[T]he seminal book on the hardships and joys of teaching.
Joseph Berger, The New York Times

[Kaufman] fully grasped the thankless position of the teachers left to impart knowledge and instill citizenship in the face of awesome obstacles … [T]he most enduring account we have of teachers’ lives — not naïve, not exculpatory, but empathetic and aware.
Samuel G. Freedman, The New Yorker

Easily the most popular novel about U.S. public schools in history.
Time

Shot through with despair and hopefulness, violence and levity, bureaucratic inanity and a blizzard of official memorandums so mind-bendingly illogical as to seem almost Kafkaesque … A stunningly accurate portrait of life in an urban school.
Margalit Fox, The New York Times

Up the Down Staircase … should be read by anyone interested in children or education.
The New York Times

The most excellent and useful portrait of a[n] … American teacher’s life that we are likely to have for a long time.
Life

Up the Down Staircase is even more pertinent, useful, charming, important, and utterly adorable than it was twenty-five years ago.
Garson Kanin, actor, writer, and director