Kentucky Education Policy Blog

One of the most deceptive strategies of education reform over the past 20 years has been to sow doubt about the importance of school funding.  The approach has been advocated by those that do not want to increase the financial investment in public education as well as those who say the public schools are inefficient or ineffective. To sow doubt, they sold an outcomes based approach--using high-stakes standardized tests as evidence that public schools are failing.  This has been an effective mirage to bring the focus away from inputs and redirect efforts away from increased funding for schools. Authors Jack Schneider and Jennifer Berkshire describe this "cost cutting crusade" in their aptly named book  Wolf at the School House Door  (2020). The perpetuation of this myth has led many states to slash education funding as a way to experiment with tax cuts -- with little success. The most notorious case is Kansas, where Governor Sam Brownback promised that a moderate tax...

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 tea...