Stop Calling It School Choice

When framing a debate, it helps to pick just the right names. Just ask the folks who decided to call their respective sides "pro-life" and "pro-choice." 

One of earliest victories for education privatizers was to coin the name "school choice." I don't know if somebody cleverly designed and tested it, or they just sort of stumbled over it, but it's a handy piece of coinage.

The Google Ngram for American English shows barely in use up through the mid-1980s, when it suddenly rocketed up the charts (aka immediately after the release of A Nation at Risk, A Nation at Risk, the Reagan era hit job on public education). That peak comes at 2001, then a steady drop since that year. 

I'm willing to bet that the vast majority of those instances are actually a misuse of the term. Because the privatization and reformster movements have got us using "school choice" to mean what it does not mean.

After all, we already have school choice, and always have. We have a requirement in most states that each child must get some sort of education, but how the child gets that education is a parent choice. Public, private, parochial, religious, home-- you can choose the school you want. But that's not what modern choicers mean by school choice.

Instead, they use the term "school choice" as a blanket term to cover a whole bunch of ideas that are not actually school choice.

Instead, "school choice" refers to a constellation of policies aimed at directing taxpayer dollars into the pockets of private operators. 

Charter schools do so by creating privately owned and operated schools that are nominally part of the system. They offer an alternative to some students, based not on what the students want but on what the school is willing to accept and able to provide.

But nothing looks less like school choice than vouchers. Vouchers--no matter what form they take--allow unregulated, non-transparent, oversight-free private schools to hoover up public tax dollars while discriminating and/or providing education of questionable value for society as a whole. The voucherized system envisioned by Milton Friedman and modern christianist nationalists is a system in which taxpayers subsidize religious schools and the government schools are cut to a bare minimum. 

Voucher schools retain the right to pick and choose their students, to reject or expel students for a variety of reasons or no reason at all. 

"But the public system we have provides good schools for rich kids and less great schools for the non-wealthy," argue voucher fans. But a voucher system would make that problem worse, not better. With universal vouchers, the wealthy would get a rebate to help pay for the schools they already send their kids to, and for poor kids, the high cost schools will stay out of reach (especially as they raise tuition). The biggest difference would be that in a voucher system, the public schools serving non-wealthy students would have even less funding. 

None of this is school choice. And it slips into the discourse. In an otherwise excellent Washington Post article that talks about "school vouchers," Laura Meckler and Michelle Boorstein write:

The growth follows a string of recent victories in the Supreme Court and state legislatures by religious conservatives who have campaigned to tear down what once were constitutional prohibitions against spending tax money directly on religious education. It also marks a win for the school choice movement, which has spent decades campaigning to let parents use tax money for any school they see fit.

Well, no. That wasn't a win for the school choice movement. It was a win for the Tear Down The Wall Between Church State and Force Taxpayers To Fund Christian Schools movement, which doesn't really have anything to do with school choice at all. 

The AP style book defines "school choice" as a sort of blanket term for a whole world of policies aimed at dismantling or privatizing public education. At least they suggest that writers "avoid using the general term when possible."

Fans of voucherizing public ed like "school choice" because it tests well. Ask people if they favor parents having the chance to send their children to the school of their choice, and they absolutely do. Ask them if they would like their tax dollars to go to help someone pay tuition at a private school instead of going to fund public schools, and they turn a big thumbs down. 

We already have school choice. What some folks are looking for is school choice that someone else pays for. And while it's a legitimate complaint that the choice we have is more accessible to the wealthy than the not-wealthy, there isn't a thing in the world of charters and vouchers that changes that a bit, and quite a bit that makes it worse. 

Both the public school system and the charter/voucher system are tied to the free market system--the public system through real estate and the charter/voucher directly--and all the problems that come with it (predatory marketing, picking winners and losers among customers, providing the bare minimum, discrimination, etc etc etc see also: a few thousand posts on this website). But the public system comes with an assortment of safeguards and guardrails that protect (sometimes very imperfectly) the rights of students, families, and taxpayers. The charter/voucher system, in most cases, has no such protections. 

Calling it all "choice" or "freedom" is a canny choice, just like calling a voucher a "scholarship" or a "savings account."  It's good marketing, but like good marketing it only sort of reflects the reality of the situation. Would more choices be better? Sure. I've even laid out how to do it, within certain boundaries (no public dollars for private schools that want to play by their own discriminatory rules). 

My frustration with various forms of education reform, from standardization through universal vouchers, is that I largely agree with the stated goals, but don't believe for a second that any of the favored policies will actually achieve any of those goals. I roughly divide the reformster crowd into people who really believe that their favored policies will work and those that know they won't (or don't care one way or another) because they have their eyes on other goals. 

So let's call it what it is. Privatizing school. Creating a market-based system. School vouchers.It's easier to have useful conversations about things like fundamental changes in the very nature of the country's education system if we call things by their name.

 *But only in America-- the British English Ngram British English Ngram shows a 2002 peak, a 2012 dip, and an all time high in 2019. But I'm not going down that rabbit hole right now.

ICYMI: Fathers Day 2024 Edition (6/16)

You know what sucks in the summer of 2024? Lord knows, the internet has affected in mostly good way, from forcing us all to agree on the fair market for vehicles to allowing us to cruise lots from the comfort of our home. But everything you've read about the industry's inventory problem is, I will certify, true. There is not much of a selection of vehicles, new or used--and used cars are crazy expensive. It's times like this I miss my dad, who was a fine car shopper. I'll let you know if things perk up.

In the meantime, here's some reading stuff.

Tax Docs Link Right-Wing “Parents Group” to Leonard Leo’s Dark Money Network

Lisa Graves and Alyssa Bowen at Truthout with some scoop about who is footing the bills for active astroturf group Parents Defending Education.

Virginia school board sued after reinstating Confederate school names

Some Virginia schools that insisted on reinstating the names of Confederate traitors will now get to explain themselves in a court of law. Karina Elwood at the Washington Post.

After a 7-year experiment, New Orleans is an all-charter district no more

New Orleans decides to bring back public schools, at least a little. Beth Hawkins reports at Route Fifty.

Vouchers Benefit the Wealthy, Oklahoma Shows

This time it's an Oklahoma study showing that a mountain of voucher money is going to subsidize private school for the wealthy.

Using Your Neighbor’s Taxes To Fund Your Child’s Private School Tuition

Sue Kingery Woltanski at Accountabaloney digs into the notion that a voucher just gives someone their own tax dollars back. It does-- plus a bunch of their neighbors' money as well.

Arizona School Voucher Program Funds Multiple $500+ Lego Purchases

The indispensable Mercedes Schneider looks at the mess that is Arizona's unregulated voucher spending.

Education Trail Blazers

Thomas Ultican profiles three exceptional women pioneers in education. 

What Schools SHOULD Be Teaching

Nancy Flanagan considers that undying meme about all the things schools ought to be teaching but, supposedly, are not. But how much adulting are schools supposed to teach?

Open Letter on AP African American Studies

South Carolina is quietly putting the kibosh on AP African American studies. Steve Nuzum and Nicole Walker respond to the actions of the state.

When Fear and Xenophobia Infect Discussions of Education Policy

Jan Resseger looks at how education policy can be affected by those who don't want to provide education for Those Peoples' Children.

Absurdity Abounds in the Education Policy Space

TC Weber digs into the nuts and bolts and ins and outs and general absurdity of third grade test-based retention and the miracles it brings.

More Spin Than Historic

Yes, it's Sue Kingery Woltanski again, this time looking at DeSantis and his attempt to claim that he's doing marvelous things for teacher pay. He isn't. She'll explain some tricks worth noting, because DeSantis isn't the only one to try this sort of spin.

In historic first, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis vetoes most arts funding in Florida

Speaking of DeSantis making bold, lousy choices, it appears that arts are on the chopping black in Florida.

Humans are symphonies, not salad dressing

You know I love a good analogy, and Benhamin Riley has a fine one here to help illuminate the nature versus nurture question.

Meanwhile, over at Forbes.com, some good news about the ongoing travails of the Florida teacher who was attacked by the state for her Black Lives Matter flag, and some important information about a primary race in Colorado. 

And don't forget my substack, currently the most reliable way to stay up on whatever I'm putting out into the world.

This Is Where Attacks On Reading Take You

It seems like a minor, irony-soaked story. Erum Salam reports for the Guardian that the Indian River school district (in Florida, natch) has banned Alan Gratz's book Ban This Book. 

The book (summary here, if you've never read it) is the story of Amy Anne Olinger, a quiet 9-year-old who discovers that one of her favorite books (along with many others) has been pulled from the library because the PTA president thinks it will be harmful to children. So she creates a Banned Books Library in her locker. There are a variety of conflicts, culminating in a school board meeting at which Amy Anne and friends confront the school board and PTA president with arguments for removing every single one of the books in the library.

What the book doesn't have is any sexual elements. Nor any trace of critical race theory, and not a thing to make anyone feel they are either the victim or perpetrator of systemic discrimination. And yet, here we are...

The challenge came from Jennifer Pippin, head of the Indian River Moms For liberty chapter. She has lots of thoughts about books that should be removed from schools, including her crusade against a graphic version of Anne Frank's diary, which contains nude statues and is "not a true adaptation of the Holocaust." 

But Pippin has two M4L-backed board members in Indian River, and they joined a DeSantis-appointed member to vote 3-2 in favor of extreme irony. Kevin McDonald, the DeSantis appointee, offered this explanation of why the book had to go:

The title itself and the theme challenges our authority. And it even goes so far as to not only to mention books that are deemed inappropriate by school boards, including ours, it not only mentions them but it lists them.

So, two problems. One is that it mentions the names of the forbidden books, thereby allowing students to, I guess, know those books exist (though the mentioned books include such Naughty Classics as Harriet the Spy and Juney B Jones books). Another board member had a charge as well--

This book is really just a liberal Marxist propaganda piece.

 It challenges the school board's authority! It gives students the idea that they can have a say in things or challenge adults. Goodness gracious! It must be Marxist propaganda, because only Marxist propaganda would suggest you can disagree with the People in Charge.

This is a tell of epic proportions.

There are (as I've said repeatedly) serious conversations to be had about what books are appropriate for which students at what time. But the drive to stomp children (and adults) under the thumb of Liberty Watchers reveals itself pretty quickly to be mostly about authoritarian impulse. That means--

First, they are never, ever satisfied. There never comes a day when they say, "We are satisfied that the library has removed the really concerning materials, and that there's a good policy in place to address future acquisitions, so you won't be hearing from us again." The librarians who say, "Okay, if we fold on this batch of books, then they'll be happy and go away" are doomed to disappointment. No, once they've gotten rid of the books that are 90% objectionable, they'll move on to the 80% books, and on and on and on. 

Second, authoritarians always have to defend their authority. Do not question them, challenge them, contradict them. In the case of book banners, challenging their authority can be as great an offense as putting sexual content in the library. There's nothing complicated or nuanced about it-- they have the power and you dare not challenge it.

The other layer of irony here is that Ban This Book is actually a pretty nuanced tale-- there are no blatantly evil villains, our heroine is not angel, and the book says a lot about how complicated these situations can be. But to three members of the Indian River board that doesn't matter. Like Eric Cartman, they will not allow anyone to question their authority.

And so what starts out being about books with sexual and CRT content and protecting the children ends up being about control and power and slapping down anyone and anything that challenges it. 

MO: More Book Banning Foolishness

Now that the book banning craze has had some time to find its legs, certain patterns of foolishness have emerged.

In many states, it has become a way to circumvent democratic processes entirely. We see over and over a tiny minority--sometimes just one person--demands to decide what everyone's children can read.  There's Vicki Baggett in Florida (at least 150 books). There's Washington Post's finding that  60% of book challenges came from just 11 persons. Adam Andre in Wisconsin challenged 444 books challenged 444 books. In Fort Bend, Texas, it was an actual board member, David Hamilton.

Hamilton is typical of another phenomenon-- the book challenger who has not actually read the book. 

This kind of blind attack on a book is facilitated by sites like Book Looks. Set up by some former Moms For Liberty, the site provides a quick, handy guide to all the Naughty Books. You don't even have to read them yourself (and if you're really lazy, you don't even have to check to see if the books are even in your library before you demand they be removed).

Here's a particularly striking example from St. Joseph School District in St. Joseph, Missouri. St. Joseph exists in the shadow of the Herzog Foundation, one more far right organization created by a rich guy to impose his vision on society. This particular vision involves school vouchers, lots of GOP officials, and a goal to “catalyze and accelerate the development of quality Christ-centered K-12 education.” They are directly tied to some local churches, and they have lots of money to throw around.

Keeping an eye on Herzog shenanigans is Herzog-free SJSD. A Herzog official filed a Sunshine request back in December for a list of all books, and soon book challenges started to appear. See what you notice about the list of challenges:

Yes, reading is hard. I am particularly unimpressed with Lawrence, who could not find the time to read "And Tango Makes Three," which, to be clear, is a children's picture book with fewer than forty pages.

The group also shared some of the actual forms on their Facebook page (comments were added by HFSJSD

It's no wonder that one other frequent theme in book banning coverage is librarians who have absolutely had enough (here, here, here, and here). 

Are there serious discussions to be had about which books are suitable for which young audiences? Absolutely. But to have serious conversations, you have to have serious people on both sides, and some of these culture panic folks are not serious enough for any such conversation.

ICYMI: Party Day Edition (6/9)

This week the Board of Directors turned 7, and this afternoon we'll be celebrating with an assortment of classmates, cake, fruit, and a swimming pool. Good times. Also this week, the insurance company declared my car a total loss, so I've got that project to take care of. But the Board and the CMO are now officially on summer vacation, and the last day of school is behind us and summer is here. So we've got that going for us. 

Last day of school!

But meanwhile there is a whole heap of reading to do, so here's your list. Live it up!

You’re paying for Pa.’s cyber charter schools. You deserve to know where your money goes

Legislator Joe Ciresi joins the chorus of people begging to finally stop wasting taxpayer dollars on an overpriced service that doesn't deliver. He's not the only person ringing this alarm bell.Not by a long shot.

Data-Mining and the "Data Race"​ for Gold in Texas

If you have sort of let data mining of children and cradle-to-career tracking drift to the back of your mind, the folks who want to push that stuff have not. Lynn Davenport lays out some of the players involved these days.

Floridians come to Iowa bearing brilliant ideas

Todd Dorman has a column in The Gazette that deploys sass and facts to explain how Iowa Republicans are getting their ideas from wealthy Florida business folks.

 

Local school, run by group on SPLC 'hate map,' is part of state's voucher program

In New Hampshire, it turns out that one school hoovering up taxpayer-funded vouchers is an outfit so radical that the Catholic Church says, "uh-uh--they are not with us no matter what they say!" Christopher Cartwright reports for the Keene Sentinel. 

Judge issues ruling in Catholic lawsuit over Colorado universal preschool program

Catholic preschools in Colorado were sad because the state wouldn't give them taxpayer money without requiring them to not discriminate against LGBTQ folks (among others). The ruling doesn't help much, but there's a depressing twist-- the state has solved the problem by cutting the anti-discrimination language. Melanie Asmar at Chalkbeat reports.

Republican Pennridge School Board Director Wants Students to Be Taught Creationism

You might think this has already been settled, but a school board director in Pennridge would like to mandate the religious version of the origins of the universe. Jenny Stephens reports for the Bucks County Beacon.

An American flag, a pencil sharpener − and the 10 Commandments: Louisiana’s new bill to mandate biblical displays in classrooms is the latest to push limits

Charles Russo writes for The Conversation about Louisiana's attempt to get religion into the classroom.

Billions in taxpayer dollars now go to religious schools via vouchers

Laura Meckler and Michelle Boorstein do some honest to goodness reporting on just who gets the benefit of taxpayer-funded vouchers-- and who doesn't. It's in the Washington Post.

Florida revises school library book removal training following public outcry

On the USA Today network, a report on Florida doing its "Okay, now that we made a public splash by announcing a policy, let's adjust it a tiny bit to reality" thing.

Third Grade Retention: The Gool's Gold of Reading Reform

Paul Thomas is here to remind us that this dumb policy is a dumb policy.

Why “Fund Students, Not Systems” Is a Recipe for Disaster

On the one hand, it's behind The Nation's annoying paywall. On the other hand, it's Jack Schneider and Jennifer Berkshire, so you know it's worth a read.

An Illinois School District’s Reliance on Police to Ticket Students Is Discriminatory, Civil Rights Complaint Says

ProPublica reports on a district where they have real cops give real students real tickets. Guess who gets the greater number of them.

Dark Money Ran Through Texas’s Runoffs and Probably Just Delivered Win for Private School Vouchers

Marlissa Collier reports on how hard Abbott and some friends worked to get him his vouchers.

Man with Sixteen College Degrees Can’t Read

Nancy Flanagan with a tale about reading and some assumptions we make about it.

Moms for Liberty Was Never About Protecting Kids

Maurice Cunningham for The Progressive and yet another Moms for Liberty spin on their bogus history.

Florida sticks by social studies standard teaching ‘benefit’ of slavery

Florida has some really dumb ideas about how the history of enslaving folks should be taught, so bad that even Byron "Jim Crows Was Great" Donalds objected.

Sex Discrimination Education Law

Thomas Ultican provides some history of Title IX

The Women Will Do It

Anne Lutz Fernandez looks at the new book Holding It Together: How Women Became America's Safety Net.

Ask When Children Should Begin to Read

Nancy Bailey continues to shed light on the world of reading instruction and some of the actual research behind it.

An Unserious Book

Sal Khan is back once again to tell us another of his amateur-hour ideas about how to revolutionize education while disguising marketing as analysis. John Warner explains why you can ignore Khan's new book.

Both State Tax Cuts and the School Voucher Expansion Threaten Fair and Equal Public School Funding in Ohio

Ohio continues to do its best to become the Florida of the midwest. Luckily, Jan Resseger is there to explain their anti-public-ed policies.

Are we intelligent or are we educable?

Benjamin Riley explains some of the major theories about what makes human thinking unique.

The New Apostolic Reformation Wants God's Government Back

Texas Observer with more reporting on the NAR, that delightful group of anti-democracy dominionists that you should be paying more attention.

NAR 19-county plan

Religion Dispatches covers the plan to hit 19 particular counties hard for the next election. Some of these will seem familiar.

Join me on substack. It's free and convenient and easy. Tell your friends and help me build my newsletter audience. Then have a good week.

How Stupid Can A Shooting Drill Get ?

I'm bringing this up not in the heat or anniversary of some awful school shooting, but because once again some misguided adults tried an active shooter simulation on students. 

Active shooter drills are pretty upsetting in the best of times. I've been through them, and the experience was unnerving. the experience was unnerving. Add to that the non-zero number of drills that are handled terribly. 

Like the infamous Indiana drill in which teachers were shot with pellets ("This is what happens if you just cower and do nothing," the helpful police offered.) The Indiana legislature, hearing about this terribly upsetting drill, decided that-- maybe it's a good idea to shoot teachers with pellets. "It's got to do with reality and making sure they experience the emotions and adrenaline," offered the head of the state senate education committee who was also an ordained minister.

Or that time in Missouri, where the state mandates shooter drills, that students were outfitted with fake wounds and fake blood.

Firing blanks during a drill doesn't even count as unusual any more. As are discussions about the "right" way to conduct these drills (which just kind of skip over the if).

But local law enforcement can still find ways to surprise. Just this week, Burlington VT police officers teaching a class of high school students (in the police station) decided it would be a good idea to stage a surprise faux active shooter attack. Masked gunmen burst into the room and started firing (blanks, one presumes). The students thought they were there to tour the station and hear a presentation about how detectives solve crimes. The police thought they were giving a demonstration of eyewitness unreliability. The students were scared to death. 

Police said they'd used the same "realistic as possible" demonstration with adults and college students without trouble, but of course adults and college students are not regularly marinated in a system that reminds them constantly that even in a seemingly safe place, they could be brutally murdered at any moment. This is how we've raised a whole generation.

It is infuriating and enraging. Since Columbine we have insisted as a country on "hardening the target" which translates into making schools responsible to thwart attacks and students responsible for saving their own lives, but not--God forbid--in any way interfering with every American's born right to have at their disposal technology that has no purpose other than to rip bullets through human flesh as swiftly and efficiently as possible. 

Of all the things that schools are asked to fix--ignorance, poverty, racism, drug abuse, pregnancy, auto accidents, etc etc etc--the demand that schools and students somehow shoulder the burden for a nation with the worst death-by-gun figures in the industrialized world is the most unjust, unreasonable, unfair and unhealthy. It is also one of our societal tells, a clear sign that all our collective talk about how much we value young humans is just not serious talk at all. And it's not just every death that reminds us, but every child who spends a day (or more) shaking or crying because once again some adult has decided that the best way to handle gun violence in this country is to scare the living shit out of some children. 

Five Takeaways from "They Came for the Schools"

Mike Hixenbaugh has written a heck of a book about the newest wave of attempts to dismantle America's public schools. They Came for the Schools is centered on Southlake, Texas, the community that turned out to be the cutting edge of harnessing culture panic for political gains (it is, among other things, the district where an administrator famously told teachers to cover both sides of the Holocaust). It's the community that pioneered the "Southlake Playbook," the plan for the far right to take power in a district. 

Hixenbaugh focuses on Southlake, but he also puts Southlake in the national context, showing where this movement spun off into other locales. It's a good read, and I recommend it. Here are a couple of particular takeaways from the book.

Historical Context (Present)

There's a tendency to mark the start of current culture panic at the pandemic years of 2020-2021. But Hixenbaugh lays out a fuller timeline quickly and efficiently.

Barrack Obama is elected President, and a whole lot of white folks get uncomfortable. Donald Trump is elected, and a whole lot of built-up pressure and panic gets permission to uncork. The incidents of racism and abuse in schools climb during the Trump presidency, and schools all over country (including Southlake) start thinking, yeah, we need to address this somehow. George Floyd's murder puts an exclamation point on that idea, but 2020 is also pandemic closings and Trump's defeat, and folks on the far right see conspiracy, loss of cultural relevance and centrality, and a need to grab power before Those People go too far.

As Hixenbaugh describes it, it's a series of reactions, and each culture panic reaction is fueled deliberately by power-seeking opportunists, from birther Donald Trump through culture panic guru Chris Rufo. Hixenbaugh does a good job, through Southlake, of stitching together a fuller narrative of how we got here.

Historical Context (Past)

We've been here before, and Hixenbaugh walks us through some of the other iterations of culture panic. Here's Anita Bryant with the old "I know that homosexuals cannot biologically reproduce; therefor, they must recruit our children."

The desire to silence certain voices, to put cultural and racial minorities In Their Proper Place, to inject certain religious beliefs into school while also sending taxpayer dollars to private Christian schools-- none of that is new. They have always been with us in this country.

Big Fish, Small Ponds

One of the recurring themes, from Southlake to Chester County, is that many of these contentious communities are the homes of people used to operating on a big budget national stage, and when they turn their money and resources to local school board races, regular folks can find themselves suddenly swamped. 

That holds true for individuals and corporations. Hixenbaugh highlights the work of Patriot Mobile, a cell phone company that ploughs its resources into backing far right christian nationalists for local school board races and school policy. 

There are some stunning stories here, like the teacher who became a whistleblower on NBC news and found that opponents had access to the kinds of high tech resources needed to reverse the voice-disguising tech that the network had used to conceal her identity.

Relentless and Focused

The Southlake conservatives become a micro-MAGA, demanding absolute purity of those they support and relentlessly hound board members, staff, even students who do not fall in line.

Not only does this bar any sorts of compromise or attempts to coexist, but the culture panic crew shows an absolutely unwillingness to accept any view of events except their own--which is often untethered from reality. Sometimes that means ignoring part of the picture; they are concerned about a school's response to racist incidents, but not the racist incidents themselves. Sometimes it means a striking lack of interest in any nuanced understanding; their opponents are never people who mean well but may have chosen poorly, but are always evil and terrible. Sometimes they just lie. 

It's what always makes culture panic movements both dangerous and doomed. Dangerous because they accept neither reason nor compromise, and because they are never satisfied. No book banning group has ever said, "Okay, now that you've removed these books, we're perfectly happy and we'll stop now." That is also what dooms them. Their demonization of all opponents and their unwillingness to compromise becomes increasingly off-putting to folks outside the panic and debates. And their demand for complete fealty means that they often turn on their own people. 

Politics and Religion

Hixenbaugh lays out how christian nationalism and right wing politics are merged in this culture panic moment. If you aren't paying attention to dominionism yet, this book will help explain why you should. In the meantime, you know what I always say-- when you mix religion and politics, you get politics.

While some of these folks come across as power hungry and selfish, there are also those who appear to have fallen for the seductive song of "the ends justifies the means." I have no doubt that there are many who sincerely believe that schools and the nation would be better off if christian nationalists had the power and public schools were required to push a particular brand of christianity, and that it's a goal so important that it should be pursued by any means necessary. Certainly Rudo and others have called explicitly for a certain ruthlessness.

The trouble with justified means thinking is that, since we so rarely achieve our ends, we are mostly defined by the means we choose. You may decide to use lying and other tools of politics to advance the kingdom of Jesus, but in the end that just makes you a liar and a politician. 

And More

There's a great deal more to Hixenbaugh's book. He does a masterful job of toggling between the local story of Southlake and the big picture nationally. There are some stories of hope here (though not from Southlake itself) and some successful attempts to work to preserve public education as we know it. It's a clear picture of what's driving much of the culture panic and the fight decide what gets taught and who gets to make those decisions. Well worth the read.