Let's Stop Comparing Education to the Civil Rights Movement
This week, Mitt Romney said that fixing education "is the civil rights issue of our era. It's the great challenge of our time." The statement implies that students are being purposefully and systematically denied an education, and calls to mind the infamous photo of one of the Little Rock Nine, Elizabeth Eckford, as she attempted to enter Little Rock High School and was turned away by the National Guard as Hazel Massery, one of her white peers, screamed at her. This comparison may make for a moving stump speech across political lines, but these flawed platitudes need to stop.
We've spent the last decade hearing similar statements from a bipartisan cast of political players. President
