Education Justice News

On Tuesday, a Wall Street Journal editorial gave voice to the ideological battle now underway over the future of public education in the U.S. Not surprisingly, the editorial supported “silver bullet” proposals and opposed real reform.

The Ford Foundation and many others support a positive, thoughtful program of reform designed to strengthen schools educating our most disadvantaged children and deliver the resources needed for a high quality education. With this in mind, Ford recently announced plans to fund projects in seven cities, including our Nation’s largest school districts, to push for four critical building blocks of success in education:

"Improving our schools, and giving the most vulnerable young people real educational opportunities, benefits all of us," said Ford Foundation President Luis Ubinas. "With this initiative we want to shake up the conversations surrounding school reform and help spur some truly imaginative thinking and partnerships."

Ford’s leaders are taking on the formidable challenges that many have shied away from. And unlike many proponents of quick-fix, top-down solutions, Ford believes that parents, students, teachers, and community leaders, as well as scholars and policy experts, are key players in building a movement for constructive change.

Dr. Jeannie Oakes, director of Educational Opportunity and Scholarship at Ford, said the foundation does not presume to have the answers, but believes that effective solutions are far more likely when all the stakeholders come together instead of competing to push narrow special interests.

"The four areas of reform on which Oakes and her team are focusing are widely recognized as having the potential to make a significant difference in the education of all students, particularly those who are the least well served by the current school system," noted Alison Bernstein, vice president of Ford's Education, Creativity and Free Expression program.

"The importance of each of these areas to the future success of our young people can't be overestimated," said Mr. Ubinas. "We can't expect young people from disadvantaged communities to be ready for 21st century life without giving them significantly more hours and days at school to benefit from innovative teaching and learning."

This is the hard work that can lead to stronger schools and a stronger nation.

But none of this matters to the WSJ’s editorial board, which continues its tradition of praising silver bullets as the only “real innovation,” while getting the facts wrong on education. Tuesday’s editorial plays the Pied Piper’s tune as it recommends hiring thousands of untrained teachers—good enough only for schools educating our low-income kids, of course—and recycles WSJ’s old-favorite “leading edge” idea -- vouchers. These WSJ-supported steps would lead to the edge, alright -- the edge of a cliff for schoolchildren, while sending lots of public dollars into private coffers. The newspaper continues to tout vouchers, even though they have failed to generate results year after year in Cleveland and Milwaukee.

Wrong on the facts, WSJ proclaims that “some of the worst school districts in the country spend the most money on students.” Not true. In fact, higher spending states and school districts are higher achieving states and districts. The shame of education in the U.S. is that we provide great education resources for some kids and lousy resources for others. Many states fund schools at a three-to-one ratio, with their high-wealth districts spending three times what their low-wealth districts spend, despite the higher needs of kids in low-wealth communities.

Wrong again, WSJ declares the promising but unproven KIPP charters “wildly successful” and claims many charters outperform their public school peers. Some charters are doing quite well, about 17% of them. Many more are doing no better than their peers (57%), while an unfortunate 26% are doing significantly worse than their public school peers. And, attempts to close or remake the weakest charters have proven extremely difficult.

When the Ford Foundation’s initiative to bring basic educational opportunities to urban children generates an attack drowning in misinformation from the staunchly pro-voucher, anti-public education WSJ, it means Ford must be doing it right.