Arthur Goldstein has taught in New York City public schools for almost thirty years. He has been trying to figure when and how teachers and public schools became objects of scorn rather than respect. He found it in “Reign of Error.”

He writes:

In Reign of Error, Ravitch demonstrates how, by ignoring poverty, America has managed to shift blame to public schools for its consequences. That’s clear when the Governor of New York declares schools with poor test scores deserve the “death penalty,” and the mayor of Chicago closes 50 schools in one fell swoop. The fact that all so-called failing schools have high percentages of high-needs kids is either attributed to coincidence or ignored completely. Standard practice is to replace them with privately run schools that generally perform either no better or much worse. Still, no one can argue they don’t place more tax money into the pockets of investors.

Reign of Error shows us corporate reform is largely about where the money goes. Americans are led to believe teachers earn too much, and entrepreneurs like Rupert Murdoch and the Walmart family earn too little. To correct this inequity, corporate reformers work to erase collective bargaining, unionism, teacher tenure, and other outrages that have left middle-class people able to make a living. This, of course, is all done in the name of helping children.