From the New Deal to the War on Schools

“The contemporary US education system suffers from a multitude of problems: overworked and undervalued teachers, overreliance on standardized tests, and systemic racial inequality, just to name a few. Anyone seeking to understand why needs to pick up a copy of Daniel Moak’s excellent book. . . . [A]n essential study in the field.”—Historical Studies in Education

“The innovation of this work is a new periodization of the rise of punitive education policies and the development of these ideas among education advocates and reformers who became partners with liberal politicians. . . . Moak’s synthesis of the most debated issues in education form the Progressive Era to the present provides great insight into the dismantling of the nation’s public schools and the bipartisan embrace of reforms that have proven ineffective since their inception.”—North Carolina Historical Review

“Daniel Moak has written a fresh and important reinterpretation of American education that goes far toward explaining the unceasing attacks on teachers and schools. Moak describes the ideological battles among educators and demonstrates how education leaders capitulated to a view that shifted the blame for poverty and inequality to the schools. His attention to the role of African American thinkers is especially valuable.”—Diane Ravitch, author of The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice are Undermining Education

“An important book. Complementing a growing body of scholarship that traces the seeds of neoliberal economic and social policy to the growth-oriented policies and reforms that characterized President Johnson’s Great Society, this book convincingly shows how the compromises liberals made in the 1960s helped lay the foundation for the mess before us now.”—Touré F. Reed, Illinois State University

“From the New Deal to the War on Schools will be a welcome addition to the fields of policy history, African American studies, and American intellectual history. Daniel Moak’s analysis of how the United States came to rely on schooling as its primary tool in addressing racial inequalities is a vital contribution to the story of American education.”—Judith Kafka, Marxe School of Public and International Affairs at Baruch College

“How did the promise of universal education as an engine of American citizenship and inclusion mutate into a pillar of neoliberalism, focused more on reinforcing than transforming a fundamentally unequal political economy? In this captivating and bracing book, Daniel Moak compellingly unpacks the rise of the ‘education state’ and shows what history can teach us about the predicament of American schools today.”—Robert C. Lieberman, Johns Hopkins University