Deborah Meier writes again to Leo E. Casey of the Albert Shanker Institute.

Dear Leo,

So, how are we to both defend and critique the "existing" public educational system, as you and I have forever been doing, while on the defensive when it comes to unions and public'ness?  We've even shown what it "could" look like, for ordinary kids, well within the public arena and with unionized teachers. We even (mistakenly) seemed on the brink of a grand expansion of such schools—Expeditionary Learning, Coalition of Essential Schools, et al. We got caught in the headlights as another train came rolling down the tracks we were laying.

Now we're facing a different and even more dangerous idea. One that overwhelms all the others: the rapid elimination of public education itself (and with it, teachers' unions, parent voice, and much more). It's always possible for us to argue about the Common Core State Standards, or standardized testing, or school and class sizes. But it won't mean much once we no longer have a system where public voices count. We "control" Walmarts by either shopping in them or not. The odds of creating collective bargaining as we know it are not great in any privatized sector. Soon our only "voice" in education will be choosing, or consumerism; and consumerism is not the model for democracy. 

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