Although in plain sight daily, a highly successful war against the
public schools has been hidden in the shadows of public consciousness.
Only very recently have several people written articles about this war,
with the only book calling it a war being written in 2002. Neither the
public nor educators have become aware of the far-reaching extent and
effectiveness of this war. This book treats this war as part of an
extensive social movement that is conducting wars also against
government and science, as well as against women, immigrants, the poor
(but not against poverty), and, certainly, against unions.
However, the book focuses on the war against the public schools. It sets
the stage in Chapter One, Checklist for Destroying Public Education,
followed by Chapter Two, How the War Plays Out on the Battlefield -
Seven Examples that illustrate and prove the thesis. One example
involves a private for-profit company that took over a school district
in Michigan, but found that they couldn't make a profit running the high
school. So what did they do? They simply closed it, leaving the students
high and dry.
We provide a chapter analyzing the considerable profits being made by
entrepreneurs, businessmen, politicians, testing companies and charter
schools. We then describe and analyze the overt and covert attacks on
our kids, on teachers and on public schools, such as the clever idea of
grading schools A, B, C, D, or F, thereby undermining public confidence
in their local schools. We focus on the arsenal of weapons aimed at the
public schools, such as privatization, intrusion of politicians into
educational decision-making, vouchers, using merit pay and Value-Added
Models (VAMs) to evaluate teachers, charter schools, extremely intensive
testing, the standards movement, etc. We look at unintended consequences
and conclude with attempts at peaceful resolutions and developing
reconciliation strategies.
