A DePaul University professor’s book critical of recent privatization efforts in public schools has won the American Educational Studies Association (AESA) Critics Choice Award for 2008.

Associate Professor of Education Kenneth Saltman’s book, “Capitalizing on Disaster: Taking and Breaking Public Schools” (Paradigm Publishers 2007), examines how privatization policies such as the federal No Child Left Behind Act are designed to deregulate and privatize public schools, favoring businesses while undermining public oversight, community involvement and critical approaches to teaching and learning. The book examines current policies in New Orleans, Chicago and Iraq and shows how the struggle for public schooling is essential to the struggle for a truly democratic society.

“The book illustrates a pattern of educational policies targeting public schools for closure or privatization using natural and unnatural disasters to achieve what could otherwise not be done through political means,” Saltman said. “It is my hope that education advocates will use this research to take a closer, more critical look at how privatization policies are undermining teaching and learning as rigorous, professional and intellectual endeavors.

“The hope is for revitalizing the commitment to strengthening public schools, not just in terms of a commitment to a more equal financial investment, but also to understanding the role that public schools play in making citizens capable of self-governance and just social transformation,” Saltman said.

Saltman is an associate professor of educational policy and research in DePaul’s School of Education. He also is a fellow of the Education in the Public Interest Center at University of Colorado at Boulder. His recent Fulbright Scholarship and DePaul’s University Research Council supported his work on the book.

In addition to the privatization of public schools, his research interests include school commercialism, globalization and education, charter schools, military involvement in the schools, cultural studies, sociology of education, middle school education and the philosophy of sports. His previously authored books include “The Edison Schools: Corporate Schooling and the Assault on Public Education” (Routledge 2005); “Strange Love, Or How We Learn to Stop Worrying and Love the Market” (Rowman & Littlefield 2002); and “Collateral Damage: Corporatizing Public Schools – a Threat to Democracy” (Rowman & Littlefield 2000). He is currently working on a book on recent changes in educational philanthropies and their growing influence on educational policy.

Every year, the AESA Critics Choice Awards Selection Committee chooses a number of new and recent books that address the foundations of education or related fields that it considers worthy of particular merit and notice. Criteria for selection include relevance to the foundations of education and the mission of AESA, originality and research, scholarly/intellectual impact on the field, and the significance of the topic.

Established in 1968, the AESA is an international society for students, teachers, research scholars and administrators interested in examining issues in education from numerous academic viewpoints and perspectives.