Overview
A deep-dive investigation of education privatization that reveals voucher programs as the faulty products of decades of work by wealthy patrons and influential conservatives This thought-provoking work traces the origins of voucher-based education reform to mid-twentieth-century fears over school desegregation. It shows how, in the intervening decades, a cabal of billionaire conservatives supporting a host of special political interests--including economic libertarianism, religious choice, and parental rights--have converged around the issue of education freedom in an ongoing culture war. Through deliberate policymaking, legislation, and litigation, Cowen reveals, an insular advocacy network has enacted a flawed system for education finance driven largely by dogma. Far from realizing the purported goal of educational equity, privatization is failing students and exacerbating income inequality, Cowen finds. He cites multiple research studies that conclude that voucher programs return poorer academic outcomes, including lower test scores on state exams, especially among students who are at greater academic risk because of their race, their religion, their gender identity, or their family's income. Continued advancement of these policies, Cowen argues, is an assault on public education as a defining American institution.
Full Product Details
Author: Josh Cowen ,
Patrick Girard Lawlor
Publisher: Tantor Audio
Imprint: Tantor Audio
ISBN: 9798228007932
Publication Date: 10 September 2024
Audience:
General/trade
,
General
Format: Audio
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: In Print
This item will be ordered in for you from one of our suppliers. Upon receipt, we will promptly dispatch it out to you. For in store availability, please contact us.
Author Information
Josh Cowen is a professor of education policy at Michigan State University and an author on topics related to education politics, school choice, and culture wars in the United States. In addition to all of the major academic outlets in his research field, his popular writing has appeared in outlets such as the Dallas Morning News, Detroit Free Press, Hechinger Report, Houston Chronicle, New Republic, Philadelphia Inquirer, Slate, Time, the Tennessean, and Washington Spectator. He lives in mid-Michigan with his family. Patrick Lawlor has recorded over three hundred audiobooks in just about every genre. He has been an Audie Award finalist several times and has received several AudioFile Earphones Awards. He has won a Publishers Weekly Listen-Up Award, numerous Library Journal and Kirkus starred audio reviews, and multiple Editors' Picks, Top 10, and Year's Best lists. He is the only male audiobook narrator in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. To relax in his spare time, Patrick runs marathons.
