The truth is, what’s behind the Washington Consensus on schools is the agreed-upon decision to avoid doing anything about poverty.
Our national neglect of poverty is made more apparent in the argument about public schools than it is in any other policy discussion – even healthcare – because schools are where the private impact of poverty on families’ lives is finally and most definitively made public. Think about that for a moment: how the brutality of a childhood where healthy food is in short supply, books are unheard of, and homelife is filled with constant parental anxiety about making ends meet is suddenly exposed to the world in the glares of a teacher and a room full of strange of kids.
Go read the rest.
