Assault on Kids and Teachers; Countering Privatization, Deficit Ideologies and Standardization in U.S. Schools (523) (Counterpoints: Studies in Criticality) - Tapa dura

"Finally a book that eschews the timid talk and middle class politeness that typically characterizes academic education analyses. If the other side can be `mad as hell and not want to take it anymore,' imagine how mad the people who are demonized and victimized by draconian and regressive policies are. Bravo to the editors for assembling such a courageous collection."-Gloria Ladson-Billings, Professor and Chair, Department of Curriculum and Instruction, Kellner Family Chair in Urban Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison "The editors and authors of this volume dare to re-frame current `debates' about the nature of U.S. public schooling. Dialogues about policy and practice have devolved into sound-byte chats about increasingly narrow curricular standards, ever more efficient-rather than effective-assessments of student learning, and endless means through which teachers' work is de-professionalized. In this context, we need the mindset offered by this volume in order to counter dangerous, de-humanizing trends. This text is a primer of our best thinking about how to make our public schools places where a public is made."-Kristien Zenkov, Associate Professor, George Mason University "These are troubling times for classroom teachers and for public education. Alhquist, Gorski, and Montano have collected a series of essays that add the provocative and vibrant voices of practitioners who face the everyday realities of `hyper accountability' policies, programs and practices. These voices shed light on the dire consequences of high stakes tests, a narrow curriculum, and of the perilous `reform' efforts currently eroding the very fabric of public education. I encourage all teachers, practicing and preservice, to read this book and to build a movement to keep the `public' in public education."-David Sanchez, President, California Teachers Association "Corporate education reformers have come for public education, punishing us with high-stakes testing, attacking teachers and communities, and profiteering through charter schools and other free market models. Assault on Kids and Teachers give us tools to not only fight back against this corporate juggernaut, but also the vision to look forward with hope and the power to make things better. A critically important book that could not have come at a better time, Assault on Kids and Teachers should be read by anyone interested in the struggle over the soul of schooling and educational democracy in the United States."-Wayne Au, Editor, Rethinking Schools; Professor, School of Educational Studies, University of Washington Bothell "So-called `solutions' for improving public education interconnect in troubling ways-as is revealed insightfully and compellingly in this new and timely book. Ahlquist, Gorski, and Montano have assembled an impressive collection of analyses that help us to unmask what are mere symptoms of broader movements to widen educational disparities, and to imagine alternatives and interventions with insight and conviction. Assault on Kids and Teachers should cause us to pause, and reimagine, and should be read immediately."-Kevin Kumashiro, Author, The Seduction of Common Sense: How the Right Has Framed the Debate on America's Schools; President-Elect, National Association for Multicultural Education

In Assault on Kids and Teachers, educators from across the United States push back against the neoliberal school reform movements that are taking the "public" out of public education, demonizing teachers, and stealing from youth the opportunity for an equitable, just, and holistic education. Contributors, including teachers, educational and community activists, teacher educators, critical education scholars, and others, expose how racism, economic injustice, and other forms of injustice are created and recreated both locally and nationally through educational policies more intent on turning schools into profit centers and undermining teacher unions than on strengthening public schools. Topics include the privatization of public schools, the growing influence of grit ideology on school practices, zero tolerance policies and the school-to-prison pipeline, Teach For America, the lies behind the charter school movement, and the damage TPAs are doing to teacher education. Beyond leveling critiques at these and other troubling trends and practices, though, contributors describe the many sites and forms of resistance emerging in response to these assaults on kids and teachers from students, parents, teachers, and other concerned people. Assault on Kids and Teachers is both a call for deeper understandings of anti-democratic and regressive school reform initiatives and an invitation into movements for putting the "public" back into public education.