I See It Every Day in Preschool
Former Federal Reserve Chair and Joe Biden's nominee for Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has expressed the opinion that it's okay for the US to add trillions to our nation debt in order to improve education.
Yellen is an impressive person. She is respected on both sides of the political aisle, having served at high levels under both Democrats and Republicans and she has been talking about the importance of education for most of her career. One can use your favorite search engine to go back and time to find her regularly saying things like this from a 2016 speech to graduates of the University of Baltimore:
"Economists are not certain about many things. But we are quite certain that a college diploma or an advanced degree is a key to economic success."
And from a talk to the National Community Reinvestment Coalition:
"Probably the most important workforce development strategy is improving the quality of general education."
She's said similar things about education from preschool through high school, touting spending on schools as a way to close the wealth gap in our country, addressing poverty as well as to stimulate the economy overall. Her elevation is a reason to celebrate, right? Our schools have long been underfunded. Finally, someone in high office is speaking our language. And best of all, she seems to have the ear of both sides, which means that maybe, just maybe, we can make education funding one of those rarest of birds in the political aviary: a bipartisan issue.
The truth, however, is that education, in my lifetime, has always been a bipartisan issue. Both sides are equally wrong. I've been listening to public officials talk about education for decades, and whatever their political stripe, none of them CONTINUE READING: Teacher Tom: I See It Every Day in Preschool