Choices

Ezra Klein writes about the new, disappointing Reading First results, and concludes:

It would be good if we could really nail down what works in education. But my conclusion, increasingly, is that the best thing you could do for poor kids' educational prospects is increase their parents' economic prospects. That's not to say either exists in a vacuum, but nor does it look likely that we're going to find educational approaches powerful enough to counterbalance the pull of parents, community, peers, playground, etc, etc, etc. Education reform is a piece of the war on poverty, but it isn't, by itself, a winning strategy.

Elsewhere in the post Ezra describes this blog as "brilliant" so he's clearly a smart man of discerning intellectual taste. And there's nothing factually incorrect about this statement (except maybe "playground." What? Is that the monkeybars theory of educational inequality?) 

But nothing is, "by itself," a winning strategy in the war on poverty, right? To take a non-random example, the same is true of universal health care. So the fact that education won't solve all of our ills doesn't really say much about the value of education reform per se. 

Moving a child out of poverty might be better for them in the long run than improving their school. But it's also a much more expensive and inherently difficult long-run proposition. Tackling entrenched poverty in economically depressed areas, creating new jobs, repairing neglected infrastructures, families, and social institutions--these are huge undertakings. Newer, better schools, by contrast, can be established in a few years. We know this because people are in fact building such schools, today. That doesn't mean we shouldn't tackle poverty, any more than saying we can build better health clinics or more affordable housing would mean that. Moreover, you could really help disadvantaged students by moving them out of poverty and giving them a better school. If poverty itself can be beaten, than surely education reform can happen too. 

So I'm just not sure who the other side of this debate about the all-encompassing power of education reform is supposed to be. The Prospect has published some persuasive arguments that education was over-valued during the 1990s as an economic curative by the likes of Robert Reich and many economists. But the value of education generally is distinct from the need for systemic educational improvement, particularly when some flaws in the public school system are so glaring. And it's not like Reich's overly narrow view of the needs of modern workers caused him to lead the war against the war on poverty. There are bad people in charge of that, and they've got plenty of other reasons to do so. 

It seems like some progressives see the possibilities of educational improvement as a barrier to more comprehensive reforms, a mirage that distracts from the real journey. Are any other sustained, large-scale efforts to improve the lives of poor children regarded this way?