Charlie Pierce catches the main problem with education reform:
Rebecca Strauss checks in at The New York Times and immediately tries to make Michelle Rhee cry.
The truth is that there are two very different education stories in America. The children of the wealthiest 10 percent or so do receive some of the best education in the world, and the quality keeps getting better. For most everyone else, this is not the case. America’s average standing in global education rankings has tumbled not because everyone is falling, but because of the country’s deep, still-widening achievement gap between socioeconomic groups. And while America does spend plenty on education, it funnels a disproportionate share into educating wealthier students, worsening that gap. The majority of other advanced countries do things differently, at least at the K-12 level, tilting resources in favor of poorer students.
I thought it was about teachers unions, and standardized testing, and Trigger Mechanisms, and not leaving any children behind in the race to the top, or some other gimmick thought up by a zillionnaire who’s no more ever set foot in a classroom than he has on the surface of Mars. You mean, it might be about...poverty? Do continue.
The problem is that the United States is not spending its education dollars effectively. At every point along the education track, from preschool to college, resources are skewed to wealthier students.
As is our society, at least where the rich can affect basic policies.
Trouble is everyone knows what the problem is with education, with health care, with . . . you name it. America stopped being a democracy and became the worlds leading oligarchy. Eat the Rich.
I saw a story just the other day touting some new ‘trade agreement’ that would “add $100 billion” to the American economy. Problem is, just like the several years, $120 billion will go to the top 1/10th of 1 percent, while everyone else loses even more.
Obama and Cameron are touting a new Atlantic Trade Partnership, some way of giving the big corporations rule over all the laws of the individual nations probably. As they’re trying to accomplish with the Trans-Pacific Partnership treaty.
I imagine Monstanto wants to get around the EU laws about genetic engineering of food crops and our companies and Big Ag want to force the Europeans to eat high fructose corn syrup.
NPR reported on it by mentioning that it would allow things to be sold which now can’t be exported. HUH??? The only things I know of which we can’t get from Europe are cheaper pharmaceutical drugs and raw milk cheeses!
This has to be another gift to the oligarchic corporatists.