Katy Dalgleish

Overview

This country’s long and successful experiment in self-government is at risk of failure. We have faced challenging times in the past. This is another one of those times.

Our long and successful, yet stumbling and rocky, attempt to educate all of the future voters in our self-government experiment is also at risk of failure.

According to U.S. News, 85% of Americans believe our nation needs significant political reform. Other research reveals the majority of Americans believe K-12 public education is also in need of significant reform.

This book addresses the history, the successes, and the challenges of public education. It constructs a new vision for the future of public schools. It reveals changes in the educational system that must be made to create a smarter citizenry. With a new vision for public schools, a stronger, sustainable, and more successful democracy will emerge.

In other words, if our public school system was in better shape, our democracy would be in better shape. If we improve our public school system, it will strengthen our democracy.

Solving public school problems requires understanding the system through many different lenses. Race, gender, class, and economics are some of the lenses.

Decision-making in schools is rarely studied through all those different and competing lenses.

This book reveals how those various factors impact public education, reveals how those things have changed over time, and offers solutions everyone can apply to help strengthen our education system and democracy. Parents, educators, administrators, school board members, legislators, politicians, and other concerned citizens all have a role to play.

While many books have been written about education, government, race, gender, class, economics, and our nation's history, no one single book ties all these topics together to show how they relate to public schools and democracy. The pillars that sustain a strong democracy need a strong public school system.

That is why I wrote this book.