From Public Schools to Privatization

Kathleen Nolan is a lecturer and the assistant director of English language arts in the Program in Teacher Preparation at Princeton University.

“Some books arrive at just the right time. In From Public Schools to Privatization, Kathleen Nolan traces the decades-long racial-capitalist project of neoliberal restructuring of U.S. public education through to the current crisis: Project 2025's white Christian nationalist ‘authoritarian marketization’ agenda of full privatization and anti-‘woke ideology.’ Nolan’s rich ethnographic data vividly demonstrate the cumulatively destructive impact of this trajectory on urban teaching, but also the ‘rise’ of teachers and teacher union locals for racial justice and strong urban schools.”Pauline Lipman, Professor of Educational Policy Studies, University of Illinois, USA“In From Public Schools to Privatization, Dr. Kathleen Nolan offers a sweeping and poignant analysis of the changes in teachers’ labor over the last three decades. Through interviews with teachers, this book critically examines how rise of neoliberal education policies and conservative nationalism have resulted in an all-out conservative attack on public education, while also showing us the hope that individual teachers and the collective power of teachers’ unions can give us.”Wayne Au, Dean and Professor, School of Educational Studies, University of Washington Bothell, USA“Nolan’s From Public Schools to Privatization is a masterful study from an educator and researcher who has both lived the deleterious impact of what she calls ‘public school marketization’ and rigorously studied its consequences. Nolan’s meticulous work shows how decades of bipartisan corporate education reform paved the way for today’s extremist efforts to ban antiracist teaching and dismantle public education through privatization. Yet Nolan also highlights how teachers resist—through everyday refusals, culturally sustaining pedagogy, solidarity with immigrant and BIPOC students, and social justice unionism—demonstrating that even under the harshest conditions, educators continue to nurture democratic possibilities. At once searing in its critique and hopeful in its vision, this book illuminates both the devastating costs of market-driven ‘reform’ and the bold acts of resistance that point toward a more just future for public education.”Jesse Hagopian, award winning educator, author, co-editor of Rethinking Schools, and a founding member of Black Lives Matter at School

• 1. Worked to Death: The Disappearing Urban Public School Teacher 2. Marketization and Teachers’ Work: From ANAR to the Present 3. Obama Era Urban School Turnaround: Incoherence and the Making of the Resistant Teacher 4. The Evolution of the Neoliberal Marketization of Urban Education 5. The Rise of Authoritarian Marketization 6. Teachers’ Unions: The Challenges 7. Reflections on the Death and Rise of the Urban Public School Teacher