Schools Matter: Why the Reform Schoolers Will Never Mention "The Children Left Behind"

Schools Matter: Why the Reform Schoolers Will Never Mention "The Children Left Behind":

Why the Reform Schoolers Will Never Mention "The Children Left Behind"

by Jim Horn

When UNICEF published last December the international rankings on children living in poverty "The Children Left Behind," neither the New York Times nor the Washington Post, or any other major American newspaper, carried a story on it. The closest the Times came was a tepid and cursory note by opinionator Charles Blow who could only manage to suggest that we should not make the situation any worse than it is. For the United States, the richest nation on Planet Earth, Blow's hope could, indeed, be realized, since we already occupy the bottom spot in at least half the categories that Report measures.

As Larry Cuban pointed out this past weekend in a piece posted by Valerie Strauss, international comparisons are only of interest by corporate reform schoolers or the corporate media when the scores can be used to label our public schools and