A 2020 SPE Outstanding Book Award Winner
A 2019 AESA Critics' Choice Award Winner
Conservative ideologues have sought to shift the focus from the
collective good to the individual good and to redirect the purposes and
aims of education away from public benefit and in favor of private
enterprise. As such, market-oriented, privatized, and standardized
approaches to education reform have worked toward achieving that goal.
This book is a primer on how the political right is utilizing various
aspects of philanthropy and the political process to influence
educational policymaking.
In 1971, corporate lawyer and future U.S.Supreme Court Justice Lewis
Powell wrote a detailed memo that galvanized a small group of
conservative philanthropists to create an organizational structure and
fifty-year plan to alter the political landscape of the United States.
Funded with significant "dark money," the fruits of their labor are
evident today in the current political context and sharp cultural
divisions in society. Philanthropy, Hidden Strategy, and Collective
Resistance examines the ideologies behind the philanthropic efforts in
education from the 1970s until today. Authors examine specific
strategies philanthropists have used to impact both educational policy
and practice in the U.S. as well as the legal and policy context in
which these initiatives have thrived. The book, aimed for a broad
audience of educators, provides a depth of knowledge of philanthropic
funding as well as specific strategies to incite collective resistance
to the current context of hyperaccountability, privatization of
schooling at all levels, and attempts to move the U.S. further away from
a commitment to the collective good.
Perfect for courses such as: Critical and Contemporary Issues in
Education, Education Policy, Educational Policy Analysis, Social
Foundations of Education, Philanthropy, Public Policy & Community
Change, Philanthropic Studies, Sociology of Education, Politics of
Education, Current Issues in Education, Government and the Mass Media,
Polarization of American Politics.
