A WOLF AT THE SCHOOLHOUSE DOOR

A stern warning about the conservative agenda to tear down the public education system.

Schneider and Berkshire, hosts of the education podcast Have You Heard, present a cogent argument against the ongoing assault on our public schools as an institution. For decades now, there has been a movement to make education something families should be able to shop for, be it public, private, parochial, charter, virtual, or home-schooling. The authors examine the ideological roots of the movement and the core policies of the dismantling agenda. They believe that the conservative animus against public education is caused by its high tax cost in state budgets, the unionization of its workforce, the generally progressive curriculum, and the host of regulations and attendant bureaucracy. Curiously, the authors do not consider in much depth the roles of bigotry and classism within the traditions of local control, taxpayer support, and open access, but they offer particularly good explanations of neo-vouchers—“a cottage industry of fraud and chaos,” in one reporter’s words—education savings accounts, scam-laden building leases and management fees, and the private-governance model for charter schools. They also deliver a rather dire picture of the role of teachers, all of whom are underpaid, especially in the virtual-learning environment, where educators are reduced to helpers who will inevitably find their way into the gig economy. Consequently, if you don’t have to pay union wages for teachers, you will free up money for advertising, which will become an increasingly expensive part of the school picture as various school types compete for student tuition dollars. Some progressives, too, have shown their anxiousness to “forc[e] competition on a public education monopoly,” which shadows the conservative argument that “if the taxpayer is paying for the education”—as in charter schools—“it’s public education.”

A vigorous, well-informed broadside against the marketization of the education system in the U.S.