Occupy Your School District

~ Laura

Want to really make a dent in economic inequality in this country? Then, target the public school system.

Andrew Rotherham writes, 

In any event, here’s my humble suggestion to all the protesters who are getting kicked out of Zuccotti Park and other places across the country: take your posters and your outrage and go occupy the central office of your local school districts and its teachers’ union headquarters. Then demand the kind of radical change we need to create a school system that lives up to our values rather than mocking them. Our schools are a more sympathetic target than corporate CEOs, but for many Americans they are a larger cause of economic injustice.

Published by Laura

7 thoughts on “Occupy Your School District”

  1. “But here’s the income-based gap: just 8% of low-income students get a college-degree by the time they are 24 while three-quarters of affluent students do. This has little to do with corporations, hedge funds or any of the other villains du jour.”
    School districts have very little power in setting the school reform agenda. That agenda has been set by a few extremely wealthy individuals and their foundations so, yeah, this does have a lot to do with the typical villians du jour.
    I am so sick of people acting like we just don’t know what leads to bad educational outcomes when there’s a well-established line of research on this topic that goes back decades. Family factors like poverty account for about 60% of outcomes, teachers (the most important in-school factor) account for about 10-15%, with the rest being a combination of in- and out-of school factors. So, yes, poverty is by far the biggest factor in determining educational outcomes.
    I can understand a line of reasoning that suggests that poverty is such a difficult factor to address that we should focus on other factors where’s it’s easier to make an impact but please let’s not pretend that we don’t know what is by far the dominant influence on the outcomes of children.

    Like

  2. I find it laughable that anyone would refer to the Occupy protestors as “they” and then offer “them” suggestions as to how to proceed. If Rotherham thinks there’s a problem, then *he* should go occupy a school district. He should go down to the Occupy sites and try to win over converts to his suggestions for “direct action”. He should include himself in those agitating for change, because “we” is more powerful than “they.”

    Like

  5. what scantee said.. the problem with schools is mostly a poverty problem, and OWS is trying to fix that. The schools don’t need fixing.
    Also, you can’t solve a demand problem from the supply side.. even supposing there was a magic to ‘fix’ the schools, all we’d get from that is well-educated poor people, not any diminution of inequality or poverty; because money and corporations would still have the power and the politicians, would still be cutting jobs and costs (salaries, to you and me) wherever they can get away with it, would still be using armored riot police against peaceful assemblies.

    Like

  6. So here’s my prediction of what’s going to happen in the next few months: the US will succeed in getting the IAEA to vote to report Iran to the UNSC again. This is simply because the IAEA acts by consensus not votes, and it will provide the necessary pressure to do this. There may be time delay imposed – for example the IAEA board will give Iran a certain time to “abide” by its “obligations” (which are made-up and don’t actually exist) before deciding to send the matter to the UNSC – but in the end the effect is the same.

    Like

Comments are closed.