Disciplining Ourselves to Stay On Message and Make a Difference for Our Children and Their Public Schools | janresseger

Disciplining Ourselves to Stay On Message and Make a Difference for Our Children and Their Public Schools | janresseger

Disciplining Ourselves to Stay On Message and Make a Difference for Our Children and Their Public Schools

Over 50 million children and adolescents attend public schools in the United States. Our public schools are spread across every city, town, suburb and rural area. And because they are established and regulated by laws, they embody a promise to protect the rights and serve the needs of all children. The protections embodied in our laws have expanded over more than two centuries as our society’s understanding of children’s rights and needs has grown.

In his new book, Schoolhouse Burning, Derek Black reminds readers about the history and significance of our public system of education along with the protection of voting rights as the two central guarantees of our democracy: “This book has told the story of a nation founded on the idea of a self-governing citizenry, bound together by public education.” (Schoolhouse Burning, p. 225) “Public education represents a commitment to a nation in which a day laborer’s son can go to college, own a business, maybe even become president. It represents a nation in which every person has a stake in setting the rules by which society will govern itself, where the waitress’s children learn alongside of and break bread with the senator’s and CEO’s children. Public education represents a nation where people from many different countries, religions, and ethnic backgrounds come together as one for a common purpose around common values.” (Schoolhouse Burning, p. 250)

Here in Ohio, we’ve been discussing Derek Black’s new book—about 80 of us gathered on ZOOM. Despite the awkwardness of being together CONTINUE READING: Disciplining Ourselves to Stay On Message and Make a Difference for Our Children and Their Public Schools | janresseger

John Thompson Reviews Derek Black’s “Schoolhouse Burning” | Diane Ravitch's blog

John Thompson Reviews Derek Black’s “Schoolhouse Burning” | Diane Ravitch's blog

John Thompson Reviews Derek Black’s “Schoolhouse Burning”

John Thompson, retired teacher and historian in Oklahoma, reviews law professor Derek Black’s recent book, Schoolhouse Burning.

Derek Black’s new book,Schoolhouse Burning: Public Education and the Assault on American Democracy, combines the best principles of the historical research that I was taught in the 1970s with the best of recent scholarship. Overall, the result is a surprisingly hopeful overview. Unfortunately, it offers an analysis of contemporary history which is more pessimistic.Black makes the case that at the end of the 1700s, and after the Civil War, Americans saw education as a right of citizenship. That explains why access to the 19^th century American education system was second only to that of Prussia.

In 1972, however, the Supreme Court denied that education was a fundamental right, and that contributed to today’s argument that education is a private choice, not a public good. Black reminds us that “Schools are not roads.” But, today, the outcome of the battle for public education is unclear.

Black explains that federal grants to education began in CONTINUE READING: John Thompson Reviews Derek Black’s “Schoolhouse Burning” | Diane Ravitch's blog

DEREK BLACK: Old ideas, not new ones, are the key to education — and democracy - kappanonline org

Old ideas, not new ones, are the key to education — and democracy  - kappanonline.org

Old ideas, not new ones, are the key to education — and democracy 

Protecting public education requires us to return to the ideals on which our country was founded. 

Public education as we know it is in trouble and, with it, so is our democracy. Rather than seeing it as a solution to segregation, inequality, and division, many now claim that the idea of public schooling itself is the problem. “Government schools,” as some pejoratively call them, deny families freedom and ought to be abandoned for the private market.   

Fully appreciating the danger of this rhetoric and the policies it is producing requires us to look backward, and beyond schools themselves to the history of the nation’s major democratic and constitutional developments. The nation, in its infancy, built its concept of democracy around public education, and, following the Civil War, public education — alongside the right to vote — became the cornerstone of the recovery of the war-torn nation. For that reason, those who would overthrow democracy have sought to attack public education, particularly during Jim Crow segregation. The lessons found in this history, more than the heated rhetoric of the present day, should inform our current approach to strengthening our schools.  

Founding gifts 

Two hundred years ago, our founding fathers gave us two gifts, both of which were relatively unknown to the world at the time. The first was democracy — what they called a republican form of government. The second was public education. These gifts were inextricably intertwined. 

A republican form of government would allow everyday people to govern themselves through elected representatives. Our founders knew what it was like to live under a king, and they wanted something radically different for themselves, their families, and the generations that would follow. Of course, by denying African Americans, women, and many poor whites the right to vote, the founders failed to live up to their lofty ideals. But those ideals, though flawed in their initial implementation, were compelling enough to take root and bear fruit for generations to come.  

The nation, in its infancy, built its concept of democracy around public education.

CONTINUE READING: Old ideas, not new ones, are the key to education — and democracy  - kappanonline.org

Wendy Lecker: Two Books That Demonstrate Why Public Education Matters | Diane Ravitch's blog

Wendy Lecker: Two Books That Demonstrate Why Public Education Matters | Diane Ravitch's blog

Wendy Lecker: Two Books That Demonstrate Why Public Education Matters

Wendy Lecker is a civil rights attorney who writes frequently for the Stamford Advocate. In this column, she reviews two important books: One shows how deeply embedded public schools are in our democratic ideology, the other describes that coordinated assault on the very concept of public schooling. The first is low professor Derek Black’s Schoolhouse Burning, the other is A Wolf at the Schoollhouse Door, by journalist Jennifer Berkshire and historian Jack Schneider.

Lecker writes:

In his scrupulously researched book, Derek Black emphasizes that the recognition that education is essential to democracy predated public schools and even the U.S. Constitution. He describes how the Northwest Ordinances of 1785 and 1787, which applied to 31 future states, mandated funding and land for public schools, declaring that education was “necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind.” Education was not explicitly included in the U.S. Constitution. However, after the Civil War, the United States required Southern states guarantee a right to education in their state constitutions as a condition for readmission. Northern states followed suit. State education articles CONTINUE READING: Wendy Lecker: Two Books That Demonstrate Why Public Education Matters | Diane Ravitch's blog

Jeff Bryant in The Progressive: Derek Black: We Need Public Schools Now More than Ever + WORSE THAN BETSY DEVOS | Ed Politics

Jeff Bryant in The Progressive: Derek Black: We Need Public Schools Now More than Ever | Ed Politics

JEFF BRYANT IN THE PROGRESSIVE: DEREK BLACK: WE NEED PUBLIC SCHOOLS NOW MORE THAN EVER

After such a polarizing election, as the nation grapples with how to deal with the coronavirus pandemic and its financial fallout, many people wonder what can bring us together.

In his new book, Schoolhouse Burning: Public Education and the Assault on American Democracy, Derek Black convincingly argues that, historically, public education can, and frequently has, unified a divided country.

Black’s deftly rendered historical account stretches from the nation’s founding to the Civil Rights Movement and into modern times. It describes how public education has long been the touchstone for the nation to recommit to its founding principles.

And though his book is mostly a historical account, Black is as concerned with the past as with the present, especially in anticipation of a post-Betsy DeVos world where public schools have been falsely portrayed as anachronistic. I recently talked with Black about his book and whether public schools are in danger of going away. The following discussion has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Q: You write in the book’s introduction that the nation is in the middle of a battle for the long-term viability of public education. How might this battle continue under a Biden presidency? 

Derek Black: There are multiple layers to that onion. But oh my God, it’s going to be great to be rid of Betsy DeVos, at least CONTINUE READIING: Jeff Bryant in The Progressive: Derek Black: We Need Public Schools Now More than Ever | Ed Politics

Worse than Betsy DeVos: The Disturbing Story of 2020 School Board Elections | Ed Politics - https://edpolitics.org/?p=303

Derek Black: State Courts Turn Back Voucher Cases | Diane Ravitch's blog

Derek Black: State Courts Turn Back Voucher Cases | Diane Ravitch's blog

Derek Black: State Courts Turn Back Voucher Cases

Derek W. Black is a professor of constitutional law who specializes in civil rights issues at the University of South Carolina. His recent book Schoolhouse Burning: Public Education and the Assault on American Democracy is a must-read.

Black writes here in an essay written for this blog about recent voucher cases in state courts:

This summer in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue, the US Supreme Court struck down the provision in the Montana state constitution that prohibited aid to religious schools as a violation of free exercise of religion.  Some public education advocates understandably feared the sky was falling. Voucher advocates hailed Espinoza as a “major win” and began strategizing how they might expand the decision and leverage it in other contexts.  Most notably, the plan they envisioned would use Espinoza to force states to allow religious institutions to operate charter schools.  If they achieved that, public education might not only be privatized, it might become religious.

Far less attention has been paid to the string of state constitutional victories striking down voucher programs and respecting states’ decision to limits on the use of CONTINUE READING: Derek Black: State Courts Turn Back Voucher Cases | Diane Ravitch's blog