Both parties in recent decades have bought into the idea that letting private business needs dictate the direction of public schools will help education. According to Noliwe Rooks, director of American Studies at Cornell University, de facto segregation in public schools is today worse than it was for much of the 20th century. The 1954 Supreme Court Brown vs Board of Education decision ended legal segregation but American creativity has found many ways to get around that ruling and the need for integration. Her new book is “Cutting School: Privatization, Segregation, and the End of Public Education.”