The answer to all your questions.

Via Tony Kornheiser, writing for the Washington Post in 1994: 

"TV wizard Don Ohlmeyer ... once told me, 'The answer to all your questions is: Money.'"

The superb Robyn Pennacchia @RobynElyse over at Wonkette has an excellent article that connects the dots between the hostility being directed at educators and the larger project of undermining public schools in order to privatize and cash in on education. 

It should surprise exactly no one that many of the loudest voices protesting and threatening teachers, administrators, school board members and even students themselves are Republican operatives, political hacks whose brief extends far beyond the banning of "uncomfortable" books and history or the rejection of school safety measures.

These ideological shock troops masquerade as concerned parents while acting as political goons, aided and abetted by Fox and the massive conservative ecosystem which promotes them while deliberately shielding their true identities, and enabled by a timid mainstream media that refuses to honestly describe and expose them.

Pennacchia describes the process:

Within the last couple years, there has been what seems like a massive uptick in outraged parents. Parents who are mad about masks, parents who are mad about books, parents who are mad about "critical race theory." They show up at school board meetings across the country to yell their faces off, frequently going viral due to the sheer number of stupid things they manage to fit into the three minute allotment they have to talk.

We're supposed to believe that these are grassroots efforts led by concerned parents who just want a say in their children's education. That these groups they form are organic. That those participating in them are, in fact, actual parents in the school district they're protesting in.

Of course, those of us who are hep know a large number of these people are not so much parents as they are Republican strategists, activists and think tank employees. That doesn't mean that there aren't parents who are "concerned" about these things — but it does mean that their outrage about them is being purposely stoked by professionals with an agenda.

And the agenda? What is the ultimate goal of inciting all this animosity and pointing it "march to the capital" style at educators? Pennacchia continues:

The obvious, immediate agenda is to get Republicans elected. Glenn Youngkin's victory in Virginia, for example, was largely spurred by parental outrage over masks and critical race theory.

But that may not be all they are after. As Truthout reports, many of the organizations ginning up the hysteria over these issues are simultaneously involved in efforts to encourage the privatization of schools by undermining support for public schools.

For years, the goal of school privatization advocates has been to oppose funding for education and then criticize the public school system for failing, hoping that this will lead to parents taking their kids out of schools and becoming increasingly supportive of voucher programs and so-called "school choice," with the ultimate goal being a for-profit education system usurping the public education system.

Penacchio goes on to quote this very good Truthout piece peeling back the veneer covering the scam. From Truthout:

School privatizers seem to know that sowing enough distrust in public education — and capitalizing on the genuine frustration of parents struggling to cope with pandemic-related work, schooling and child care issues — could fulfill their “great disenrollment” prophecy. One strategy of these “parent” groups seems to be using easily replicable resources to attack public schools, deploying them in school districts nationwide and attracting right-wing media coverage. 

Liat Olenick @Liat_RO raised the issue in a great article in The Nation, connecting the attacks over COVID and "Critical Race Theory" and describing them as "a primary Republican organizing strategy." The project to enfeeble public schools is well-funded and comprehensive:

What unites all these attacks are the right-wing, anti-union billionaires who benefit from them: The anti-CRT furor is a coordinated attack on the institution of public education and multiracial democracy, designed to justify defunding public schools and replacing them with segregated charter schools and voucher programs. The current attacks on teachers over Covid safety demands serve the very same purpose. The hedge fund managers and billionaires who have funded the charter school and school voucher movements for the past two decades are the same elites who stand to benefit from this latest raft of anti-teacher, anti-union vitriol.

Of course, educators in public schools are also familiar with contempt from the nominal "left."  We are witnesses to the charter school craze and white flight, and we sure as hell remember "Race to the Top" and Arne Duncan (looking at you Barack Obama). The pandemic, with its nondenominational rancor over masking and in-person schooling, has cranked the volume up to 11. 

Olenick rightly observes that even--I'd say especially--during these miserable times, "the vitriol isn’t just coming from Republicans, but also from leading “liberals” who conveniently refuse to hold politicians accountable for failing to implement basic mitigation strategies to keep schools open but are extra-eager to attack teachers’ unions demanding things like soap in the bathrooms and minimal Covid testing." And she has a warning for us:

The failure to confront authoritarianism and the failure to defend public schools and educators from Covid is the same failure. When an institution is a cornerstone of democracy, you fight for it, you fund it, and you respect it.

Democrats ignore attacks on teachers and schools to their peril. There is no democracy without public education. There is no public education without qualified, caring, and dedicated teachers.

In Olenick's words: "Healthy democracies don’t hate their teachers."

The other side--Republicans, religious conservatives, true believers and opportunists--are well-organized and committed. Theirs is a comprehensive, methodical plan for the destruction of a public institution and the transfer of its assets to private, commercial entities. You can see the plan playing out in real time in Virginia (h/t @jbouie). Like ALEC writing model legislation to be cribbed by legislatures all over the country, Youngkin and his Virginia mobsters have created the template for reducing public schools to rubble. 

When combined with pre-existing conditions such as diabolical funding formulas and the national testing addiction, this present demonstration of outrage over everything from masks to the accurate teaching of history spurs parents and students to take advantage of "school choice" portals, leave their former (public) schools impoverished, and delivers an entire system ready to be stripped down and sold for parts.

It's a pretty dreary picture and can feel like the ship has already sailed. As a teacher, I was always inside the event horizon. I could feel the gravity of freemarket schooling as it was warping spacetime and sucking the life out of my little corner of the universe, but what was I supposed to do about it? It was overwhelming and seemed unstoppable. I had 180 students. I was fucking busy.

What I didn't know and didn't have time to learn was that I wasn't alone. Other people felt like I did--and I'm not just talking about the half dozen in my "this sucks" lunch group. Now I know that lots of people--big important people--have been fighting this battle for decades, some of them successfully. The Profiteers and Privatizers are playing the long game but they haven't yet won the war. There's still time to join the fight. 

I'm just getting started and the sheer weight of what I don't know could tip the earth off its axis. However, I am exploring lots of different resources and include some of them here. I have not had time to fully vet them all, and if you have additional suggestions, please share. 

Diane Ravitch, author, historian and former Assistant Secretary of Education, has been a leader in this battle. Her blog is must reading and I'm working my way through her books, especially The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education; Slaying Goliath: The Passionate Resistance to Privatization and the Fight to Save America's Public Schools; and now Cutting School: The Segrenomics of American Education co-authored with Noliwe Rooks. It takes time, but I'm retired and now I have time. I want to go to war fully armed. 

Ravitch also is president of the Network for Public Education, and though some of its material could be updated (toolkit), the website provides a very good rundown of organizations around the country that are fighting to save the public in public education. Email is here for more information.

There are other resources I've discovered as I've been teaching myself what lots of others seem to already know. On her blog, Diane Ravitch writes that an organization called
UnKoch My Campus "does a great job of tracking and exposing the influence of billionaire Charles Koch in schools and higher education." According to their website they are a "fiscally sponsored project" of Essential Information, the Ralph Nader-founded (1982) non-profit. Their K-12 report for 2020-2021 identifies many of the major players and details the strategies of the Koch Network's "capture" of education Privatization Plan and illustrates it this way:

It's a good graphic, though test scores and the national testing addiction really deserve their own space around steps 3 and 4.

Jennifer Berkshire @BisforBerkshire is a writer I'm now becoming familiar with. Her "Have You Heard" podcast is excellent and I'm looking forward to reading A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door, co-authored with Jack Schneider. I first heard her speak about her work on the Know Your Enemy podcast.

"C'mon Waid," some of you might be thinking. "I did not come here for extra homework. I have 180 students right now, and you want to give me a reading list?" That's not it. I'm just telling you what I'm reading. So I understand the terrain and I'm not just bullshitting about what things used to be like. So I can get a clearer, more complete picture of our enemies, and our friends. And, ideally, to help you understand that you are not alone.

It would be helpful to have some models of successful resistance. Within the network of teachers, allies, and all advocates for public education and its offspring, multiracial democracy, we should be able to identify effective strategies and replicate them in diverse locations under varying circumstances. We're smart enough to reproduce successful plans just like the bad guys, only we use our power for good. 

I did manage to find a few ideas. Here, for example, Diane Ravitch joins a panel of international educators in a discussion titled "Fighting the Privatisation of Education," presented by the University of New South Wales Centre for Ideas, among others. I find Ravitch generally too optimistic regarding the impact of the pandemic on the public's attitudes towards schools and the people who work there. However, these remarks all predate the current "CRT"/book banning/masking brouhaha, so perhaps that explains it.  

It's a good conversation and much of it may sound familiar. Nevertheless, as we continue to learn the battlefield and our enemies and allies, we are still in the middle of an active warzone. What can a teacher do? What are some specific actions we can take to impede the drive to privatize public schools? When I know more, I'll say more, but for the time being I'll rely on Ravitch. I know you're busy I'll save you some time. 

Shorter Diane Ravitch: 

• Join your union. (Waid editorial: Just shut up and do it. They're not perfect, but if you think a union is expensive, try not having one.)
• Collaborate and organize with like-minded individuals around the country (Network for Public Education) and the world in order to amplify your voice. 
• The road to privatization is paved with testing data, so align yourself with the opt-out movement in your state.  
• Read Slaying Goliath.

Later this month I'll be starting Goliath, which is advertised as a collection of successful stories and strategies from around the country. I'll share them in a future post. In the meantime, please, if you have ideas that have worked for you or a colleague, please do share them in the comments section. You may comment anonymously if you prefer.

During my career I pushed back against bad administrators and bad policies at my schools and helped lead a strike against my district--all on behalf of my students and their families. I worked to support public schooling and fought threats like excessive testing and school choice, but my efforts were limited and local. Looking back, I spent my career in a silo grinding my teeth and shockingly unaware that there was an entire community of resistance just outside my classroom walls. Now I'm outside those walls and I have the time and bandwidth to educate myself and become part of that community. 

Fundamentally, this fight is about much more than a particular ideology, or politicians seeking to evade responsibility, or parents' rights (which, let's face it, is really just hostage-taking by the most extreme parents available), or fear, or class, or religion. It goes beyond someone's idea of morality, or even racism. All these are crucial elements of the battle, but they are engineered primarily to achieve the objective. The same plan was, is, or will be used to turn other public institutions into private profit centers. From the U.S. Postal service to national parks to public schools, it's up to us to protect them. 

The struggle is grueling because the stakes are high. Money is power and power concedes nothing. So if you ever wondered why school board meetings are now screaming matches or how "CRT" is even a thing, or when you see book banning and ask "What the actual fuck is going on?" remember: 

The answer to all your questions is money.