Capitalizing on Disaster

Kenneth J. Saltman is Associate Professor of Educational Policy Studies and Research at DePaul University in Chicago. He is author most recently of The Edison Schools: Corporate Schooling and the Assault on Public Education (Routledge 2005).

• Introduction Smash and Grab; Chapter 1 Silver Linings and Golden Opportunities; Chapter 2 Creative Associates International, Incorporated; Chapter 3 Renaissance 2010 and No Child Left Behind; concl Conclusion From Dispossession to Possession;

“Saltman takes an unblinking look at the insatiable and predatory greed that drives neoliberal capitalism to feed on both natural and human-made disasters for profit. He cogently demonstrates how today's form of age-old class struggles is legitimated by deceitful and self-serving corporate values and high-sounding rhetoric that seek to privatize all aspects of human existence. This is a global logic that breeds terrible loss, lasting distress, and grave affliction to those left in its wake. Saltman offers a brilliant and compelling analysis that is destined to leave its mark.” —Angela Valenzuela, author of Subtractive Schooling: U.S.-Mexican Youth and the Politics of Caring “What do Hurricane Katrina and the Iraq War have in common? They both represent ‘golden opportunities’ to replace destroyed public school systems with private corporations. Worse, as Kenneth Saltman clearly shows in his angry and powerful new book, while these two examples are exceptional situations, they characterize the right’s modus operandi for radical social engineering--the public to private conversion--of the public schools.” —Gerald Bracey, Education Policy Research Unit “Disaster capitalism signals hard times for public schools, and, by consequence, democratic public life—locally, nationally, and globally. Kenneth Saltman unflinchingly demonstrates why and how in his important new book, which is constituted by case studies of privatization efforts in post-Katrina New Orleans, post-invasion Iraq, and post-decades-of-disinvestment-and-resegregation Chicago. … the book should be read widely.” —Christopher G. Robbins in the Journal of Educational Controversy