Putting the Public Back in Public Education What it would take
to ensure that nobody’s child is left behind Image by
istockphoto.com/Luseen This article is one of several on fixing
education. For more, read The People’s Professor, America 101,
and the online exclusive Educational Success: Stories of
Innovation from the Utne Library. The public schools have been
bad and they deserve to be punished. That’s the mantra Americans
have heard for the past eight years as politicians have
scrambled to appease citizens battered by apocalyptic headlines
about the state of the educational system, stories that detail
how public schools are both epic disasters and the country’s
only ticket out of global decline, increasing poverty, and a
coming society of dimwits. And how did an administration hell-
bent on warding off any responsibility for its own actions
(torture, irresponsible war, a gutter-dwelling economy) react?
They’ve assured us that failing schools will be held
accountable. They transformed our society’s greatest