Education Policy Books for 2020

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Here are my additions to the flurry of December reading lists as the two best published books in 2020 on the topic of education policy.  

The first is School House Burning: Public Education and the Assault on American Democracy by Derek Black, a law professor at the University of South Carolina.  Since I teach courses on the history of education and school law and policy, this book was particularly interesting to me.  Black adeptly traces the current challenges in public education to their historical roots from the Early National Period through Reconstruction. He makes a very compelling case that many of these threats are direct challenges to democracy overall.

The second book, A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door, is by Jack Schneider and Jennifer Berkshire, the hosts of the popular policy podcast Have You Heard.  Schneider and Berkshire address the growing movement toward privatization.  One of the best sections of the book focuses on challenges to teaching as profession and the importance of teacher mobilization.  To me, this is one of the most important policy issues for the future of public education. 

Both books are slanted toward a progressive point of view in favor of public education and skeptical of efforts to privatize or dismantle aspects of the traditional model of public education.  They offer a scholarly view documenting the credibility of the threats to not only public education, but democracy in general.

Both are great reads and a provide a really good overview on the state of public education in the early 21st Century.  If you only had time to read two books to get the gist of where we are in the struggle to provide an adequate education for all children, I would recommend reading these two.


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