As one of the country's most outspoken critics of standards and testing, and a former inner-city teacher, Susan Ohanian is no stranger to the "f" word: failure. She often referred to it in her best-seller, One size fits few, to point out "the folly of educational standards." And now, in her follow-up book, Caught in the middle, it's the fulcrum upon which she dares to reveal what schools are really like when nonstandard kids and a standardized curriculum collide in the classroom. Although admitting to failure, Caught in the middle is not a downer. Hope shines through, and it comes, not from political initiatives or even from wonderful programs, but from individual interactions between teacher and students; it comes from matters of the heart. --From the publisher description.