Summary
That's a hefty sum -- by comparison, the Education Department's entire discretionary budget for the year was $59 billion -- and it will save America's schools from the catastrophe that they were facing. A University of Washington study had calculated that the recession would lead to cuts of 574,000 school jobs without a stimulus. "We dodged a bullet the size of a freight train," notes Amy Wilkins of the Education Trust, an advocacy group in Washington.
Education Secretary Arne Duncan describes the stimulus as a "staggering opportunity," the kind that comes once in a lifetime. He argues: "We have to educate our way to a better economy, that's the only way long term to get there."That's exactly right, and it's partly why I shifted my views of the relative importance of education and health. One of last year's smartest books was "The Race Between Education and Technology," by Claudia Goldin and Lawrence F. Katz. They offer a wealth of evidence to argue that America became the world's leading nation largely because of its emphasis on mass education at a time when other countries educated only elites (often, only male elites).The implication is that throwing money at a broken system won't fix it, but that resources are necessary as part of a package that involves scrapping certification, measuring better through testing which teachers are effective, and then paying them significantly more -- with special bonuses to those who teach in "bad" schools.See the full content of this document
Extract
Our Greatest National Shame
So maybe I was wrong. I used to consider health care our greatest national shame, considering that we spend twice as much on medical care as many European nations, yet American children are twice as likely to die before the age of 5 as Czech ch...
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