Punished for Dreaming: How School Reform Harms Black Children and How We Heal

NOW A NEW YORK TIMES AND A USA TODAY BESTSELLER

WINNER, 2024 GODDARD RIVERSIDE STEPHAN RUSSO BOOK PRIZE FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE

FINALIST, LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE

"I am an eighties baby who grew to hate school. I never fully understood why. Until now. Until Bettina Love unapologetically and painstakingly chronicled the last forty years of education 'reform' in this landmark book. I hated school because it warred on me. I hated school because I loved to dream."
--Ibram X. Kendi, New York Times bestselling author of How to be an Antiracist

In the tradition of Michelle Alexander, an unflinching reckoning with the impact of 40 years of racist public school policy on generations of Black lives

In Punished for Dreaming, Dr. Bettina Love argues that Reagan's presidency ushered in a War on Black Children. New policies punished schools with policing, closure, and loss of funding in the name of reform, as white-savior egalitarian efforts increasingly allowed private interests to infiltrate the system. These changes implicated children of color, and Black children in particular, as low performing, making it all too easy to turn a blind eye to their disproportionate conviction and incarceration. This book examines how decades of racist education policies have paved the way for the current structural overhaul of American schools. In this prequel to Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow, Dr. Love serves up a blistering account of four decades of educational reform through the lens of the people who lived it. Then with input from leading U.S. economists, Dr. Love offers a road map for repair, arguing for reparations with transformation for all children at its core.

Author: Bettina L. Love
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Published: 07/22/2025
Pages: 352
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.00lbs
Size: 8.25h x 5.38w x 1.00d
ISBN: 9781250383082

About the Author
Dr. Bettina L. Love is the William F. Russell Professor at Teachers College, Columbia University, and the acclaimed author of We Want to Do More Than Survive and Punished for Dreaming, a New York Times bestseller. This groundbreaking work led to her being awarded the prestigious Stowe Prize for Literary Activism and being named a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize. In 2022, the Kennedy Center named her one of the world's Next 50 Leaders. She is a co-founder of the Abolitionist Teaching Network and a sought-after public speaker on topics such as abolitionist teaching, educational reparations, and anti-racism. Her writings have appeared in various news outlets, including The Daily Beast, Time, Education Week, The Guardian, and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Additionally, she was instrumental in founding the Task Force behind the groundbreaking "In Her Hands" program, which is disbursing more than $13 million to support Black women in Georgia. She was granted a resolution by Georgia's House of Representatives for her impact on education in 2018.