Two Important Articles Describe Widespread Attack on Core Value of Public Education
Here is a particularly strong critique of what the North Carolina legislature is doing to undermine that state’s public schools. Helen Ladd, one of the chairs of the Broader, BOLDER Approach to Education campaign and a professor of public policy at Duke University and Edward Fiske, former education editor of the NY Times, describe their experience two years ago working with North Carolina’s state board of education to craft what was known as a “Vision of Public Education in North Carolina.” They continue by describing how in 2013, that commitment was dismantled when the North Carolina “General Assembly, with the assent of Gov. Pat McCrory, enacted a sweeping set of new laws that represent a frontal assault on public education…”
Ladd and Fiske write: “If one were to devise a strategy for destroying public education in North Carolina, it might look like this: Repeat over and over again that schools are failing and that the system needs to be replaced. Then make this a self-fulfilling prophecy by starving schools of funds, undermining teachers and badmouthing their profession, balkanizing the system to make coherent planning impossible, putting public funds in the hands of unaccountable private interests and abandoning any pretense that the goal is to prepare every child in our state to succeed in life.”
Writing for the Education Opportunity Network and the Campaign for America’s Future, Jeff Bryant devotes this week’s commentary to the same theme. He examines the situation in North Carolina and also tracks a much broader attack on public schools across the states. “For quite some time, there has been a well-orchestrated, well funded, and extremely