"An essential addition to any library’s collection, particularly those focusing on education policy or social justice. Its relevance extends beyond New Hampshire, addressing issues that affect schools across the United States, and is valuable to educators, students, activists, and general readers interested in understanding educational inequality." —Library Journal
During this time of attacks on public education, teacher layoffs and funding crises, it's crucial to understand why some schools struggle for lack of resources while others flourish. Why is education funding in America so embattled and so unequal?
In
The Last Bake Sale
, Andru Volinsky tells this story as no one else can, using New Hampshire as the example of the most unfair and regressive state in the nation in terms of how it funds its schools. In New Hampshire, taxpayers in the state's poorest communities pay the highest education taxes yet raise the lowest revenues for their kids’ schools.
As the lead lawyer in the Claremont, New Hampshire, school funding case, Volinsky waged a twenty—year battle to make access to education fairer for all children in the state, not just the wealthy, white, and privileged. Volinsky offers not just a history of how we got here at the state and national level, but also how to find a better path forward.
Combining litigation with public engagement and direct political action (including holding office) is our best hope to change public policy on education and advance the public good. Change can happen, and
shows us how.