Cutting School

Privatization, Segregation, and the End of Public Education

By: Noliwe Rooks

Narrated by: Robin Eller

What do public schools have in common with the pyramid schemes of Amway? Absolutely nothing, yet Trump's education secretary Betsy DeVos - part of the family at the helm of this corporation and a fierce advocate for vouchers, school choice, and free market competition in the education system - may soon be deciding the fate of American children. The wholesale privatization of our schools is expected to be at the top of her agenda.

One of the greatest American achievements in the twentieth century was the creation of public schools and universal education, an ideal now deeply at risk. Cornell University professor Noliwe Rooks provides a critical account of the making and unmaking of public education in Cutting School, the first book to foreground how vast racial and economic divides are part and parcel of the push to privatize our education system.

Rooks traces the historical origins and contemporary contours of today's separate and unequal schools to show the disastrous impact of funneling public dollars to private for-profit and non-profit operations that have questionable if not abysmal track records for educating children well - particularly poor children of color.

©2017 Noliwe Rooks (P)2017 Tantor

Critic reviews

"A convincing argument that the only viable, proven school reform strategy is integration, a solution distressingly difficult to achieve." ( Kirkus)

Important and well explained real history here.

I appreciate how this book cuts through the discomfort and heads straight for the truth and stories that should make us all really around people actual trying to do right by the education system. People in power making decisions about schools do a lot of hand waving to make it seem like the problems that got us here are in the past. This book shows how disingenuous that is.
This is a good sister book to another called Slaying Goliath. The two together are powerful.

I learned so much...

There was a great deal of history presented in this book. Much of it was well known, but the way Rooks connects these historical accounts to education is brilliant. This is definitely a book I will return to on a regular basis.

The information

Insightful book. Charter schools often aid in the destruction of communities. I highly recommend this book

Great book, subpar narration

This is a fantastic (and fantastically important) book that is repeatedly undercut by amateurish narration. A lot of weird, idiosyncratic pronunciations, accidental omission of words, saying the number but forgetting to add the unit of measure, etc. make it a bit hard to listen to. But the content makes it a must read for anyone interested in educational reform.

A game changer and must read

One of the most important educational reads I have ever come across! Change the game!!!!

Note to school boards & elected officials

Every elected official should read this book and ensure resources are invested equitably into public education.

informative not convincing

This books shares a lot of good information about our failed strategies to provide equitable access to a high quality education for historically disadvantaged groups in the USA. She shows how we have flailed to integrate and how the privatization of this public good is failing at scale, and how choice is falling at scale. She does make a convincing argument for an alternative.

Important Book

The reader sounds like she's trying to channel Captain Kirk...with long pauses...at sometimes unexpected...places.

Nevertheless, this is an excellent book about the damaging move to privatize public education and its relationship to segregation.

Important topics

The narrator was terrible with poor choice of tempo and pauses which detracts from the important messages in this work.

terrible narration

I wanted to listen to this book but could not finish it because the narration was so bad that it became a distraction.