Schooling Alone: The Costs of Privatizing Public Education [Hardcover]

Schooling Alone is a look at the history of public education and the current state of the efforts to privatize our public schools. This work looks at who is really choosing and what we, as members of a democratic republic, are losing as privatization of our publicly funded institutions moves forward. There is a difference between a capitalist economic theory and the values of a democratic republic. This work asks the reader to consider what our values regarding public education should be.Curtis J. Cardine has served as a teacher, principal, corporate officer, and superintendent in New Hampshire public schools and Arizona charter schools. He is currently a research fellow for the Grand Canyon Institute, author and a nationally recognized expert on charter and public school finances and governance.

Cardine, an educator and research practitioner, builds on ideas of public education chartering developed by the late Ray Budde of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, to critique the financial models that support the development of US charter schools. The title and focus is analogous to Robert D. Putnams Bowling Alone (CH, Dec'00, 38-2454), representing a decline in societal cohesion. Accordingly, Cardine views the rise of over 7,000 publicly supported charter schools with over 3,000,000 students as a phenomenon primarily serving school districts that already excel, causing a loss in the common political and social capital formed by community public schools. Cardine describes how charter schools treat teachers as contractors with salary and benefits below the level of neighboring schools, are a tool for deprofessionalizing public education, and fit into the current political movement for deregulation of public goods and services. Charter schools are thus often profit-oriented businesses, with 10 charter groups controlling three-quarters of enrollments, and only 23 percent have local governing boards. As the author concludes, charter providers should run their charlӝ