Jack Schneider is a historian of education at the University of Massachusetts in Lowell. He and Jennifer Berkshire recently published a superb book, A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door, which I recommend to you.
The “Public” in Public Schools
There are two stories that we tell over and over these days about our schools. The first is that schools are a mechanism for getting ahead in our society. In a competition of each against every, schools are the ostensibly meritocratic sorting mechanism that determines who gets what. The second story is that schools are the engine of the economy. Education builds human capital, which in turn promotes economic growth.
These aren’t entirely wrong. Despite the fact that the privileged work feverishly to tilt the playing field for their children, schools can and often do serve a leveling function. And it is impossible to imagine the American economy thriving in the same way without an educated populace. Yet this is a torturously narrow way of understanding the value of public education.
We don’t have public schools in this country so that young people can win advantage in an unequal society (and we especially don’t have public schools so that racially and economically advantaged families can launder their privilege). Nor do we publicly fund education so that the private sector can reduce the costs of training labor. Instead, we tax ourselves to pay for universal K-12 education because public schools are the bulwark of a diverse, democratic society.
The founders knew this. As early as the 18th century, leaders were making the case that education was too important to be left to the whims of the market. If the young republic was to be governed by the people, those people needed access to schooling. Of course, education wasn’t universal from the outset; racially minoritized students were excluded and segregated, low-income students attended poorly-funded schools, and students with disabilities were refused at the door. But access to public education increased in commensuration with the recognition of other rights. Over time, our notion of “we the people” has expanded most obviously in our schools, and the benefit of this has accrued to all of us. We live in a stronger and healthier society because of our investments in public education.
And public schools weren’t merely seen as purveyors of academic content. As early advocates like Horace Mann understood, an increasingly diverse society needed a mechanism for fostering civic relationships and mutual understanding. Schools could draw young people from various walks of life together under a common roof and teach them to work in common cause. Although this inclusive vision of education has often remained an elusive ideal, integrated schools are also a reality. They have strengthened all of the communities in which they exist, and at a time of increased social fracturing it is perhaps more important than ever to heed the wisdom of Thurgood Marshall—that “unless our children begin to learn together, there is little hope that our people will learn to live together.”
As Jennifer Berkshire and I document in our new book, A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door (which Diane wrote about in The New Republic), public education in this country is presently facing an extinction threat. Those who wish to privatize it like to make the case that the “public” part of public education isn’t so important; in fact, they argue that it’s a liability. I vehemently disagree. In the nineteenth century, we had a system much like the one envisioned by the radical right. And is essential to remember that public education was developed as a replacement for that largely-private system, which had proven insufficient at advancing the public good. There are things that all young people in this country should learn, and common destinies for which they should be prepared. Moreover, this is work that should be done in equal fashion for all, since we all stand to benefit from the education of our populace.
We’ve been so distracted by the use of schools for social mobility and economic sorting that many of us have forgotten about the essential role education plays in making and sustaining an American public. Yet what other institutions do we have for fostering the kinds of civic virtues that increasingly seem so short in supply? Shall we leave it to private entities to build that public? Do we trust that the profit motive will advance the interests of us all? Whatever the flaws in our existing system, we risk tremendous harm in unmaking it.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This is an informative post. While reading it, I was thinking about Trump and Matt Gaetz. The children of the connected wealthy get by forging relationships with other well-connected people. Those of us from the working class make our way through hard work. The wealthy network while the working class moves forward on its own merit.
Abandoning public education would be a tremendous loss for the bottom three quintiles of working families in this country. Many in the wealthy class do not care if three fifths of our population gets a fair shot in life as the wealthy will take care of their own. This “let ’em eat cake” mentality is pervasive among many conservatives. Public education is one of the best investments a country can make. All we have to do is reflect on our shared past to understand this. In fact, during my career as an ESL teacher, I saw myself as someone that was helping to build a foundation for young people to be better able to serve themselves as well as their country. I saw myself as a messenger of equity. Strong public schools are absolutely essential in a democratic society. They are essential for bringing all types of people together for a stronger, healthier collective future. We cannot afford to abandon our public schools as they are essential building block of democracy..
Are people even reading these voucher laws the ed reform echo chamber are pushing all over the country?
It is wholesale privatization of K-12 education. The ed reform “movements” twenty years of assurances that they wouldn’t privatize public education are absolutely contradicted by their actions.
So what happened? Did they lie to the public when we were assured they wouldn’t privatize, or did they change their minds and decide to privatize?
Because it’s ALL they do. They do no work on behalf of public school students and provide no practical value to public school students. This “movement” spends 100% of their time lobbying lawmakers to privatize schools.
At the very least could we STOP hiring people who oppose the existence of public schools to set public school policy? They’re the voucher/charter lobby. Why are they setting policy in public schools? How is that fair to public school students?
If your goal is a privatized system of charters and vouchers, hire ed reformers. If you want strong public schools, hire outside the ed reform echo chamber. That seems like the least we could do on behalf of public school students- stop hiring and paying people who work against our students and schools.
“Kerr was backed largely by conservatives, but also touted a couple endorsements from Democrats: state Sen. Lena Taylor and former U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who has supported expanding charter schools.”
There is no longer any practical difference between Besty DeVos’ vision of privatized K-12 education and Arne Duncan’s vision of privatized K-12 education- they now back the same candidates.
Ed reform is aggressively and exclusively pro-privatization. They do nothing else.
Where does that leave the 90% of students and families who attend the public schools ed reform rejects? No one in ed reform even asks- they’re too busy lobbying for privatized systems.
Isn’t it past time this “movement” admitted what the goal is here? When are they planning on telling the public? They’re hoping no one will notice they work full time on privatization lobbying?
and when anyone does notice they get away with saying that they only do to it bring “equity” and suddenly they are they good guys again
Equity is never separate and unequal as in privatization which imposes rationing resources for a select few or the dumping of the neediest in schools with few opportunities. Equity is about building capacity for the many despite individual differences and according to needs. That is the mission of a well funded public school. Privatization is the antithesis of equity.
Have you all seen this?
“It’s the idea of revisionist history combined with ‘cancel culture’ that we have to get a handle on,” said Oklahoma state Sen. David Bullard, a Republican. He introduced two bills this session that would add protections for public school and college students’ political speech and ban “anti-American” teachings in the classroom, which he described as any endorsement of socialism, Marxism or communism.
“We’re not sending our kids to schools to be indoctrinated,” he told Stateline. “We’re sending them to school to be educated.”
The ed reform echo chamber will now police what goes on in public schools. The same people who are aggressively privatizing and handing out public funding to any entity that is even remotely “educational” with no regulation at all, now presume to rigidly police the public schools they don’t support, don’t attend, and work to eradicate.
Are they going to police the educational contractors like this? Why should public schools put up with it if the privatized systems they prefer aren’t bound by these rules?
Public school policy is now written by a group of people who don’t value public schools and work every day to replace them all. How is that a good deal for public school students?
They’re now publicly funding private schools. They have to either apply ed reform mandates to those schools or keep their mandates out of our schools- they cannot have this both ways. If publicly funded private schools are exempt from garbage ed reform policy then public schools should be too.
The school privatization-seeking billionaire does not only want to return education to being a privilege instead of a right; he wants to undo the entire Progressive Era, the New Deal, and the Great Society, so that all life in this country, from progressive taxation to saving for retirement to having welfare available when needed, will regress back to being a Darwinian survival of the fittest, and capitalism will replace all of the democracy feared by slaveholders and purveyors of indentured servitude who helped make democracy indirect in the founding of a new nation.
So glad you make the point that pushing private solutions means going back to the 19th century, when dodgy schools abounded, opening and closing as the fortunes or inclinations of the owner dictated – and sometimes being closed down in the wake of a TB outbreak or abuse scandal. Victorian fiction is full of these sorts of schools. Giving working-class and poor people the vote made public schools a necessity because, as Neil Postman argued in “End of Education,” public schools don’t serve a public – they create a public, and in a democracy, we all have to be in it together. In a time of reviving Jim Crow-like voter suppression, no wonder public schools have a target painted on their back.
This needs to be considered in higher education, too. So much is about “quick turnaround for careers!”
I’m not sure this can happen within the current infrastructure, though. As teachers are fleeing, I’m wondering if communities can re-define “public” and create new structures for learning.