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...what makes us a society is a set of mutual benefits and duties embodied most clearly in public institutions - public schools, public libraries, public transportation, public hospitals, public parks, public museums, public recreation, public universities, and so on.  Public institutions are supported by all of us as taxpayers, and they are available to all. If the tax system is progressive, those of us who better off (and who, presumably, have benefitted from many of these same public institutions) help pay for everyone else.  "Privatiize" means pay-for-it-yourself. In an economy whose wealth and income are more concentrated than any time in 90 years, the practical consequences is availability to fewer and fewer. The story of our time is a decline of the public good. 

Any way you do the math, Teach For America raises a lot of money. And, this, in turn, raises a lot of questions. Corps members, their families, public agencies and others wonder, "Where does the money go?" It came as no surprise to me that more voices expressed concern about Teach For America's transparency in financial matters. These concerns persist across cohorts of corps members, and particularly in a tough economy, TFA interns suggest a hidden agenda that impacts financially struggling corps members and their families.

The Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst recently released a report detailing the number of jobs created based on investments in both domestic programs and the military. Contrary to the beliefs of many, investments in consumer tax cuts, clean energy, health care, and education all result in more jobs than military spending. According to the study, investments in education are the clear cut winners in job creation with approximately 26,700 jobs created per billion dollars spent. As a contrast, military spending only creates 11,200 jobs per billion spent.

"Can America Make It?" is the headline on the cover of the December issue of The American Prospect. The lead article is written by an old friend, Harold Meyerson, who argues that, "with the right trade and industrial policies," we can be a nation with a strong middle-class majority. It's a fascinating piece and makes me think that the debates we're having about school reform have so distracted us that we forget that a good education system depends on a strong society. There's no point in scaring 5-year-olds into thinking if you don't work hard, you won't get a good job-when in fact virtually no one (well-educated or not) is going to have a good job in the future. Except the 1 percent-or maybe it's 5 to 10 percent? Meyerson's vision is not going to be realized through reforming our schools, although they have a role to play. But it depends on whether we think having such an America is what we want to do-for all sorts of reasons. So our own grandchildren will earn decent livings, for example. So that we can sustain democracy, which in turn rests on a certain level of economic wellbeing and security.

At the risk of bloggy immolation, I'm going to jump into the boiling water of ongoing debates over President Obama's few words on higher education in the 2012 State of the Union Address, wherein he said nothing of Pell Grant awards and yet talked about constructing new policies to make it easier to afford college, especially ones attempting to give institutions incentives to slow down tuition hikes. While I define neoliberalism here in fairly bold strokes, focusing on market rhetoric, public disinvestment, and inconsistencies between rhetoric and reality, this is a tentative judgment for someone who is not an intellectual historian. I am well aware that many terms of political economy are fuzzy or malleable, and my understanding of neoliberalism as a post-WW2 construct is tentative. Yet the term has some core uses in understanding how people talk about and use talk about markets.

The teaching profession is crucial to America's society and economy, but public-school teachers should receive compensation that is neither higher nor lower than market rates. Do teachers currently receive the proper level of compensation? Standard analytical approaches to this question compare teacher salaries to the salaries of similarly educated and experienced private-sector workers, and then add the value of employer contributions toward fringe benefits. These simple comparisons would indicate that public-school teachers are undercompensated. However, comparing teachers to non-teachers presents special challenges not accounted for in the existing literature.

"It's widely agreed that American education is in trouble.  What is missed in both the response to the crisis and the cacophony of reform efforts is a true understanding of the nature of the problem. In the early days of public schooling, Horace Mann called the schools the balance wheel of society. It was thought that schools served as a corrective for all kinds of problems ranging from skill gaps that needed to be remedied for the economy to flourish to culture gaps that were created by immigrants that needed to be Americanized. The school never worked in quite that way, but it was part of a web of social institutions that helped build a framework that allowed America to grow both in prosperity and in diversity. We face a lot of social and economic problems; we expect the schools to solve them. When they don't, we think it's a school failure. Instead, the schools are in fact a signal of a breakdown. Nowadays, the balance wheel is not working so well; it would be more accurate to think of public schools as the canary in the mine."

"A few days ago, CNN interviewed former D.C. schools chancellor Michelle Rhee about American education. Rhee, predictably, said that American education is terrible, that test scores are flat, and that we are way behind other nations on international tests. I disagree with Rhee. She constantly bashes American education, which is one of the pillars of our democratic society. Our public schools educate 90% of the population, and we should give the public schools some of the credit for our nation's accomplishments as the largest economy and the greatest engine of technological innovation in the world. It's time to set the record straight."

Judging by the applause lines at GOP campaign stops and debates this winter, a significant segment of the Republican electorate understands public education not as a crucial civic institution, nor as a potential path from poverty to the middle class, nor even as a means of individual betterment. Instead, this coalition of religious conservatives and extreme tax-cutters prefers to vilify public schools-and actually, pretty much any traditional educational institution, including liberal arts colleges-as potential corruptors of the nation's youth; as unwanted interlocutors in that most sacred relationship: the one between a child and her parent. It is a curious thing, because with some 90 percent of American children enrolled in public schools, there must be significant overlap between the consumers of public education and the approximately one-third of Americans who describe themselves as Tea Party-type conservatives. Never mind: It is clear that in the American political economy, there is nothing unusual about a voter hating and resenting a government program even while relying heavily upon it.

It is rare that a pundit (and ardent reformer) lays out clearly and crisply the core assumption driving the past thirty years of school reform. It is not only rare but startling when that insider then questions the assumption, suggesting that it is a hunch, not a fact.

The slump in the economy, coupled with the acrimonious discourse over how much weight test results and seniority should be given in determining a teacher's worth, have conspired to bring morale among the nation's teachers to its lowest point in more than 20 years, according to a survey of teachers, parents and students released on Wednesday.

Over the past two years of gut-punching, teacher job satisfaction has fallen from 59 percent to 44 percent. That's according to the annual ­ MetLife Survey of the American Teacher. While this 15-point plummet is no doubt caused in part by the bad economy and budget cutting, it's also hard to overlook things like Waiting for Superman , the media deification of Michelle Rhee, and the publishing of flawed "scores" that purport to evaluate teachers based on students' test results - an offense first committed by the Los Angeles Times and now taken up by the New York Times and other New York papers. Teachers knew these evaluations were unreliable and invalid even before researchers documented those problems.

A strong majority of California voters is willing to pay higher taxes to boost funding for public schools even in a grim economy, a new poll has found.

In today's knowledge‐based economy, education-especially education beyond high school-is central to achieving the American Dream. Yet, recent research points to devastating statistics related to educational outcomes in the nation's communities of color.  For example, only 54 percent of Native American students will graduate high school on‐time. Half of today's African American and Latino eighth‐graders will drop out of high school before graduation. And, only 10 percent of African‐American and Latino eighth grade students will complete any sort of college degree. While Asian American student outcomes are seemingly high compared to other students of color, this is not true for all Asian groups. Within the Southeast Asian community, 34 percent of Laotian, 39 percent of Cambodian, and 40 percent of Hmong adults do not have a high school diploma or equivalent.

In the Republican Party, presidential debates candidates like Mitt Romney and Herman Cain tout their business executive experience and claim expertise at job creation. Former Governors Rick Perry and Jon Huntsman promote their management experience as the CEO of state governments. Whatever you may think of their proposals for stimulating the economy and ending unemployment, there is no question that these candidates believe, and they believe their audience believes, that knowledge and experience are important leadership qualities. However, when it comes to educational leadership, it seems that knowledge and experience do not count for very much, certainly not to the Obama-Duncan team, the Cuomo-King-Tisch team that establishes educational policy in New York State, or the Bloomberg-Walcott team that runs the schools in New York City.

Put three rockstars of the education world in a room together and you get this fantastic panel from last week's Netroots Nation on the future of public education, the importance of community organizing and the path towards systemic education reform to provide every child with a fair and substantive opportunity to learn.  The panelists were education historian Diane Ravicth, John H. Jackson, President & CEO of the Schott Foundation for Public Education, and Ken Bernstein, a long-time teacher and education advocate. All three had harsh words for policymakers pedaling ineffective or untested policies as viable reform strategies. "We don't have an innovation challenge, we have an implementation challenge," Jackson said. We know what policies work. Countless studies have shown the importance of early childhood education, access to healthcare and guidance counselors, and support for teachers. But the practical, systemic solutions that come out of that body of research are ignored in favor of a political agenda that seeks to privatize and dismantle a public institution that is vital to our nation's economy and democratic well-being.

"The current debate regarding interpretation of recently released results of the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) implies that we need to choose between two interpretations: 1. The educational sky isn't falling. Although US students have never done well on international tests, as a nation we have made remarkable economic progress and remain the strongest most innovative economy; or 2. PISA results should be a wake up call. PISA assesses important 21st century skills. Our students' abilities remain stagnant while other countries are racing ahead. Could these both be valid claims?"

"The United States' education system is neither coherent nor likely to see great improvements based on its current attempts at reform, a report released this week by the National Center on Education and the Economy concludes. "

"This paper is the answer to a question: What would the education policies and practices of the United States be if they were based on the policies and practices of the countries that now lead the world in student performance? It is adapted from the last two chapters of a book to be published in September 2011 by Harvard Education Press. Other chapters in that book describe the specific strategies pursued by Canada (focusing on Ontario), China (focusing on Shanghai), Finland, Japan and Singapore, all of which are far ahead of the United States. The research on these countries was performed by a team assembled by the National Center on Education and the Economy, at the request of the OECD."

"A conservative billionaire who opposes government meddling in business has bought a rare commodity: the right to interfere in faculty hiring at a publicly funded university. A foundation bankrolled by Libertarian businessman Charles G. Koch has pledged $1.5 million for positions in Florida State University's economics department. In return, his representatives get to screen and sign off on any hires for a new program promoting "political economy and free enterprise.""