As weve been saying . . . Politicians, reformers and pundits think we have a great nation with lousy schools. What we have are the same schools we always had, with a desperately deteriorated national community. . . . I may not know the motivations of reformers, but I know this: The condition of education in America is the result of poverty, racism, re-segregation of communities, inequitable and insufficient funding of schools, loss of stable supports for families and rotting infrastructure. And these things are due, in part, to the political and economic philosophy and policies of those who now claim to aim to fix education. Just as my high school and its teachers did not deserve credit for the conspicuous success of its students, todays schools and teachers do not deserve blame for the problems that plague education. If the influential people who are driving so-called educational reform used their significant resources to build vital communities across the country through full employment, living wages, investment in infrastructure and progressive social policy, education would take care of itself. Raising the minimum wage to a living wage would do more to fix education than the aggregate effect of every single piece of education reform. But you wont find the Walton family supporting that kind of change. Attacking teacher unions and tenure, high stakes testing, NCLB, Race to the Top, Common Core, charter schools... all these things are just fiddling around while civil society burns. huffingtonpost/steve-nelson/fiddling-with-schools-whi_b_5652255.html?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000020
Posted on: Sun, 10 Aug 2014 23:07:38 +0000
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