Closing the Incarceration Gap
Jan 26, 2011 7:13 AM - Show original item
Dear Diane,
It's interesting to imagine what world view drives my enemies. Reading your piece about economists provided an insight! Maybe. Most of the current members of the billionaire's club make or produce nothing. None of their friends or neighbors are in the producing classes either. I used to try to appeal to them with the book by H. Thomas Johnson and Anders Broms called Profit Beyond Measure describing why Scania and Toyota reject the kind of data-driven accountability that business has imposed on schools. They were concerned with quality—the long-term viability and impact of their products. Meanwhile, education reformers are interested only in numbers. Even what's still called "school quality review" is, in New York City at least, now taken to mean how schools use numbers.
The "smart" graduates of our "best" universities are not dreaming of producing a new and better mouse-trap. They can't point to the highways they built or the dams they designed with a proud "I made it." To be leaders of finance requires a different kind of bragging rights. Wall Street data may tell us the economy is improving even if more and more Americans face long-term unemployment and lowered wages and benefits, and public pensioners face disaster. "The economy" is an illusive concept. I used to have this New York Times headline on my refrigerator: "Employment Up, Stocks Drop."
