A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door: The Dismantling of Public Education and the Future of School

Jack Schneider · Jennifer Berkshire

Jul 2021 · Tantor Media Inc · Narrated by Suzie Althens

About this audiobook

A trenchant analysis of how public education is being destroyed in overt and deceptive ways-and how to fight back. If America's public schools don't survive the COVID-19 pandemic, it won't just be due to the virus. Opponents of public education have long sought to dismantle our system of free, universal, and taxpayer-funded schooling. But the present crisis has provided them with their best opportunity ever to realize that aim. Books like Jane Mayer's Dark Money and Nancy MacLean's Democracy in Chains sounded a clear warning about the influence that right-wing plutocrats increasingly exert over American politics. Now, A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door takes their analyses a step further, addressing an urgent question: Why is the right so fixated on dismantling public education in the United States? Education historian Jack Schneider and journalist Jennifer Berkshire trace the war on public education to its origins, offering the deep backstory necessary to understand the threat presently posed to America's schools. The book also looks forward to imagine how current policy efforts will reshape the educational landscape and remake America's future. A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door offers listeners a lively, accessible, yet scholarly view of a decades-long conservative cause: unmaking the system that serves over 90% of students in the US.

About the author

Jack Schneider is Dwight W. Allen Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he leads the Beyond Test Scores Project. The author of A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door, he writes regularly for the Atlantic and the Nation and cohosts the podcast, Have You Heard.

Jennifer Berkshire writes about education and politics for the Nation, the New Republic, the Baffler, and other publications. The creator and cohost of the education policy podcast Have You Heard, she teaches aspiring podcasters in the journalism program at Boston College. She is a licensed public school teacher.

Suzie Althens records from her professional studio in Alaska, near the beautiful Matanuska Glacier. She narrates regularly for major publishers and specializes in audiobooks and e-learning.