We need to fix the economy to fix education
In the intensifying debate over the future of education, two camps seem to be emerging. On one side, there are people like New York University professor/former Deputy U.S. Education Secretary Diane Ravitch who argue that larger social ills such as poverty, joblessness, economic despair and lack of health coverage negatively affect educational achievement, and that until those problems are addressed, schools will never be able to produce the results we want. On the other side, there are so-called “reformers” who want to radically change (read: charterize and/or privatize) public education under the premise that the primary problems are bad/lazy teachers and “unaccountable” school administrators (to hear a debate between Ravitch and self-described “reformer” Jon Alter, listen to this podcast from my KKZN-AM760 radio show).
For her work marshaling hard facts and empirical data against corporate-backed “reformers” who rely largely on substance-free rhetoric and platitudes, Ravitch has been named this year’s winner of the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Prize — so clearly, she’s holding her own, even as U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is launching a desperate PR campaign to make her Public Enemy #1. But just in case she needed any help making her argument about poverty and education, the National Bureau of Economic Research has published a new report further supporting her position.
(Source: azspot)
