THE SLOW, AGONIZING DEATH OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS
A BIPARTISAN SNUFF FILM - THE OLIGARCHY'S 30-YEAR MURDER SPREE
A Satirical Autopsy of American Education
WASHINGTON D.C. — If you listen closely on a quiet Tuesday morning, you can hear it: the death rattle of American public education, wheezing its last breaths while politicians from both parties stand around the bedside arguing about which method of euthanasia shows more "fiscal responsibility."
It's been a slow death—painfully, excruciatingly slow—much to the chagrin of our billionaire overlords who've invested good money in expediting this execution and expected Amazon Prime-level delivery speeds on the collapse of public education. Instead, they've gotten the bureaucratic equivalent of dial-up internet.
A Tale of Two Executioners: The Bipartisan Murder Mystery Nobody's Solving
In what can only be described as the most depressing buddy-cop movie never made, Republicans and Democrats have joined forces in a rare display of unity to systematically dismantle the institution that once educated their own grandparents. It's touching, really—like watching two rival gangs put aside their differences to agree on which neighborhood to burn down.
The Republican Method: Vouchers, or "Death by a Thousand Cuts to the Budget"
Republicans, never ones for subtlety when a sledgehammer will do, have chosen school vouchers as their weapon of choice. It's genius in its simplicity: take public money, give it to private schools, and watch public schools collapse from malnutrition like a Victorian orphan in a Dickens novel.
"Why should we fund schools for everyone," asks Senator Moneybags McTaxcut, "when we could fund schools for people who already have money? It's just more efficient!" The logic is airtight if you don't think about it for more than three seconds.
The Democratic Method: Charter Schools, or "We're Not Killing Public Education, We're Just Letting It Die Naturally"
Democrats, preferring their destruction with a veneer of progressive rhetoric, have embraced charter schools—the "I can't believe it's not public school!" of education reform. It's murder, but make it woke.
"We're not destroying public schools," insists Representative Wellmeaning Complicit, adjusting her "I'm With Teachers" pin while signing another charter school authorization. "We're just creating competition! You know, like how competition helped healthcare become so affordable and accessible!" She says this without a trace of irony, which is either impressive or terrifying.
The Dream Team: Potential Architects of Educational Armageddon
As the Trump administration assembles its cabinet like a villain collecting Infinity Stones, the position of Education Secretary has become a hot topic. Who will deliver the final blow to public education?
Linda McMahon: The WWE Approach
Current frontrunner Linda McMahon has been applying professional wrestling techniques to education policy with mixed results. Her strategy involves a lot of body slams, chair shots, and dramatic entrances accompanied by pyrotechnics. While entertaining, critics argue that pile-driving the Department of Education through a flaming table, while spectacular, may not constitute sound policy.
"Listen, in WWE, we understood storytelling," McMahon explained at a recent press conference while practicing her signature move on a scale model of a public school. "And the story here is clear: public education is the heel, and privatization is coming off the top rope with a steel chair!"
Kristi Noem: The "She Shot Her Dog" Credentials
But wait—there's a dark horse candidate emerging from the wings, and she comes with a resume that's raising eyebrows and lowering property values near public schools nationwide.
Governor Kristi Noem, fresh off her successful career in making controversial decisions about living beings in her care, has been floated as a potential Education Secretary. Her qualification? She shot her dog. And apparently, the ICE executions have been going swimmingly.
"Look, if there's one thing I've proven," Noem said while ominously cleaning a rifle at a campaign stop, "it's that I'm willing to make the tough calls. That puppy was underperforming, and I dealt with it. These public schools? Also underperforming. I'm just saying, I've got experience with... solutions."
When pressed on whether she was actually suggesting violence against schools, her spokesperson clarified: "Governor Noem believes in a multi-pronged approach. Shooting is just one tool in the toolbox. She's also suggested blowing up a few schools as a warning to parents who still support public education. You know, pour encourager les autres."
The French reference was apparently meant to demonstrate her commitment to foreign language education, though critics noted that "encouraging others" through explosive intimidation might not align with current pedagogical best practices.
The Oligarchy's Impatience: When Billions Don't Buy Speed
Perhaps the most frustrating aspect of this slow-motion assassination has been the pace. Our benevolent billionaire job creators have spent billions—with a B, the letter that also starts "betrayal," "bureaucracy," and "why is this taking so long?"—on this project.
The investment portfolio is impressive:
- Fake Media Reports: Millions spent on think tanks with names like "The Institute for Definitely Real Education Research" and "Americans for Not Looking Too Closely at Our Funding Sources"
- Front Group Nonprofits: Organizations with heartwarming names like "Students First" (Billionaires Second, But Don't Check Our Donor List)
- Politician Purchases: A bargain, really—most politicians cost less than a luxury yacht and require minimal maintenance
- Testing Industrial Complex: Because nothing says "we care about learning" like reducing education to filling in bubbles while testing companies make bank
- Common Core: The curriculum everyone loves to hate, brought to you by people who definitely asked teachers what they thought (they didn't)
And yet, despite this massive investment, public schools persist like a cockroach after a nuclear blast. They're underfunded, understaffed, crumbling, and somehow still educating millions of children. It's almost as if communities actually want public schools. How inconvenient.
"We've spent billions, and these schools just won't die," laments hedge fund manager Thurston Moneypenny III, wiping his tears with hundred-dollar bills. "We've tried everything—defunding, demoralizing teachers, standardized testing until the children's eyes glaze over. And still, parents keep sending their kids there! It's like they don't understand we're trying to help them by destroying their neighborhood schools."
Teachers: The Villains in This Upside-Down World
In a plot twist that would make Orwell blush, teachers—those lazy, greedy monsters who chose a profession that requires a master's degree and pays less than middle management at Arby's—have been cast as the villains in this drama.
The Vilification Campaign
The propaganda has been relentless:
- "Teachers only work nine months a year!" (Ignoring the unpaid hours, summer professional development, and using their own money for supplies)
- "They're impossible to fire!" (Ignoring that due process isn't a bug, it's a feature)
- "They're indoctrinating our children!" (With dangerous concepts like "critical thinking" and "the Civil War was about slavery")
Mrs. Henderson, a 25-year veteran teacher in Ohio, responded to these accusations while grading papers at 11 PM on a Sunday: "Yes, you've caught us. We're getting rich off our $45,000 salaries and luxurious benefits package that we have to supplement with GoFundMe campaigns for classroom supplies. We're basically the Illuminati, but with more construction paper and fewer vacation homes."
Teachers Unions: Defenders of Children or Obstacles to Progress?
And then there are the teachers unions—those pesky organizations that insist on radical concepts like "teachers should be paid living wages" and "maybe class sizes shouldn't be 45 students per teacher."
Teachers unions have been rebranded as the enemy of education reform, which is like calling firefighters the enemy of fire safety. They're the last line of defense between public education and complete privatization, which makes them Target #1 for the oligarchy's hit list.
"These unions are standing in the way of innovation!" shouts a billionaire who's never spent a day in a classroom. "We need flexibility! Disruption! The ability to fire teachers without cause and replace them with an app!"
The unions, meanwhile, continue their radical agenda of checks notes advocating for smaller class sizes, adequate funding, and not having teachers work second jobs to survive. Truly, they are the villains of our time.
The Endgame: Separate and Unequal, Again
Here's the dirty secret that the school privatization movement doesn't advertise on their glossy brochures: they don't actually want to close all public schools.
No, no, no. That would be inefficient.
The goal is to create a two-tiered system: well-funded private and charter schools for the "deserving" (read: wealthy, white, able-bodied, straight, cisgender) students, and gutted, underfunded public schools for everyone else—the poor, Black, Brown, disabled, and LGBTQ+ kids who apparently don't deserve the same educational opportunities.
It's segregation with extra steps and better PR.
"We're not trying to recreate Jim Crow," insists one reform advocate, unconvincingly. "We're just creating 'choice'! If parents choose to send their kids to schools that happen to be segregated by race and class, well, that's just the free market at work!"
Historians have noted that this argument would be more convincing if it wasn't identical to arguments made in the 1950s and 60s, but with the word "choice" doing a lot of heavy lifting.
The plan is elegant in its cruelty:
- Defund public schools
- Point to their struggles as evidence they "don't work"
- Offer privatization as the "solution"
- Cream off the profitable students
- Leave the expensive-to-educate students in the gutted public system
- Blame teachers for the predictable failure
- Repeat
It's the circle of life, if the circle of life was designed by Ebenezer Scrooge and implemented by Gordon Gekko.
The Trump Administration's Modest Proposals: A Brainstorming Session from Hell
As this article goes to press, sources inside the Trump administration report that several "innovative solutions" are being considered to accelerate the death of public education. These proposals were apparently brainstormed during a meeting that witnesses described as "like watching a Bond villain convention, but with worse catering."
Proposal 1: ICE in Every School
"We've had tremendous success with ICE operations," explained an unnamed administration official while twirling a mustache that definitely wasn't there before. "Why not send them into schools? We could check papers, terrify children, separate families—it's a win-win! Plus, nothing says 'quality education' like armed immigration enforcement in the cafeteria."
When asked if terrorizing children might negatively impact learning outcomes, the official responded, "Learning outcomes? What are those?"
Proposal 2: Teacher Kidnapping Program
In what's being called "Operation Substitute Shortage," the administration is reportedly considering a program to kidnap teachers, thereby creating a staffing crisis that would force school closures.
"It's simple supply and demand," explained an economist who requested anonymity because even he was embarrassed by this idea. "No teachers, no schools. No schools, no public education. No public education, no problem! Well, except for the kidnapping charges, but we're working on immunity for that."
Proposal 3: Naval Blockade of Public Schools
In perhaps the most creative proposal, the administration has considered deploying the U.S. Navy to blockade public schools, preventing students and teachers from entering.
"We have the best Navy, tremendous Navy," said a source doing a poor impression of someone. "Why not use it? We could park destroyers in school parking lots. Try getting to homeroom past an aircraft carrier!"
Military analysts have pointed out that this would be an unprecedented domestic deployment of naval forces and possibly unconstitutional. Administration officials responded, "Constitution? Is that still a thing?"
Proposal 4: The Noem Nuclear Option
But the proposal generating the most buzz—and terror—is Governor Noem's suggestion to simply blow up a few public schools as a warning to parents who still support public education.
"It's about sending a message," Noem explained at a recent donor event, apparently unaware that her statement sounded like dialogue from a mob movie. "You blow up one, maybe two schools—empty ones, we're not monsters—and suddenly parents get very motivated to consider other options. It's psychology!"
Child psychologists have noted that terrorizing parents with explosives might create trauma, not school choice. Noem dismissed these concerns as "fake news from the mental health industrial complex."
When reporters pressed her on the legality and morality of bombing public infrastructure, Noem smiled and said, "Look, I'm just thinking outside the box. Or in this case, thinking about blowing up the box. The box being a school. You get it."
We got it. We wish we didn't, but we got it.
The Deliberation Continues
As of press time, no final decision has been made on which of these proposals to implement. Sources say the administration is waiting to see which focus groups best with suburban voters and which can be most easily blamed on Antifa.
The Resistance: Parents, Teachers, and Reality
Despite the billions spent, the propaganda deployed, and the increasingly unhinged proposals from government officials, public schools stubbornly refuse to die quickly.
Why? Because it turns out that communities actually value their public schools. Parents like having free, local schools for their children. Teachers keep showing up despite being vilified and underpaid. Students keep learning despite crumbling buildings and outdated textbooks.
It's almost as if public education serves a vital social function that can't be replaced by market forces and profit motives. Who knew?
"We just want our kids to have what we had," says Marcus Johnson, a parent in Detroit fighting school closures. "A decent education, qualified teachers, a safe building. Why is that controversial? Why does wanting public schools make us the enemy?"
It doesn't, Marcus. It makes you sane. But sanity has been in short supply in education policy for decades.
The Prognosis: Terminal, But Not Dead Yet
So where does this leave us? Public education is on life support, surrounded by politicians arguing about whether to pull the plug or just let it die of neglect. The oligarchy grows impatient, having expected their investment to pay dividends by now. Teachers continue teaching despite everything. Students continue learning despite everything. And parents continue fighting for their neighborhood schools despite everything.
The death of public schools has been slow, painful, and ugly. But here's the thing about death scenes that drag on too long: sometimes the patient survives.
Maybe, just maybe, enough people will realize that public education—free, universal, secular education for all children—is worth fighting for. That it's not a business to be disrupted or a market to be exploited, but a public good, a cornerstone of democracy, and a promise we make to the next generation.
Or maybe Kristi Noem will get her way and we'll all learn to love the smell of napalm in the morning drop-off line.
Either way, it's going to be a hell of a show.
The author is a concerned citizen who believes that education policy should be made by educators, not billionaires, and that shooting dogs does not qualify one to run the Department of Education, but apparently, we're living in interesting times.
No public schools were harmed in the writing of this article, though several charter school lobbyists tried to defund the author's coffee budget.
EDITOR'S NOTE: This is a work of satire. Any resemblance to actual education policy is deeply, profoundly depressing.
Amazon.com : Diane Ravitch https://www.amazon.com/s?
ProPublica: The Zealots Who Hate Public Schools Now Work in the U.S. Department of Education https://dianeravitch.net/2026/01/08/propublica-the-zealots-who-hate-public-schools-now-work-in-the-u-s-department-of-education/ via @dianeravitch
Vouchers Continue to Cause School Closures in Arizona 8 more local schools closed amid rapid voucher expansion ANDY SPEARS https://theeducationreport.substack.com/p/vouchers-continue-to-cause-school
Complex Issues Rumble Beneath Plan to Close Cleveland Schools | janresseger https://janresseger.wordpress.com/2026/01/08/complex-issues-rumble-beneath-plan-to-close-cleveland-schools/
The Schools Are Failing (Again) What’s behind the latest round of public education panic? JENNIFER BERKSHIRE https://educationwars.substack.com/p/the-schools-are-failing-again
