Go Schools.Com/Courage

This is year 2 of the Public Education Network's national campaign for good public schools. Its aim is to get people talking about public schools, caring about public schools, etc. I don't know how PEN is evaluating its success, or if it can, but its efforts are a drop in a pretty dry bucket. In an effort to improve public schools, we're all pretty focused on what's not working. If you were to read a random selection of policy papers on education right now, you'd hear different voices of the same chorus: our school teachers are weak and maldistributed, school leaders are even weaker, our students are overtested or poorly tested or both, and we need more and better choices if we want our kids to be able to compete in a global economy. Much of this is true, and the fundamental inequity that some policies are trying to address is absolutely a worthwhile civil rights fight. But lest we succumb to the baby/bathwater problem, we should be reminded that public education is still one of, if not the best social service system we have. And it is without a doubt our nation's most important democratizing institution. So how useful is PEN's campaign? Not as useful as it would be if we had a real marketing strategy for our nation's public schools-old and new models alike- the way we do for other publicly-funded endeavors.

p.s. Video-gaming war wouldn't be my pick for schools. But then neither would Kanye West in all his educational glory.