Profiles of the courageous few on the left who championed choice read today like ancient history
Last summer I taught a graduate-level education policy course. During a discussion of the achievement gap, I referenced a provision in the No Child Left Behind Act. The students stared blankly. It was late in the day, so I thought the problem was that statutory language can be a sedative. I spiced things up by referencing Lean on Me and Stand and Deliver, two education-related Hollywood films that energized the accountability movement. Again, stony faces.
The students noticed my confusion. One asked sheepishly, “Stand and what?” Then it occurred to me: None of these students had even been born when Congress was debating NCLB in 2001. In fact, for the students born in 2003, Stand and Deliver (1988) is as distant as the black-and-white The Hustler (1961) is for me.
I realized my two-fold challenge. I had to explain policy history and show why it was relevant today. My students, after all, were shaped by the battles over Common Core, Covid, online learning, and the value of four-year degrees. The education news they consumed focused on DEI and AI. My touchstones—A Nation At Risk, the Charlottesville Summit, adequate yearly progress, ESEA waivers, Race to the Top—were not theirs. I had to work overtime to make them care about things from my era that I had assumed to be definitive.
Continue reading the entire piece here at Education Next
______________________
Andy Smarick is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Follow him on Twitter here.
Photo by Gulfiya Mukhamatdinova/Getty Images