They Came for the Schools

Winner of the 2025 Helen Bernstein Book Award and the 2023 Lukas Works-In-Progress Award“From the front lines of America’s culture wars, Mike Hixenbaugh delivers a clear-eyed, intensely reported lesson about the underhanded efforts to privatize what was once our finest and most democratic institution—our schools. As propulsive as it is important and teeming with narrative surprise, They Came for the Schools harkens to the great J. Anthony Lukas’s Common Ground.” — Beth Macy, author of Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America“Propulsive… This razor-sharp book is the masterful culmination of years of reportage… a work of compassion, one that never fails to center the vulnerability or the dignity of students.” — Washington Post“This book is not only a gripping, up-close story of one Texas town’s descent into political madness, it’s also the larger tale of how powerful moneyed interests are stoking our divisions and turning classrooms into battlegrounds.” — Paul Tough, author, The Inequality Machine: How Colleges Divide Us”One of the most important battles raging across our country is what our children are taught about our history. With penetrating reporting, research, and crisp writing, Mike Hixenbaugh delivers a must-read dispatch from the front lines of a war over not just the complexities of our past, but the future of our multiracial democracy.” — Wesley Lowery, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of American Whitelash: A Changing Nation and the Cost of Progres”A long overdue investigation of powerful forces battling behind the scenes to control what our children are taught about the American story. Hixenbaugh reveals a coordinated and growing attack on educators who want their classrooms to be places where all children can thrive, think freely, and learn a full accounting of who we are as a nation.” — Soledad O’Brien, host, Matter of Fact with Soledad O’Brien “In They Came for the Schools, Mike Hixenbaugh has produced an absorbing if deeply unsettling account of how our public schools have become the nation’s foremost cultural war zones. Hixenbaugh’s even-handed tale of a seemingly idyllic Texas suburban high school’s descent into hysteria is a parable of polarization on steroids, made all the more poignant for the children who are caught in the political crossfire.”  — Robert Draper, author, Weapons of Mass Delusion: When the Republican Party Lost Its Mind“An extraordinarily detailed analysis of current conservative thought and political activity. It’s a vital work of reporting.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review)“Detailed and sharp-edged… A timely case study from a war of ideas being waged, ever more intensely, across the nation.” — Kirkus Reviews“This is a frightening but all too real piece of reporting, and belongs in every library.” — Booklist“Written by award-winning investigative reporter Mike Hixenbaugh, They Came for the Schools tells the eye-opening story of well-funded conservative backlash against a school board in Southlake, Texas. This book pulls back the curtain on the powerful forces driving the present-day crusade on book bans, curricula, and rights for minority and LGBTQ+ students.” — Ash Center, Harvard Kennedy School, Antiracism Summer Reading List

Mike Hixenbaugh, senior investigative reporter for NBC News, has been named a Pulitzer Prize finalist and won a Peabody Award for his reporting on the battle over race, gender, and sexuality in American classrooms. They Came for the Schools, his first book, is the winner of the prestigious Lukas Work-in-Progress Award. Hixenbaugh’s work at newspapers in Ohio, North Carolina, Virginia, and Texas has uncovered deadly failures in the U.S. military, abuses in the child welfare system, and safety lapses at major hospitals. He lives in Maryland with his wife and four children.