Assault on Kids and Teachers: Countering Privatization, Deficit Ideologies and Standardization in U.S. Schools (Counterpoints) - Hardcover

Roberta Ahlquist has been a professor at San Jose State for over 30 years, supervising prospective high school teachers. Her areas of research include critical race theory, unlearning racism, critical multicultural education, indigenous education, and postcolonial studies.

Paul C. Gorski is Associate Professor of Integrative Studies at George Mason University where he coordinates degree programs in social justice and human rights. He is the founder of EdChange and the Equity Literacy Institute. His other books include Reaching and Teaching Students in Poverty: Strategies for Erasing the Opportunity Gap and Case Studies on Diversity and Social Justice Education.

Theresa Montaņo is an associate professor of Chicana and Chicano studies at California State University Northridge. She teaches courses to prospective teachers in the area of equity and diversity in school, Chicano/a childhood and adolescence, and research in Chicano/a education. Her areas of research include the schooling of Chicano/a-Latino/a students; critical pedagogy; teacher activism; and bilingual/ELL instruction.

“So-called ‘solutions’ for improving public education interconnect in troubling ways―as is revealed insightfully and compellingly in this new and timely book. Ahlquist, Gorski, and Montaņo have assembled an impressive collection of analyses that help us to unmask what are mere symptoms of broader movements to widen educational disparities, and to imagine alternatives and interventions with insight and conviction. Assault on Kids and Teachers should cause us to pause, and reimagine, and should be read immediately.”―Kevin Kumashiro, Author, The Seduction of Common Sense: How the Right Has Framed the Debate on America’s Schools; President-Elect, National Association for Multicultural Education

“Corporate education reformers have come for public education, punishing us with high-stakes testing, attacking teachers and communities, and profiteering through charter schools and other free market models. Assault on Kids and Teachers give us tools to not only fight back against this corporate juggernaut, but also the vision to look forward with hope and the power to make things better. A critically important book that could not have come at a better time, Assault on Kids and Teachers should be read by anyone interested in the struggle over the soul of schooling and educational democracy in the United States.”―Wayne Au, Editor, Rethinking Schools; Professor, School of Educational Studies, University of Washington Bothell

“These are troubling times for classroom teachers and for public education. Alhquist, Gorski, and Montaņo have collected a series of essays that add the provocative and vibrant voices of practitioners who face the everyday realities of ‘hyper accountability’ policies, programs and practices. These voices shed light on the dire consequences of high stakes tests, a narrow curriculum, and of the perilous ‘reform’ efforts currently eroding the very fabric of public education. I encourage all teachers, practicing and preservice, to read this book and to build a movement to keep the ‘public’ in public education.”―David Sanchez, President, California Teachers Association

“Finally a book that eschews the timid talk and middle class politeness that typically characterizes academic education analyses. If the other side can be ‘mad as hell and not want to take it anymore,’ imagine how mad the people who are demonized and victimized by draconian and regressive policies are. Bravo to the editors for assembling such a courageous collection.”―Gloria Ladson-Billings, Professor and Chair, Department of Curriculum and Instruction, Kellner Family Chair in Urban Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison

“The editors and authors of this volume dare to re-frame current ‘debates’ about the nature of U.S. public schooling. Dialogues about policy and practice have devolved into sound-byte chats about increasingly narrow curricular standards, ever more efficient―rather than effective―assessments of student learning, and endless means through which teachers’ work is de-professionalized. In this context, we need the mindset offered by this volume in order to counter dangerous, de-humanizing trends. This text is a primer of our best thinking about how to make our public schools places where a public is made.”―Kristien Zenkov, Associate Professor, George Mason University