The Talking Heads of School Reform

This article lays out some of the major problems of the education reform "debates" that have been going on in this country: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/10/weekinreview/10reform.html

As is often the case with morally charged policy issues — remember welfare reform? — false dichotomies seem to have replaced fruitful conversation. If you support the teachers’ union, you don’t care about the students. If you are critical of the teachers’ union, you don’t care about the teachers. If you are in favor of charter schools, you are opposed to public schools. If you believe in increased testing, you are on board with the corruption of our liberal society’s most cherished educational values. If you are against increased testing, you are against accountability. It goes on. Neither side seems capable of listening to the other.

The above quote illustrates a problem that, while certainly prevalent in all forms of political discourse today, is especially disheartening when dealing with an issues as important as education. Any real discussion is drowned out by the entrenched partisan interests that seem to do nothing but talk past each other about little details, while completely missing the heart of the issue. The worst of it is that (charitably, perhaps) these are well-meaning people with genuine concern for our education system, who are simply woefully ignorant of the big picture, clinging madly to details like standardized tests or charter schools, trying to find a panacea for our ailing school system without seeming to realize that meaningful reform will require much more than this or that fix.

The issue is much bigger than just looking at schools. Our schools mirror our society. If we want to fix failing schools, we cannot do it by simply trying to institute more standardized tests or replacing public schools with charter schools. We need to fix the inequalities in the economic and political system that lead to the issues we face in schools. When there are no jobs, when crime is the only way to make a living, when children go to sleep hungry because their parents can't afford food (and 15 million children in this nation live in poverty), it's absurd to think that a standardized test is going to help their education. They need stability at home to succeed in school and beyond, and to achieve this, we need to bolster our social welfare programs, and reorganize our economy to bring decent jobs so our struggling families can make ends meet.

To end with a question: Schools are undoubtedly vital institutions for the perpetuation of our society. Given that, can meaningful school reform be successfully enacted absent reforms to the surrounding political and economic systems?