Slaying Goliath
The Passionate Resistance to Privatization and the Fight to Save America's Public Schools
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Narrated by:
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Amanda Carlin
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By:
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Diane Ravitch
About this listen
From one of the foremost authorities on education and the history of education in the United States, Slaying Goliath is an impassioned, inspiring look at the ways in which parents, teachers, and activists are successfully fighting back to defeat the forces that are trying to privatize America’s public schools.
Diane Ravitch writes of a true grassroots movement sweeping the country, from cities and towns across America, a movement dedicated to protecting public schools from those who are funding privatization and who believe that America’s schools should be run like businesses and that children should be treated like customers or products.
Slaying Goliath is about the power of democracy, about the dangers of plutocracy, and about the potential of ordinary people - armed like David with only a slingshot of ideas, energy, and dedication - to prevail against those who are trying to divert funding away from our historic system of democratically governed, nonsectarian public schools. Among the lessons learned from the global pandemic of 2020 is the importance of our public schools and their teachers and the fact that distance learning can never replace human interaction, the personal connection between teachers and students.
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From the best-selling authors of The Right Nation, a visionary argument that our current crisis in government is nothing less than the fourth radical transition in the history of the nation-state. Dysfunctional government: It' s become a cliché, and most of us are resigned to the fact that nothing is ever going to change. As John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge show us, that is a seriously limited view of things. In fact, there have been three great revolutions in government in the history of the modern world.
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A must read for everyone wondering whats going?
- By Truth-be-told on 03-30-15
By: John Micklethwait, and others
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The Conscience of a Liberal
- By: Paul Krugman
- Narrated by: Jason Culp
- Length: 9 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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America emerged from Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal with strong democratic values and broadly shared prosperity. But for the past 30 years, American politics has been dominated by a conservative movement determined to undermine the New Deal's achievements. Now, the tide may be turning, and in The Conscience of a Liberal Paul Krugman, the world's most widely read economist and one of its most influential political commentators, charts the way to reform.
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Great Book!!!
- By carl801 on 12-04-07
By: Paul Krugman
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The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860-1935
- By: James D. Anderson
- Narrated by: Bill Andrew Quinn
- Length: 12 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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James Anderson critically reinterprets the history of southern Black education from Reconstruction to the Great Depression. By placing Black schooling within a political, cultural, and economic context, he offers fresh insights into Black commitment to education, the peculiar significance of Tuskegee Institute, and the conflicting goals of various philanthropic groups, among other matters.
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Against all Odds
- By tubby on 10-21-22
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Reason
- Why Liberals Will Win the Battle for America
- By: Robert B. Reich
- Narrated by: Robert B. Reich
- Length: 7 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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From Robert B. Reich, passionate believer in American democracy and public servant, Reason is a guide to confronting and derailing what he sees as the mounting threat to American liberty, prosperity, and security posed by the radical conservatives, Radcons as he calls them.
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Reason
- By Ron Green on 03-13-05
By: Robert B. Reich
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Class Warfare
- Inside the Fight to Fix America's Schools
- By: Steven Brill
- Narrated by: L. J. Ganser
- Length: 16 hrs
- Unabridged
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In a reporting tour de force, award-winning journalist Steven Brill takes an uncompromising look at the adults who are fighting over America’s failure to educate its children and points the way to reversing that failure. Brill not only takes us inside their roller-coaster battles, he also concludes with a surprising prescription for what it will take from both sides to put the American dream back in America’s schools.
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Unions are Evil
- By Elton on 09-16-11
By: Steven Brill
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Beyond Outrage
- What Has Gone Wrong with Our Economy and Our Democracy, and How to Fix Them
- By: Robert B. Reich
- Narrated by: Robert B. Reich
- Length: 3 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Robert B. Reich urges Americans to get beyond mere outrage about the nation’s increasingly concentrated wealth and corrupt politics in order to mobilize and to take back our economy and democracy. Americans can’t rely only on getting good people elected, Reich argues, because nothing positive happens in Washington unless good people outside Washington are organized to help make those things happen after the election. But in order to be effectively mobilized, we need to see the big picture.
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Falls short
- By J. Klinghoffer on 11-04-13
By: Robert B. Reich
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Armageddon
- How Trump Can Beat Hillary
- By: Dick Morris, Eileen McGann
- Narrated by: Ian Patterson
- Length: 8 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Timed for the critical presidential election season, New York Times best-selling author and noted political commentator Dick Morris provides a strategy and position on the issues for Republicans to attract crucial new voters to the party in order to win back the White House in 2016 and put an end to the Obama agenda of ruinous socialism. By using new issues, attracting new voters, and offering new alternatives, Republicans can win the election of 2016 and save America!
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Informative and practical a must read
- By quentin on 06-30-16
By: Dick Morris, and others
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Audacity
- How Barack Obama Defied His Critics and Created a Legacy That Will Prevail
- By: Jonathan Chait
- Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain
- Length: 8 hrs and 58 mins
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Over the course of eight years, Barack Obama has amassed an array of outstanding achievements. His administration saved the American economy from collapse, expanded health insurance to millions who previously could not afford it, negotiated an historic nuclear deal with Iran, helped craft a groundbreaking international climate accord, reined in Wall Street, and crafted a new vision of racial progress.
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Good and balanced view of the Obama years
- By Paul on 02-01-17
By: Jonathan Chait
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Fail U.
- The False Promise of Higher Education
- By: Charles J. Sykes
- Narrated by: Michael Butler Murray
- Length: 8 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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With chapters exploring the staggering costs of a college education, the sharp decline in tenured faculty and teaching loads, the explosion of administrator jobs, the grandiose building plans (gyms, food courts, student recreation centers), and the hysteria surrounding the "epidemic" of campus rapes, "triggers", "micro-aggressions", and other forms of alleged trauma, Fail U. concludes by offering a different vision of higher education - one that is affordable, more productive, and better-suited to meet the needs of a diverse range of students.
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Very glad I listened, not enough resolution
- By James Collier on 03-01-17
By: Charles J. Sykes
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A Generation of Sociopaths
- How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America
- By: Bruce Cannon Gibney
- Narrated by: Wayne Pyle
- Length: 14 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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What happens when a society is run by people who are antisocial? Welcome to baby boomer America. In A Generation of Sociopaths, Bruce Cannon Gibney shows how America was hijacked by the boomers, a generation whose reckless self-indulgence degraded the foundations of American prosperity.
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Honest introspection required
- By Niki on 03-31-17
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The Centrist Manifesto
- By: Charles Wheelan
- Narrated by: Charles Wheelan
- Length: 3 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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From debt ceiling standoffs to single-digit Congress approval ratings, America’s political system has never been more polarized - or paralyzed - than it is today. As best-selling author and public policy expert Charles Wheelan writes, now is the time for a pragmatic Centrist party that will identify and embrace the best Democratic and Republican ideals, moving us forward on the most urgent issues for our nation.
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Must read for all rational americans
- By CM on 09-15-15
By: Charles Wheelan
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Great book to combat the Libertarians!
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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.
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What listeners say about Slaying Goliath
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- KOANSMinds
- 04-16-21
A better way forward for our students
Why disrupt/defund public schools so a few can siphon public funding while dodging taxes which families (including teachers) dutifully pay? A thoughtful analysis and critique of woefully misguided attempts to capture the public education market for personal and corporate profit at the expense of school children, teachers and people who must work for a living and pay income and social security taxes.
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- Michael M-M
- 02-14-20
Great and informative book with robotic narration
Great and informative book from a trustworthy education expert. Unfortunately this book has robotic narration that is displeasing.
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- Gloria L. Nolan
- 12-12-23
A glimpse of hope
this book gave a tremendous amount of hope and examples of triumph in a seemingly impossible situation
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- SethF
- 02-14-20
Data-backed Slap to the Face of the Privatization Movement in Education
While I seriously struggled with the narration, I think that EVERYONE, especially those with children, should read this book and learn about the dark money and shady political tactics being aimed at the nation’s schools. The American Public Schools has been strong, and will stay strong thanks to the dedicated teachers willing to stand up for ALL children in the US. Read this book!
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- Tara Hinkle
- 10-31-20
Outstanding
Every public school system needs to listen to this book for motivation to stay sustainable
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- David
- 03-21-20
Great Subject, Careful On Voicing
I absolutely live this perspective and applaud the in depth evaluation of an industry that needs to be in the hands of the people not profiteers.
I think the author has brilliantly laid out both side of this topic and has given us her important analysis of a world thar is often mired in dark money and powerful elites.
However, whether directed to or not, I felt the voicing of this book was often tainted by the narrator's glib opinion of the opposing side. I agree much of the elite point of view is worthy of dismissal, however THEY believe it is rational and won't listen to counter argument if they are being talked down to.
That said, this book is important, and I applaud the author for her work on it.
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- Amazon Customer
- 09-05-21
Great perspective, way too long
Great information from a knowledgeable author with terrific perspective. However, I really struggled to finish. I understood all the main points at the halfway mark and kept waiting on new ones. Could have been half this length.
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- Josiah
- 02-08-23
Sounds like Gladius from Porthole when sped up
Very compelling book. The narration was so robotic I thought I was listening to a machine. Slugged through it and made it work.
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- jwj
- 02-03-20
Informative but very preachy
Lots of enlightening information repeated past redundancy, and the bias was downright vitriolic. Weird combination.
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1 person found this helpful