Education reform, like highway. Man walk left side of street, okay. Man walk right side of street, okay. Man walk middle of street . . . chhhhhheeerrrrrriiiik! Just like grape.
(Guest post by Greg Forster)
A think tank called Third Way has a new report out, titled “Incomplete,” on the mediocrity of middle class schools. And with a name like Third Way, you know it has to be good!
On the surface, the point of the report is to emphasize that we don’t just have an education crisis in “the inner city” (i.e. in somebody eles’s neighborhood); we have an education crisis in “middle class” schools.
And that’s true! Part of me wants to be positive about this report and say, “okay, people are starting to get that this isn’t just about the 10% of kids in the worst schools.” After all, we’ve always said around here that we won’t get the education reforms we need until white suburbanites see how inadequate their own schools are.
But this report frames everything all wrong. Here are the three “key findings” they list:
- Most students are taught in middle class schools (duh)
- Middle class schools spend the least per pupil, pay teachers the least, and have the highest enrollment to teacher ratios.
- Middle class students are underachieving in test scores and college graduation rates.
The report offers no action items and no conclusions of substance beyond “a second phase of education reform focused on middle-class schools can’t begin soon enough.”
Right! Because the assumption that we don’t need to think about the policy specifics since everything is about mo’ money, mo’ money, mo’ money worked so well in the first phase of education reform!
Normally I wouln’t bother highlighting yet another blob mouthpiece hawking the mo-money line, but I wonder if this is going to be a new trend. A focus on the black/white, urban/suburban achievement gap doesn’t translate to mo-money for them any more, because they’ve gotten mo-money for that for decades and have squat to show for it. Is the mo-money line going to start migrating to other issues now?
Perhpas they’ve discovered a perpetual motion machine. You spend decades complaining that we need to increase spending in the inner city because we spend less there than in the suburbs, then once you can’t say we spend less in the inner city any more, you start saying we need to increase spending in the suburbs – because, of course, we spend less there than in the inner city! Rinse and repeat in perpetuity.
Jay P. Greene's Blog 
I would love to read your thoughts on:
International Test Scores, Irrelevant Policies Misleading rhetoric overlooks poverty’s impact By Iris C. Rotberg
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2011/09/14/03rotberg_ep.h31.html?tkn=SPLF316qRWUJqZeUhttfJI3d79Vf6t6%2FAgYk&cmp=clp-edweek
Love your blog!