From the anti-CRT panic to efforts to divert tax dollars to charter schools, the right-wing attack on education has cut deep. In response, millions of Americans have rallied to defend their cherished public schools. But this incisive book asks whether choosing between our embattled status quo and the stingy privatized vision of the right is the only path forward. In As Public as Possible, education expert David I. Backer argues for going on the offensive by radically expanding the very notion of the “public” in our public schools.

Helping us to imagine a more just and equitable future, As Public as Possible proposes a concrete set of financial policies aimed at providing a high-quality and truly public education for all Americans, regardless of wealth and race. With witty and provocative prose, Backer shows how we can decouple school funding from property tax revenue, evening out inequalities across districts by distributing resources according to need. He argues for direct federal grants instead of the predations of municipal debt markets. And he offers eye-opening examples spanning the past and present, from the former Yugoslavia to contemporary Philadelphia, which help us to imagine a radically different way of financing the education of all of our children.

Praise For As Public As Possible:

“Backer is an excellent tour guide showing us not only the inequities in how we pay for schools, but also how the system supports and perpetuates them. Like a docent at the Johnstown Flood Museum, he helps us admire the scale of the disaster, while also suggesting smart reforms to prevent another. Astute, frank, angry—he’s exactly the guide you want for this trip.”
—Tom Sgouros, fellow, The Policy Lab, Brown University

“David I. Backer has written the book that school finance consultants hope you’ll never read. As Public as Possible brings to light the privatizers, profiteers, and policy pushers who have long treated education not as a public good, but as a revenue stream for the already-rich. With humor, rigor, and radical hope, Backer demands that we stop fighting over scraps and start demanding the feast—a public education system as fully public as our children deserve.”
—Noliwe Rooks, author of Integrated and Cutting School and L. Herbert Ballou University Professor and chair of Africana Studies at Brown University

“David Backer has accomplished the seemingly impossible here, making the complex issue of school finance not just accessible, but provocative and inspiring. You’ll come away from this book convinced of the urgent necessity of a radical transformation in how we pay for public education and armed with a road map for how to get there.”
—Jennifer Berkshire, co-author of A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door and The Education Wars

David I. Backer is an associate professor of education policy at Seton Hall University whose research, teaching, and organizing focus on ideology and school finance. A former high school teacher, his research has appeared in Harvard Educational Review, Journal of Urban Affairs, Journal of Education Policy, Journal of Educational Human Resources, Journal of Educational Administration and History, as well as popular venues like Crain's Business Chicago, Phenomenal World, African American Policy Forum, The American Prospect, n+1, Dissent, and Jacobin. He lives in Philadelphia.