CASE FILE: Proud Boy’ing Our Public Schools

This is the story of a multi-million dollar heist of taxpayer funds into private hands that has played out for more than a decade and shows no sign of slowing down. As the school calendar flips throughout Florida, we look at how Charter Schools and “school choice” have successfully played into the American (and Floridian) dual ethoses of “freedom” and “choice, creating a system where there’s no freedom to fix what’s broken and the only choices are bad.

We explore the powerful, well-funded political project that aims to harness conservative anxiety and grievance into an anti-education movement, molding American secondary schools into a caste system where the kids with means pay for-profit schools for the privilege of attending a decent school, and the rest get the underfunded, neglected leftovers. Sure, they’re undermining the public/community school model that has educated generations of kids, but who’s profiting from it?

Our guest is Jen Cousins (@JenCousinsFL), founding member of the Florida Freedom to Read Project, which can be followed on Twitter @FLFreedomRead, and the Students’ Rights Coalition, @SRCforEd.

You can follow WAWLT on Twitter @WAWLTShow.

This episode features music by David Rosen, @ByDavidRosen.

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