Scenes from the Loudoun county, Virginia, school board meetings riveted Americans during 2021. A girl had been raped in a school bathroom by a boy dressed as a girl. For fear of running afoul of transgender ideologues, the district covered up the crime. Soon after her father was arrested for complaining bitterly at a school board meeting, the National Association of School Boards asked the U.S. Department of Justice to treat complaining parents as domestic terror threats. An early draft of the Association’s letter called on the federal government to deploy the National Guard and military police to restrain parents at school board meetings.
Luke Rosiak’s Race to the Bottom shows that such episodes are produced by an educational system that has abandoned excellence for ideology. The proximate causes of the equity agenda include zealots in the ranks of teachers, principals, and board members. But, Rosiak shows, the ultimate cause is a system funded from top to bottom by social justice crusaders determined to transform the public schools in order to transform the country.
An investigative reporter for the Daily Wire who broke stories putting a national spotlight on Loudoun County public schools, Rosiak reveals “the secret forces destroying American public education,” as his subtitle promises. The book also shows how the Left “marches through”—captures and controls—powerful governing institutions. Once you see this process in detail here, you will see it everywhere.