The Miseducation of Betsy DeVos
For almost twenty-five years, Betsy DeVos has been one of the most dogged political operatives in the movement to privatize public education.
Fall 2024
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Milton Friedman, Betsy DeVos, and the Privatization of Public Education
For almost twenty-five years, Betsy DeVos has been one of the most dogged political operatives in the movement to privatize public education.
Classroom Saints and Fiends
Dana Goldstein’s The Teacher Wars shows that the failed ideas underlying today’s ed-reform crusade are as old as public education itself.
How to Criticize “Big Philanthropy” Effectively
Criticizing philanthropy (or philanthropists) of any kind is tricky. To most people, a negative appraisal sounds off-base and churlish—yet another instance of “No good deed goes unpunished.” Criticizing the immense private foundations that finance and shape the market-model “reform” of …
We They Shall Overcome
Rooted in the gospel tradition, the song “We Shall Overcome” became an anthem of the African‑American civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s and then an assertion of struggle and solidarity worldwide. Solidarity is at the heart of both …
Plutocrats at Work: How Big Philanthropy Undermines Democracy
Early twentieth-century skeptics were rightly suspicious of plutocrats deciding how to improve the human condition and then paying to translate their notions into public policy. Now it’s time for a new progressive era—complete with muckrakers and trust-busters to cast a critical eye on big philanthropy.
What Happened to Public Education on Election Night?
The rescue of public education must come from the grassroots, from a coalition led by parents and teachers. Such a movement has been taking shape gradually and gained visibility during the 2012 election cycle.
Who Is Victimizing Chicago’s Kids?
Yes, schoolchildren in Chicago are victims, but not of their teachers. They are victims of a nationwide education “reform” movement geared to undermine teachers’ unions and shift public resources into private hands; they are victims of wave after wave of …
Hired Guns on Astroturf: How to Buy and Sell School Reform
For the last decade and more, a generation of self-proclaimed “ed reformers” has been setting up programs to show the power of competition and market-style accountability to transform inner-city public schools. Ed reformers spend at least a half-billion dollars a year in private money…
Firing Line: The Grand Coalition Against Teachers
J. Barkan: Ed Reformers v. Teachers
Got Dough? How Billionaires Rule Our Schools
To see an MSNBC interview with Barkan about this article, click here. For resources and further reading suggested by Barkan, click here. The cost of K–12 public schooling in the United States comes to well over $500 billion per year. …
Resources and Further Reading for “Got Dough? How Billionaires Rule Our Schools” (Web-Only)
In the text of my article “Got Dough? How Billionaires Rule Our Schools,” readers can find the sources for any material that I have quoted. For those who would like to see general sources, background material, or suggestions for further …
About-face: A Conservative Rethinks Education Policy 
The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education by Diane Ravitch Basic Books, 2010, 288 pp., $26.95 It’s fall 2007. Diane Ravitch is packing a career’s worth of reading and writing …
(Ms.)reading Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying
In 1973—the same year that the Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade, legalizing abortion, the U.S. House of Representatives accepted its first female page, and AT&T settled a major lawsuit by agreeing to end pay discrimination against women—Holt, Rinehart and …
Don’t Blame the Socialists: A Response to Sheri Berman
Sheri Berman has written an exhortation to the “present day” democratic socialist Left in the “Western world” to get over “the loss of its vision of a postcapitalist society,” to stop denigrating efforts to reform capitalism, and to begin agitating …
