I Got Schooled: The Unlikely Story of How a Moonlighting Movie Maker Learned the Five Keys to Closing America’s Education Gap

America’s “educational apartheid”—the achievement gap between high- and low-income students—weighs heavily on filmmaker Shyamalan (writer and director of The Sixth Sense). For his first book, he attends a think-tank meeting on the subject and then teams up with an education researcher to visit schools, speak with researchers, and collect evidence on the traits that make a school successful. In addition to the “five keys” (longer hours, small schools, data-driven instruction, school leaders, best teachers), the book contains a few surprises. Leading schools employ principals who monitor teachers in the classroom and free teachers from the bureaucratic demands typical of less successful schools. Further, student-achievement assessments occur more frequently throughout the school year and are calibrated so that teachers receive more detailed feedback about their students’ needs. Even something as simple as identifying ineffective teachers and eliminating them from the system sooner could have staggering results, as ineffective teacher are extremely harmful to struggling students. The book’s conversational tone and appealing humor yields an engaging narrative of one Hollywood director’s struggle to find out what works in the best schools, and how we can apply those insights to the rest. Agent: Eric Simonoff, WME. (Sept.)