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In our on-going coverage of public education in the US, we’ve been looking this week at how teachers who report problems are often targeted, retaliated against with negative evaluations, and dismissed. On Tuesday we heard the case of one LA public school teacher who is fighting his dismissal over his complaints that undereducated students were graduating from his school. Yesterday, we heard how a Chicago teacher facing a similar situation has organized over a thousand other teachers nationwide who have suffered similar fates. Today, we look at the larger picture of how the current paradigm of public education is designed to fail schools, teachers, and ultimately students, in order to open the door to privatization. It is already the case that most parents who can afford it, send their children to private schools unless they happen to live in an excellent school district. My guest Lois Weiner, a professor of Education at New Jersey City University, has said that “Education is the last sector of the economy that is still mainly ‘owned’ by the public,” and also “the last sector of the economy that is heavily unionized.” Weiner sees the failures of public education – which whistle-blowing teachers are punished for pointing out – as deliberate, and part of a larger, international neo-liberal project of entirely dismantling the system in order to privatize it.

GUEST: Lois Weiner, professor of Education at New Jersey City University, co-editor of “The global assault on teaching, teachers, and their unions.”

Find out more at www.loisweiner.org, www.endteacherabuse.org, and www.perdaily.com. Also, search for “rethinking schools” on facebook.com.