RADICAL DREAMERS

An educator argues for the school choice movement in this nonfiction work.

“Today, race and class remain the most reliable predictors of education achievement in America,” writes Viteritti, adding that, 70 years since the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision, “our public schools continue to be segregated.” A professor of public policy at New York’s Hunter College, the author, whose research has been widely published and cited in Supreme Court decisions, has a long history with both American public schools (serving as a senior adviser to the chancellor of the New York City public school system, among other positions) and working as an advocate for school choice. While promoting his vision for school choice, this book also serves as “an extended acknowledgment and note of gratitude” to the theorists (some of whom he ranks among his close friends) who shaped his ideas on school choice. These include Ron Edmonds (a New York educator known for his advocacy on behalf of Black families), Jack Coons (a prominent lawyer and advocate of choice), Diane Ravitch (a widely published scholar of education history and policy), and Howard Fuller (a Black Power civil rights activist). Viteritti is careful to distinguish himself from the growing conservative choice movement backed by President Donald Trump, which, the author argues, in its narrow support for private and parochial schools, “compounds past injustices.” He is similarly critical of the Democratic Party’s blind defense of public school policies that “sustain failure and confine students of color to underperforming public schools.” Advocating for school choice through the progressive lenses of Edmonds, Coons, Ravitch, Fuller, and a host of grassroots Black activists, Viteritti makes a well-researched case for charter schools that is backed by more than 560 scholarly endnotes. Despite its academic bona fides, this is an accessible work from the perspective of an activist who has long been in the trenches of public education.

An impassioned case for school choice supported by ample research.