Because blond-haired, blue-eyed, white males might lose out on a job to a Finnish dude. So says Ed in '08, the Bill Gates and Eli Broad-funded drive to make education a top priority in the presidential election, with a particular focus on how math and science education could bolster the economy. Here is the group's new commercial:
It should be crystal clear to most thinking people that the American children most in need of school reform aren't white kids standing on docks (like the boy in this commercial), but rather the rural and inner-city children whose schools have the fewest resources and who tend to be taught by the least qualified teachers. Putting that obvious point aside, does it make much sense to link school reform to the broader success of the American economy, as opposed to the abilities of individuals to get better-paying jobs and climb the socioeconomic ladder? Consider Larry Mishel and Richard Rothstein's "Schools as Scapegoats," an essay from last October's Prospect print edition. They demonstrate that past periods of strong American economic growth (such as the Internet boom of the 1990s) were largely divorced from changes in the skill-level of the workforce, writing:
Rising workforce skills can indeed make American firms more competitive. But better skills, while essential, are not the only source of productivity growth. The honesty of our capital markets, the accountability of our corporations, our fiscal-policy and currency management, our national investment in R&D and infrastructure, and the fair-play of the trading system (or its absence), also influence whether the U.S. economy reaps the gains of Americans' diligence and ingenuity. The singular obsession with schools deflects political attention from policy failures in those other realms.
But while adequate skills are an essential component of productivity growth, workforce skills cannot determine how the wealth created by national productivity is distributed.
That doesn't mean there isn't a moral imperative to fix public education now. Every day in a failing school is a day a child can't live up to his or her potential. But above all else, school reform should be about enriching kids -- not enriching our financial markets.
--Dana Goldstein
