Progressive Political News

Two refugee camps were bombed as civilians face growing risk of disease and starvation.

We speak with The Nation’s Chris Lehmann about President-elect Donald Trump’s escalating attacks on the press and how major media figures and institutions are “capitulating preemptively” to the pressure. ABC News recently settled a defamation suit brought by Trump by making a $15 million donation to his future presidential library, despite experts saying the case…

Prahlad Iyengar recently came across a video of children in Gaza reacting to the sound of their school bell ringing through a pair of headphones. Iyengar watched as the children burst into tears over how much they missed school, unsure which of their teachers and friends were still alive. Iyengar, a Ph.D. candidate at the…

New York — To keep working, Amy Lee Funes desperately needed help paying for child care. Funes loved her job at a New York City-based child and family nonprofit, but she earned only $35,000 a year. In a city where child care can easily consume more than half of that, Funes was optimistic that she…

In an attempt to ground myself at the turn of the year, I recently attended two webinars hosted by abolitionist organizer Mariame Kaba. A common thread through both talks was the need for the left — or lefts, as Kaba astutely observes — to abandon purity and embrace difference; to ground ourselves in common purpose…

By now, it’s indisputable that we’re experiencing a global crisis of plastics production and plastics waste. There may be as much as 200 million tonnes of plastic in our oceans. Humans annually consume thousands of plastic particles and their harmful chemicals. The Global North dumps massive amounts of plastic waste on the Global South. Powerful…

In 2017, PBS released School Inc., a rightwing billionaire-funded documentary created by the late Andrew Coulson, a conservative author and former director of the libertarian Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom. School Inc. showcased Coulson’s theory that for-profit schooling, funded by parents without government involvement, is the best delivery model for education. In a review for the long-running Answer Sheet blog in The Washington Post, the education historian Diane Ravitch and I criticized Coulson’s romanticization of the era of American schooling before public education, during which children were homeschooled, church-schooled, or taught by private tutors—except for the poor, who, if they were lucky, were trained in charity schools.  

The “school choice movement,” which Coulson’s documentary promoted, has always been a classic bait-and-switch swindle: Charter schools were the bait for vouchers, and vouchers the lure for public acceptance of market-based schooling. While narrow debates about accountability, taxpayer costs, and the public funding of religious schools raise important concerns, the gravest threat posed by the school choice movement is its ultimate objective: putting an end to public responsibility for education. 

This goal is not a secret. The libertarian right has openly dreamed of ending public education for the past seventy years—the economist Milton Friedman advocated for school choice as early as 1955, and his acolytes have continued to do so ever since.

 And they have made extraordinary progress. During the past few years, the traditional voucher model championed by the right has morphed into the Education Savings Account (ESA). In exchange for promising not to enroll their child in public schools, parents receive funds to “shop” for services, including private school tuition, tutoring, and luxury purchases, including trips to Disney World, televisions, and waterskiing lessons. Nearly all recent state ESA programs have either no or high-income caps, and few have sensible protections. 

The libertarian right embraces this flagrant waste because it helps them achieve their ultimate objective of shifting all of the responsibility and costs to families. By approving universal ESA programs, they are creating a vested interest among middle and upper-income families in pay-as-you-go education. Frivolous spending is tolerated because it aligns with Friedman and Coulson’s objective of putting parents in charge of education without government responsibility or concern. 

The America First Policy Institute, where Trump’s Secretary of Education nominee Linda McMahon serves as board chair, states in its recent policy agenda that “the authority for educating children rests with parents.” As public responsibility for schooling shifts to parents, educational subsidies will be gradually reduced until Friedman and Coulson’s dream of a fully for-profit marketplace that competes for students is achieved.

What about families who cannot afford to pay? In his 1999 book Market Education: The Unknown History, Coulson claims, without substantiation, that philanthropies will compete to educate the poor. (Friedman similarly assumed there might be some public subsidy for “the indigent.”) 

And what about those who refuse to pay? Former Arizona legislator Paul Mosley wanted to end compulsory schooling in his state, claiming that what was once a privilege was now “being forced down everyone’s throat.” The Cato Institute has similarly signaled its approval of “unschooling,” a practice of eschewing formal education altogether in favor of informal learning. If education is governed as a marketplace, they claim, you have the right not to shop at all. 

The implications of this approach are profound. In a pay-as-you-go system, few families will have the financial means to educate a special needs child outside the home. What’s more, families in rural areas will be left with few options, if any: In the for-profit marketplace, why go where customers are few and nonaffluent? If your Muslim or Jewish child lives in a town where the majority “choose” a Christian school, there may be no secular option. Schools opening and closing based on profit margins will be commonplace—more than one in four charter schools already closes by its fifth year of operation.

The allure of school choice may work temporarily. However, the long-term implications will make a well-functioning democracy unsustainable. Those who propose cutting a “deal” with the Trump Administration to redefine public education to include vouchers and charters are either naïve or complicit. For nearly a century, the libertarian right has known the road it is traveling with “school choice,” and where that road leads—and they now have a presidential administration on board for the journey. As Donald Trump once said, “I love the poorly educated.”

A new, intimidating year is upon us. Catastrophes abound and the threat of autocracy looms large. As we prepare ourselves for the struggles ahead, many people are feeling discouraged or confused about how to move forward. As I have made my own preparations for the new year, I have talked with some of my brilliant…

For months, Donald Trump issued terrifying promise after terrifying promise on the campaign trail: threatening to deploy the military in his mass deportation schemes, pledging to increase fossil fuel extraction, and vowing to issue a number of repressive policies targeting the most vulnerable people in our communities. He’s also promised to hit the ground running…