A Political Education - (Justice, Power, and Politics) by Elizabeth Todd-Breland (Paperback)

About the Book

"In 2012, Chicago's school year began with the city's first teachers' strike in a quarter century and ended with the largest mass closure of public schools in U.S. history. On one side, a union leader and veteran black woman educator drew upon organizing strategies from black and Latinx communities to demand increased school resources. On the other side, the mayor, backed by the Obama administration, argued that only corporate-style education reform could set the struggling school system aright. The stark differences in positions resonated nationally, challenging the long-standing alliance between teachers' unions and the Democratic Party. Elizabeth Todd-Breland recovers the hidden history underlying this battle"--

Book Synopsis

In 2012, Chicago's school year began with the city's first teachers' strike in a quarter century and ended with the largest mass closure of public schools in U.S. history. On one side, a union leader and veteran black woman educator drew upon organizing strategies from black and Latinx communities to demand increased school resources. On the other side, the mayor, backed by the Obama administration, argued that only corporate-style education reform could set the struggling school system aright. The stark differences in positions resonated nationally, challenging the long-standing alliance between teachers' unions and the Democratic Party.

Elizabeth Todd-Breland recovers the hidden history underlying this battle. She tells the story of black education reformers' community-based strategies to improve education beginning during the 1960s, as support for desegregation transformed into community control, experimental schooling models that pre-dated charter schools, and black teachers' challenges to a newly assertive teachers' union. This book reveals how these strategies collided with the burgeoning neoliberal educational apparatus during the late twentieth century, laying bare ruptures and enduring tensions between the politics of black achievement, urban inequality, and U.S. democracy.

Review Quotes

"Recounts [Chicago's] educational history in vivid detail."--New York Review of Books

"Todd-Breland skillfully establishes the major activists and players in the major movements and uses their biographies to illustrate broad context, changing social currents, and the shifts in power and discourse over time. . . . [Her] clear-eyed yet sympathetic portrayal of the movement is a vital and refreshing approach."--South Side Weekly

"Todd-Breland's critically acclaimed book . . . is especially impressive in its fluent engagement with numerous strands of the historical literature. A Political Education not only engages with but also contributes to the fields of urban history, Black History, labour history, women's history, educational history, political history, and intellectual history. . . . It is precisely because the book is about making connections and showing continuity that Todd-Breland can masterfully take her readers around a nebula of educational reform movements."--Historical Studies in Education