Review by Booklist Review
The classroom is very much a battlefield in Fitzpatrick's The Death of Public School. The concept of the traditional public school, where local students flock each day, has been under attack for decades as some parents look for alternative choices in how their children are educated, including private, religious, and the relatively new concept of charter schools. As these options proliferated, many parents and educators looked toward an expanded voucher system as a way for families to send their children to public alternatives at no additional cost. Fitzpatrick expertly showcases how the debate over education crystallizes some of the biggest failings of our modern society, including our propensity to segregate based on race and class. Fitzpatrick, who earned a Pulitzer Prize for her reporting on school segregation in Florida, outlines a story that is both complicated and ever evolving. The Death of Public School manages to provide grounding context to the labyrinthine journey of the school-choice movement, profiling both the well-known figures and the less familiar activists, lawyers, educators, and parents on both sides who have shaped this war. In Fitzpatrick's capable hands, a sequel would certainly be much appreciated.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Pulitzer winner Fitzpatrick's informative debut outlines the recent history of public education reform, detailing the intellectual underpinnings and political wrangling behind successive movements for school privatization. Beginning in the 1960s, she notes, school vouchers and similar programs were developed to "sidestep" integration, allowing white students to opt in to segregated private schools in the South, an idea that spread across the country but "remained deeply unpopular"--and rarely implemented--because of how it would have diverted taxpayer dollars to Catholic institutions. (Catholic intellectuals, like political scientist and Jesuit priest Virgil Blum, became strong proponents of voucher systems.) In the 1990s, charter schools and their promise of "school choice" became a far more successful method of diverting resources from public education. Promoted in a 1988 speech by Albert Shanker, president of the American Federation of Teachers, the concept of a charter--a small, experimental "school within a school"--caught on like "wildfire," according to Fitzpatrick. Rather than functioning as teaching laboratories, however, most charters were coopted by the forces of privatization and established as "competitors of the traditional public school"; by 1993, Shanker was referring to charters as a "gimmick." Meticulously drawn from years of archival research, this is a lucid and thorough study of a hot-button issue. (Aug.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
Pulitzer Prize winner Fitzpatrick (editor, Chalkbeat) focuses on the United States' public school system, designed to educate all children but currently facing declining enrollment, diminished public trust, and cuts in government funding. The book notes that conservatives are successfully diverting government funds for private and chartered schools that have different and even oppositional curriculums. In the 1960s, Wisconsin passed the first bureaucratic funding of school vouchers, and more states followed suit. Although the author does not interview people who actually work in or design school systems, her personal interviews with students are quite revealing. They show how limited the options are for disadvantaged learners, often assigned to low performance classes or segregated in public schools with lower expectations of performance. Also enlightening from other interviews is the desperation of parents to procure funds to move their child to any school that would give them a better education. VERDICT This book does not offer any solutions or suggest any governmental or educational policies that would solve the problems it identifies, but will still likely appeal to general readers. A great addition to education and behavioral sciences collections.--Claude Ury
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A Pulitzer Prize--winning education journalist follows the recent history of education movements in America. In a landscape of declining trust in public schools, Fitzpatrick examines how public education has been radically redefined in the U.S. since the 1950s. From the South's campaigns of "massive resistance" to desegregation that followed Brown v. Board of Education, she traces the country's trajectory toward today's understanding of "school choice." Along the way, she delves into contentious movements for and against school vouchers, religious education, charter schools, and standardized testing along with these movements' entanglement with racial biases, civil rights, church-state separation, and free market principles. Instead of the characters most regularly discussed in the media's coverage of education--e.g., superintendents, school boards, teacher unions, and philanthropists enamored with charter schools--Fitzpatrick details the outsized influence of several less-familiar figures, such as the Jesuit priest Rev. Virgil Blum, Wisconsin state Rep. Annette "Polly" Williams, and conservative attorney Clint Bolick. Fitzpatrick's substantial coverage of unlikely political alliances, granular explanation of legal battles, and detailed accounts of education legislation tempers the potential sensationalism of her subtitle: Rather than a tidal wave of conservatism, America's current education system has been shaped by narrow wins, compromises, technicalities, and a few key pivotal moments--e.g., rebuilding the New Orleans school system in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. More textbook-style history than analysis, the book leaves Fitzpatrick's driving questions about the role of individual liberty, government measurement and accountability, and the importance of education itself largely unanswered, and the narrative sometimes feels like more of a synthesis of materials rather than something new and incisive. Nevertheless, it is sure to be a valuable resource for anyone who studies public education, as the author offers sufficient context for divisions that went before and go beyond today's partisan arguments over curriculum, merit pay, or online learning. A cohesive study of America's path to increasingly politicized--and privatized--education. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
