Class Warfare
Class Warfare: that’s the title Stephen Brill gave to his recent book on the state of American education.
With such a title, one might think that that Brill’s book would investigate how the deep class divisions between America’s wealthy class and our poor and working class, a gap that has grown immensely over the last four decades, has harmed our schools and our students. After all, educational research has shown that greatest challenge our schools face is the grinding effect of poverty on so many of the students we teach.
But Brill’s book embraces without question or qualification the diagnosis of the wealthy Wall Street hedge-fund managers who have driven much of the dominant ‘education reform’ agenda: in their view, the educational failures of schools and students are the fault of public school teachers and teacher unions. This Wall Street
