Politics and school reform: Power, ideology and the use of evidence
Last week we learned that Republican legislators had pressured the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service into withdrawing a report that reached a conclusion about tax rates and economic growth that undercut a central GOP philosophy. What does this have to do with school reform? Larry Cuban explains below. here. Cuban was superintendent of Arlington Public Schools for seven years and a high school social studies teacher for 14 years. He is professor emeritus of education at Stanford University, where he has taught for more than 20 years. This first appeared on his blog.By Larry Cuban
On the eve of the nation’s voters going to the polls, a truth about policymakers’ use of evidence arrives in plain sight. Sure, the obscene spending from Super PACs on political ads shows how evidence can be bent into grotesque shapes to support one candidate over another. Fact-checkers have had a bumper season. But political ads are a genre that all of