Saturday, August 13, 2011

Can Teachers Alone Overcome Poverty?

Dana Goldstein recently wrote an article for The Nation entitled "Can Teachers Alone Overcome Poverty? Steven Brill Thinks So" that discusses Brill's coverage of education issues in America. The article summarizes some of his past work and provides analysis of his recent book entitled Class Warfare. Here is an excerpt from the article:

"One of Class Warfare’s stars, a charter school assistant principal named Jessica Reid, unexpectedly quits her job at Eva Moskowitz’s Harlem Success Academy in the middle of the school year; the charter chain’s rigorous demands pushed the 28-year-old Reid, a dedicated and charismatic educator, to the brink of a nervous breakdown and divorce. “This wasn’t a sustainable life, in terms of my health and my marriage,” she tells Brill, who concludes that he agrees (at least in part) with education historian and charter school critic Diane Ravitch. You can’t staff a national public school system of 3.2 million teachers, Ravitch tells Brill, with Ivy Leaguers willing to run themselves ragged for two years. Most of these folks won’t move on to jobs at traditional public schools, as the uncommonly committed Jessica Reid did, but will simply leave the classroom altogether and head to politics, business or law, where they’ll be paid more to do prestigious work, often with shorter, less pressure-filled hours."

Continue Reading:
"Can Teachers Alone Overcome Poverty? Steven Brill Thinks So"