
The Privateers
How Billionaires Created a Culture War and Sold School Vouchers
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
3 months free
Buy for $17.19
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Patrick Lawlor
-
By:
-
Josh Cowen
About this listen
A deep-dive investigation of education privatization that reveals voucher programs as the faulty products of decades of work by wealthy patrons and influential conservatives
This thought-provoking work traces the origins of voucher-based education reform to mid-twentieth-century fears over school desegregation. It shows how, in the intervening decades, a cabal of billionaire conservatives supporting a host of special political interests-including economic libertarianism, religious choice, and parental rights-have converged around the issue of education freedom in an ongoing culture war. Through deliberate policymaking, legislation, and litigation, Cowen reveals, an insular advocacy network has enacted a flawed system for education finance driven largely by dogma.
Far from realizing the purported goal of educational equity, privatization is failing students and exacerbating income inequality, Cowen finds. He cites multiple research studies that conclude that voucher programs return poorer academic outcomes, including lower test scores on state exams, especially among students who are at greater academic risk because of their race, their religion, their gender identity, or their family's income. Continued advancement of these policies, Cowen argues, is an assault on public education as a defining American institution.
©2024 the President and Fellows of Harvard College (P)2024 TantorListeners also enjoyed...
-
Stolen Pride
- Loss, Shame, and the Rise of the Right
- By: Arlie Russell Hochschild
- Narrated by: Ellen Archer
- Length: 9 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For all the attempts to understand the state of American politics and the blue/red divide, we've ignored what economic and cultural loss can do to pride. What happens, Arlie Russell Hochschild asks, when a proud people in a hard-hit region suffer the deep loss of pride and are confronted with a powerful political appeal that makes it feel "stolen"? Hochschild's research drew her to Pikeville, Kentucky, in the heart of Appalachia, within the whitest and second-poorest congressional district in the nation.
-
-
Gripping and insightful
- By Marianna Grossman on 12-27-24
-
Offshore
- Stealth Wealth and the New Colonialism
- By: Brooke Harrington
- Narrated by: Jennifer Walden
- Length: 4 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
How do the rich keep getting richer, while dodging the long arm of the law? The ultra-rich seem to live in a different world from the rest of us. That world is called offshore. Hidden from view, the world's ultra-rich can use offshore finance to escape tax obligations, labor and environmental safety regulations, campaign finance rules, and other laws that get in their way.
-
-
Informative
- By Seattle mom on 03-02-25
-
White Poverty
- How Exposing Myths About Race and Class Can Reconstruct American Democracy
- By: Reverend Dr. William Barber II, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove - contributor
- Narrated by: Bill Andrew Quinn
- Length: 6 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One of the most pernicious and persistent myths in the United States is the association of Black skin with poverty. Though there are forty million more poor white people than Black people, most Americans, both Republicans and Democrats, continue to think of poverty—along with issues like welfare, unemployment, and food stamps—as solely a Black problem. Why is this so? What are the historical causes? And what are the political consequences that result?
-
-
Cannot be antiracist without the ties that bind
- By marwalk on 08-25-24
By: Reverend Dr. William Barber II, and others
-
They Came for the Schools
- One Town's Fight over Race and Identity, and the New War for America's Classrooms
- By: Mike Hixenbaugh
- Narrated by: Mike Hixenbaugh
- Length: 9 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Award-winning journalist Mike Hixenbaugh delivers the immersive and eye-opening story of Southlake, Texas, a district that seemed to offer everything parents would want for their children—small classes, dedicated teachers, financial resources, a track record of academic success, and school spirit in abundance.
-
-
Informative,..scary as hell…a wake up call for ALL Americans
- By debra on 05-19-24
By: Mike Hixenbaugh
-
Money, Lies, and God
- Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy
- By: Katherine Stewart
- Narrated by: Patricia Rodriguez
- Length: 11 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Why have so many Americans turned against democracy? In this deeply reported book, Katherine Stewart takes us to conferences of conspiracy-mongers, backroom strategy gatherings, and services at extremist churches, and profiles the people who want to tear it all down.
-
-
Describes a well funded international fascist cult
- By marwalk on 03-24-25
-
Minority Rule
- The Right-Wing Attack on the Will of the People - and the Fight to Resist It
- By: Ari Berman
- Narrated by: Gary Tiedemann
- Length: 11 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The mob that stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, represented an extreme form of the central danger facing American democracy today: a blatant disregard for the will of the majority. Through voter suppression, election subversion, gerrymandering, dark money, the takeover of the courts, and the whitewashing of history, reactionary white conservatives have strategically entrenched power in the face of a massive demographic and political shift.
-
-
SO much great information!
- By CharlieSeymourJr on 05-01-24
By: Ari Berman
-
Stolen Pride
- Loss, Shame, and the Rise of the Right
- By: Arlie Russell Hochschild
- Narrated by: Ellen Archer
- Length: 9 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For all the attempts to understand the state of American politics and the blue/red divide, we've ignored what economic and cultural loss can do to pride. What happens, Arlie Russell Hochschild asks, when a proud people in a hard-hit region suffer the deep loss of pride and are confronted with a powerful political appeal that makes it feel "stolen"? Hochschild's research drew her to Pikeville, Kentucky, in the heart of Appalachia, within the whitest and second-poorest congressional district in the nation.
-
-
Gripping and insightful
- By Marianna Grossman on 12-27-24
-
Offshore
- Stealth Wealth and the New Colonialism
- By: Brooke Harrington
- Narrated by: Jennifer Walden
- Length: 4 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
How do the rich keep getting richer, while dodging the long arm of the law? The ultra-rich seem to live in a different world from the rest of us. That world is called offshore. Hidden from view, the world's ultra-rich can use offshore finance to escape tax obligations, labor and environmental safety regulations, campaign finance rules, and other laws that get in their way.
-
-
Informative
- By Seattle mom on 03-02-25
-
White Poverty
- How Exposing Myths About Race and Class Can Reconstruct American Democracy
- By: Reverend Dr. William Barber II, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove - contributor
- Narrated by: Bill Andrew Quinn
- Length: 6 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One of the most pernicious and persistent myths in the United States is the association of Black skin with poverty. Though there are forty million more poor white people than Black people, most Americans, both Republicans and Democrats, continue to think of poverty—along with issues like welfare, unemployment, and food stamps—as solely a Black problem. Why is this so? What are the historical causes? And what are the political consequences that result?
-
-
Cannot be antiracist without the ties that bind
- By marwalk on 08-25-24
By: Reverend Dr. William Barber II, and others
-
They Came for the Schools
- One Town's Fight over Race and Identity, and the New War for America's Classrooms
- By: Mike Hixenbaugh
- Narrated by: Mike Hixenbaugh
- Length: 9 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Award-winning journalist Mike Hixenbaugh delivers the immersive and eye-opening story of Southlake, Texas, a district that seemed to offer everything parents would want for their children—small classes, dedicated teachers, financial resources, a track record of academic success, and school spirit in abundance.
-
-
Informative,..scary as hell…a wake up call for ALL Americans
- By debra on 05-19-24
By: Mike Hixenbaugh
-
Money, Lies, and God
- Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy
- By: Katherine Stewart
- Narrated by: Patricia Rodriguez
- Length: 11 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Why have so many Americans turned against democracy? In this deeply reported book, Katherine Stewart takes us to conferences of conspiracy-mongers, backroom strategy gatherings, and services at extremist churches, and profiles the people who want to tear it all down.
-
-
Describes a well funded international fascist cult
- By marwalk on 03-24-25
-
Minority Rule
- The Right-Wing Attack on the Will of the People - and the Fight to Resist It
- By: Ari Berman
- Narrated by: Gary Tiedemann
- Length: 11 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The mob that stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, represented an extreme form of the central danger facing American democracy today: a blatant disregard for the will of the majority. Through voter suppression, election subversion, gerrymandering, dark money, the takeover of the courts, and the whitewashing of history, reactionary white conservatives have strategically entrenched power in the face of a massive demographic and political shift.
-
-
SO much great information!
- By CharlieSeymourJr on 05-01-24
By: Ari Berman
-
The Whiteness of Wealth
- How the Tax System Impoverishes Black Americans - and How We Can Fix It
- By: Dorothy A. Brown
- Narrated by: Karen Murray
- Length: 7 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Dorothy A. Brown became a tax lawyer to get away from race. As a young black girl growing up in the South Bronx, she’d seen how racism limited the lives of her family and neighbors. Her law school classes offered a refreshing contrast: Tax law was about numbers, and the only color that mattered was green. But when Brown sat down to prepare tax returns for her parents, she found something strange: James and Dottie Brown, a plumber and a nurse, seemed to be paying an unusually high percentage of their income in taxes. When Brown became a law professor, she set out to understand why.
-
-
Thought provoking and very accessible
- By Simone on 05-16-21
By: Dorothy A. Brown
-
The Longest Con
- How Grifters, Swindlers, and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism
- By: Joe Conason
- Narrated by: Steve Marvel
- Length: 10 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Longest Con tells the fascinating story of the partisan con artists who have corrupted conservative politics in our time, creating a toxic phenomenon that culminated in the election of Donald Trump, a bumptious fraud whose checkered career and tawdry retinue, including his presidential cabinet, have featured almost every variety of scam. But long before he appeared, Trump's path to power was blazed by the motley horde of swindlers and quacks who preceded him.
-
-
Avalanche of Facts
- By K. Clark on 01-13-25
By: Joe Conason
-
Bad Law
- Ten Popular Laws That Are Ruining America
- By: Elie Mystal
- Narrated by: Elie Mystal
- Length: 8 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The New York Times bestselling author brings his trademark legal acumen and passionate snark to offer a brilliant takedown of ten shocking pieces of legislation that continue to perpetuate hate, racial bias, injustice, and inequality today—an urgent yet hopeful story for our current political climate
-
-
Chicken Soup for the Political Soul
- By Gracie on 05-22-25
By: Elie Mystal
-
The Violent Take It by Force
- The Christian Movement That Is Threatening Our Democracy
- By: Matthew D. Taylor
- Narrated by: Asa Siegel
- Length: 11 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Over the last decade, the Religious Right has evolved. Some of the more extreme beliefs of American evangelicalism have begun to take hold in the mainstream. Scholar Matthew D. Taylor pulls back the curtain on a little-known movement of evangelical Christians who see themselves waging spiritual battles on a massive scale.
-
-
Comprehensively Researched
- By Chuck Anderson on 09-25-24
-
The End of History and the Last Man
- By: Francis Fukuyama
- Narrated by: L. J. Ganser
- Length: 15 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ever since its first publication in 1992, The End of History and the Last Man has provoked controversy and debate. Francis Fukuyama's prescient analysis of religious fundamentalism, politics, scientific progress, ethical codes, and war is as essential for a world fighting fundamentalist terrorists as it was for the end of the Cold War. Now updated with a new afterword, The End of History and the Last Man is a modern classic.
-
-
An important discussion expertly narrated
- By Kevin Teeple on 06-27-19
By: Francis Fukuyama
-
The Second Coming of the KKK
- The Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s and the American Political Tradition
- By: Linda Gordon
- Narrated by: Jo Anna Perrin
- Length: 7 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
By legitimizing bigotry and redefining so-called American values, a revived Klan in the 1920s left a toxic legacy that demands reexamination today. Boasting four to six million members, the reassembled Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s dramatically challenged our preconceptions of hooded Klansmen, who through violence and lynching had established a Jim Crow racial hierarchy in the 1870s South.
-
-
Necessary History
- By S. Summers on 01-29-18
By: Linda Gordon
-
Erasing History
- By: Jason Stanley
- Narrated by: Dion Graham
- Length: 4 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Combining historical research with an in-depth analysis of our modern political landscape, Erasing History issues a dire warning for America and the world: the worst fascist movements of humanity’s past began in schools; the same place so many of today’s right-wing political parties have trained their most vicious attacks. Yale professor Jason Stanley exposes the true danger of the right’s tactics and traces their inspirations and funding back to some of the most dangerous ideas of human history.
-
-
The bias attitude of the author
- By Elizabeth ohanna on 09-30-24
By: Jason Stanley
-
Tyranny of the Minority
- Why American Democracy Reached the Breaking Point
- By: Steven Levitsky, Daniel Ziblatt
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 8 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
America is undergoing a massive experiment: It is moving, in fits and starts, toward a multiracial democracy, something few societies have ever done. But the prospect of change has sparked an authoritarian backlash that threatens the very foundations of our political system. Why is democracy under assault here, and not in other wealthy, diversifying nations? And what can we do to save it?
-
-
Tyranny of the Minority
- By orders on 10-07-23
By: Steven Levitsky, and others
-
How Civil Wars Start
- And How to Stop Them
- By: Barbara F. Walter
- Narrated by: Beth Hicks
- Length: 7 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Political violence rips apart several towns in southwest Texas. A far-right militia plots to kidnap the governor of Michigan and try her for treason. An armed mob of Trump supporters and conspiracy theorists storms the U.S. Capitol. Are these isolated incidents? Or is this the start of something bigger? Barbara F. Walter has spent her career studying civil conflict in places like Iraq, Ukraine, and Sri Lanka, but now she has become increasingly worried about her own country.
-
-
Reveals the limits of a Political Science approach
- By Bill on 01-17-22
-
Ungoverning
- The Attack on the Administrative State and the Politics of Chaos
- By: Russell Muirhead, Nancy L. Rosenblum
- Narrated by: Katherine Fenton
- Length: 8 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this unsettling book, Russell Muirhead and Nancy Rosenblum trace how ungoverning—the deliberate effort to dismantle the capacity of government to do its work—has become a malignant part of politics. Democracy depends on a government that can govern, and that requires what’s called administration.
By: Russell Muirhead, and others
-
The Death of Expertise (2nd Edition)
- The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why It Matters
- By: Tom Nichols
- Narrated by: Tom Nichols
- Length: 10 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Fully updated chapters continue to address how technology and increasing levels of education have exposed people to more information than ever before. These societal gains, however, have also helped fuel a surge in narcissistic and misguided intellectual egalitarianism that has crippled informed debates on any number of issues. Over the past several years, the rise of populism and conspiracy theories have taken this to new levels. All voices, even the most ridiculous, demand to be taken with equal seriousness, and any claim to the contrary is dismissed as undemocratic elitism.
-
-
Tom Nichols is a partisan hack
- By Carl Almgren on 07-06-25
By: Tom Nichols
-
Attack from Within
- How Disinformation Is Sabotaging America
- By: Barbara McQuade
- Narrated by: Barbara McQuade
- Length: 10 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Disinformation is designed to evoke a strong emotional response to push us toward more extreme views, unable to find common ground with others. The false claims that led to the breathtaking attack on our Capitol in 2020 may have been only a dress rehearsal. Attack from Within shows us how to prevent it from happening again, thus preserving our country's hard-won democracy.
-
-
This is not a feel-good book. Review and commentary:
- By Gary M on 03-13-24
By: Barbara McQuade
Underwhelming
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.