As Public As Possible: The Socialist Solutions to the War on Schools

A witty and provocative treatise on the financial policies we’ll need to make our public schools work for all children

From the anti-CRT panic to efforts to divert tax dollars to charter schools, the right-wing attack on education has cut deep. In response, millions of Americans have rallied to defend their cherished public schools. But this incisive book asks whether choosing between our embattled status quo and the stingy privatized vision of the right is the only path forward. In As Public as Possible, education expert David I. Backer argues for going on the offensive by radically expanding the very notion of the “public” in our public schools.

Helping us to imagine a more just and equitable future, As Public as Possible proposes a concrete set of financial policies aimed at providing a high-quality and truly public education for all Americans, regardless of wealth and race. With witty and provocative prose, Backer shows how we can decouple school funding from property tax revenue, evening out inequalities across districts by distributing resources according to need. He argues for direct federal grants instead of the predations of municipal debt markets. And he offers eye-opening examples spanning the past and present, from the former Yugoslavia to contemporary Philadelphia, which help us to imagine a radically different way of financing the education of all of our children.

David I. Backer is an associate professor of education policy at Seton Hall University whose research, teaching, and organizing focus on ideology and school finance. A former high school teacher, his research has appeared in Harvard Educational Review, Journal of Urban Affairs, Journal of Education Policy, Journal of Educational Human Resources, Journal of Educational Administration and History, as well as popular venues like Crain's Business Chicago, Phenomenal World, African American Policy Forum, The American Prospect, n+1, Dissent, and Jacobin. He lives in Philadelphia.