Praise for Schoolhouse Burning

“I loved Schoolhouse Burning for its stirring defense of the central importance of public education to American democracy, and for Derek Black’s groundbreaking research. He definitively shows that the founders of the nation enthusiastically promoted public schools, that public schools enjoyed overwhelming bipartisan support, and were established in every state as central to democracy. The current efforts to privatize them with vouchers began with segregationists in the 1950s and continue today with charter schools, reinvigorated vouchers, and deep cuts to public school funding. I highly recommend Schoolhouse Burning as an important counter to a destructive trend.”

—Diane Ravitch, author of Slaying Goliath and Reign of Error

“Derek Black has written a magnificent book on the history of public education in the United States. Professor Black shows that the future of American society—its equality, its democracy—depends on improving its public schools. This beautifully written book offers a path forward to making a right to a quality education for all children a reality.”

—Erwin Chemerinsky, dean and Jesse H. Choper Distinguished Professor of Law, University of California, Berkeley

“Derek Black is the rare education law scholar willing to put his vast skills and knowledge in the service of defending our nation’s public schools. Schoolhouse Burning is a searing analysis of the current assault on public education by those intent on its destruction and, with it, the further erosion of our democratic institutions. It is also an urgent call to action to join with parents, advocates, teachers, and lawyers on the front lines of ensuring the right of every child to a high-quality education remains prominent, paramount and fully protected.”

—David Sciarra, executive director of the Education Law Center

“Schoolhouse Burning: Public Education and the Assault on American Democracy explores the privileged place that [public schools] hold in our country’s history. Black, a professor of law at the University of South Carolina and a civil rights lawyer, makes clear that public education was central to the Founding Fathers’ vision of a new kind of democracy that rests on the consent of the governed.”

—New York Review of Books

“Many folks discuss education with semi-formed ideas about whether or not education really is a fundamental part of our democracy. . . . Black’s book is packed with information and analysis, but remains exceptionally accessible, like getting a detailed explanation from a legal scholar who just happens to speak plain English. Beyond the well-researched history, Black also provides a convincing argument in favor of public education in this country, a defense of a foundational institution at a time it is once again under attack.”

—Peter Greene, Forbes

Black “chronicles the history of public education in the United States and makes the unassailable case that this cornerstone of our democracy faces serious threats that we must address head on.”

—Southern Education Foundation

“Schoolhouse Burning should become required reading in all education administration and policy programs.”

—Dan McGuire, executive director of SABIER

“Derek Black convincingly argues that, historically, public education can, and frequently has, unified a divided country. Black’s deftly rendered historical account stretches from before the American Revolution to the Civil Rights Movement and into modern times. It describes how public education has long been the touchstone for the nation to recommit to its founding principles. And though his book is mostly a historical account, Black is as concerned with the past as with the present, especially in anticipation of a post-Betsy DeVos world where public schools have been falsely portrayed as anachronistic.”

—Jeff Bryant, The Progressive

“There are more than a few books both you and Biden should read to start his presidency off right, and we've pulled together a list. . . Thanks to decades of underfunding, America's public schools are in big trouble, and that's without accounting for the endless proposals for programs that would divert tax dollars into private education. Derek W. Black analyzes the problem with public education in the United States today, and lays out a plan to fix it, in Schoolhouse Burning.”

—K.W. Colyard, Bustle

“Schoolhouse Burning is an unsettling read, but also an enlightening one. The concept of education as a commodity – chosen on the basis of personal preferences and resources – emerges as the radical idea, and as a threat to our democratic ideals. Many who embrace school choice in the name of freedom would do well to learn the origin story of American education.”

—Karen Francisco, The Journal Gazette

Black “brilliantly expands the historical bases of a constitutional commitment to public education. Through painstaking research and pathbreaking analysis, Black traces the United States steadfast governmental commitment to universal education well before Reconstruction, to the era of the Nation’s founding. In clear, accessible prose, he demonstrates that from 1787, states joining the nascent Union were required to set aside land and commit resources to educate their people for free citizenship. This new work makes accessible and brilliantly supplements his earlier work highlighting the requirements that rebel states rejoining the Union after Civil War guarantee public education. Anyone concerned about the state of public education in the United States will be enlightened and supported by Schoolhouse Burning.”

—Peggy Davis, professor, NYU School of Law and author of Neglected Stories: The Constitution and Family Values

"Black argues that education does indeed play a foundational, constitutional role in American democracy and that it is the state's obligation--often the state's primary obligation--to provide it....[H]e takes us back to several crucial moments in American history when questions about the meaning of democratic governance became inescapably acute, and he reminds us of the central role that public education played in each of them."

―Derek Gottlieb, author of A Democratic Theory of Educational Accountability

“In his scrupulously researched book, Derek Black emphasizes that the recognition that education is essential to democracy predated public schools and even the U.S. Constitution. . . . These lofty ideals were often not matched by reality. Enslaved African Americans neither had their freedom nor education. However, African Americans recognized early on that education was the key to full citizenship, and fought for the right to equal access and treatment for all. For Black, the struggle of ensuring equality in public education is intertwined with the struggle for political equality.”

―Wendy Lecker, Stamford Advocate

“To say education is the foundation of democracy is neither novel nor controversial. But I find it a challenge to find scholarship that moves beyond platitudes to truly explain the link between the two. Derek W. Black offers an examination into their connection through historical examples that turn esoteric theories into real world experiences.”

—Justin Kempf, Democracy Paradox

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