Stay Positive: Public Schools

"The War on Public Schools" by Erika Christakis in The Atlantic is worth a read. It's written by someone who gets it. 

For me, here are some important passages:

• Few people care more individual students than public-school teachers do, but what's really missing in this dystopian narrative is a hearty helping of reality: 21st-century public schools, with their record numbers of graduates and expanded missions, are nothing close to the cesspools portrayed by political hyperbole. 
• Not only is the idea that American test scores were once higher a fiction, but in some cases have actually improved over time, especially among African American students. Since the early 1970s, when the Department of Education began collecting long-term data, average reading and math scores of 9- and 13-year-olds have risen significantly.
• ... [S]chool districts with strong unions actually do a better job of weeding out bad teachers and retaining good ones than do those with weak unions. This makes sense. If you to pay more for something, you are likely to care about its quality; when districts pay higher wages, they have more incentive to employ good teachers (and dispense with bad ones). 
• Oddly, the idea of addressing our supply-and-demand problem the old-fashioned American way, with a market-based approach, has been largely unappealing to otherwise free-market thinkers. 
• We ignore public schools' civic and integrative functions at our peril.