Liberals

Kevin Carey at the Quick and the Ed and the Prospect's Ezra Klein seem to be talking past each other on education reform. I thought I'd try to clear things up a bit.

Here's Klein:

It would be good if we could really nail down what works in education. But my conclusion, increasingly, is that the best thing you could do for poor kids' educational prospects is increase their parents' economic prospects...Education reform is a piece of the war on poverty, but it isn't, by itself, a winning strategy.

And here's Carey:

So I'm just not sure who the other side of this debate about the all-encompassing power of education reform is supposed to be. The Prospect has published some persuasive arguments that education was over-valued during the 1990s as an economic curative by the likes of Robert Reich and many economists. But the value of education generally is distinct from the need for systemic educational improvement, particularly when some flaws in the public school system are so glaring. And it's not like Reich's overly narrow view of the needs of modern workers caused him to lead the war against the war on poverty. There are bad people in charge of that, and they've got plenty of other reasons to do so.

It seems like some progressives see the possibilities of educational improvement as a barrier to more comprehensive reforms, a mirage that distracts from the real journey. Are any other sustained, large-scale efforts to improve the lives of poor children regarded this way?

Klein's most likely referring to the innumerable conservatives who push education reform as the sole corrective to poverty and inequality and then do little about it. To conservatives, education reform is almost tantamount to picking yourself up by your bootstraps. When they bring it up, they more or less mean, "education is what you poor people need- so get off your duff and get one!"

Even centrists use education reform against liberals. To be sure, they differ from conservatives because actually do something about it. Still, they propose it as a substitute for more ambitious intervention in the economy, rather than as part of a package that could reduce poverty and inequality. Once again, liberal solutions get pushed off the table by education reform.

So while Carey knows about these "bad people," he doesn't seem to see that that's what liberals are responding to. That's probably not to his or his constituents' benefit. I wonder if more people like Carey took on bad-faith conservative arguments and denounced centrists who marginalize their allies' causes, education reform would make liberals much less jumpy.