I think you will find this book review interesting. I reviewed Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism; Steve Suitts, Overturning Brown: The Segregationist Legacy of the Modern School Choice Movement; and Derek W. Black, Schoolhouse Burning: Public Education and the Assault on American Democracy.
The review is titled “The Dark History of School Choice.” It appears in the New York Review of Books, which is the most prestigious literary journal in the U.S.
You can read the opening paragraphs, then it goes behind a paywall. However, you can request to read review in full for free.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Here’s the link: https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2021/01/14/the-dark-history-of-school-choice/
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Thanks, Bob, and thanks to Diane for yet another deep reveal, a story that is sickening every time I read more about it.
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Perhaps you want to add Sowell’s book on Charter Schools
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Thomas Sowell is a far right libertarian hack. He’s part of the problem.
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Tom Sowell is a far-right libertarian. He is 90 years old. His views have been frozen for 50 years. When do you think he was last in a school of any kind?
I was once a friend of Tom’s, back when I was on the other side. Public schools enabled him to rise out of poverty.
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These books as well as the blog in general are great at saying what’s wrong but weak in saying what to do about it. How can you blame charter while public does nothing about systemic change from the system that pushes kids out of school.
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Charter schools push kids out of school, the poor performers and discipline problems, the kids more expensive and more difficult to educate. Gee, then where do these more challenging to educate kids go after they are counseled out of the charter school? Oh, that’s right, they go back to the real public schools.
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You are right, Joe Jersey.
Thank you for, “Gee, then where do these more challenging to educate kids go after they are counseled out of the charter school? Oh, that’s right, they go back to the real public schools.”
TRUE!
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and then the public schools are very notably blamed and closed, and older teachers fired for having low-scoring students: an “on the nose” recipe used for years in our district as it sold out school after school to developers and re-gentrification
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With respect, Cap, after over 20 years of Reform (including worship of charters) your statement is liking saying an oncologist is great at identifying (and trying to remove) cancer but weak at fixing everything else in a patient’s life. With regards to charters, this blog has done a service in pointing out how it weakens an already highly weakened public school system. With regards to pushing kids out of schools, far more students are sent out of closing charters (back to where?) then by public schools who generally do everything they can to do their best for students. DeVos epitomized the double standard of blaming public schools for all things bad in education while glorifying all other schools for everything good.
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Politicians have worked to deliberately under fund large public systems in urban areas. School funding is not the fault of the public schools or the teachers that work in them. The institutionalized under funding is the result of institutionalized racism.
I just listened to a black doctor on the news discuss the high number of Covid deaths in people of color. He said we always attribute the disparity to preexisting conditions. He said nobody talks about the fact that most public urban hospitals are under funded, and that is where the majority of people are treated. Also, people without insurance are more likely to wait until their symptoms are so severe before seeking treatment. Inequity abounds in our society. Sound familiar?
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Very true. And the healthcare disparity is outrageous, which the COVID death rate has put into stark relief. The only thing that hasn’t been done (yet) is blaming doctors and nurses in those hospitals for having higher death rates than the private hospitals awash with funding who treat disproportionate numbers of affluent patients.
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I read the entire article, Diane.
Thank you.
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Here’s my tri-yearly push for an awesome anti-Reform satirical novel called Adequate Yearly Progress by Roxanna Elden. Recommended reading for the break. I’m not sure I’ve gotten anyone on here to read it, yet, but I’ll keep trying.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/53010290-adequate-yearly-progress
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For myself, I’m making a shopping list. Checking it twice. Thanks!
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