Education policy is one of my key academic interests. I follow what the bloggers, moms, and academics write on this subject. I try to blog about it whenever I'm not distracted by whatever bright, shiny object shows up in my RSS feeder.

Lately, I have been bothered about the vast chasm between middle class education reform and poor people eduction reform. When we talk about urban and poor schools, the issues are administrative continuity, retaining good teachers, and scaling up good programs. For everyone else that's a given. Instead, middle class concerns are about PTA spending, testing, and math curriculum.

This isn't anything new, I suppose. I remember my old adviser made a point of ignoring everything that she considered to be middle class education reform. School governance was her thing, but the object of reform was always urban schools. I don't want to do that. Middle class families have their concerns and issues, and they should be valid, too. I just wish there was a way of joining those tracks together in some way.