​David Brooks of The New York Times is something of a fountain of knowledge for us educators—even when his work isn’t written with us specifically in mind. For his writing regularly encourages readers to consider a variety of topics from a stirring number of viewpoints, something that we should always strive to do when working on behalf of the nation’s youngest and most vulnerable citizens. This week, then, we’d like to highlight Mr. Brooks’s work, along with that of Oren Cass, as these two big thinkers are some of our most eloquent predictors of what’s to come: be it good or bad.
 
First: David Brooks. To give you a glimpse of his insights, here are some notes from an article he published just after the November 2018 election:

• 20% of working men are not working full-time jobs
• Only 37% of Americans think that their child will be better off financially than they have been themselves
• Financial insecurity is no longer a reality only for those near or below the poverty line

 
Oren Cass, meanwhile, is the author of The Once and Future Worker, a book replete with policy ideas educators might well consider. Cass, for example, supports what’s called academic tracking, a system by which students are grouped and taught according to their academic abilities as opposed to being thrown into a one-size-fits-all system designed to prepare everyone for college. In support of academic tracking, Cass offers the following data, ultimately concluding from it that too many schools currently treat all students as if they are all the same and have the same needs and aspirations instead of working to actually meet kids’ needs.   

• 20% of students do not graduate high school in four years
• 20% of students do not continue their education after high school
• 20% of students drop out of college
• 20% of students get a job unrelated to their college degree

 
And now, of course, it’s time for us to debate - just as all critical thinkers should. Debate. Analyze. Work out and through. So what do you think of this data? What do you think we should draw from it? Do you agree with Cass’s opinion of academic tracking?
 
Let us know. More to come soon. 

Last week, we kicked off the new year by discussing the ways in which we might look, in our increasingly globalized and interconnected society, to other American industries—such as healthcare—for ways to critique, better understand, and improve our current approaches to public education. This week, we’re going to expand briefly on one key component of our prior analysis, and that is the true and even shocking extent of geographical disparities in states’ investments in public education.  
 
Recall that, like healthcare, education is largely a state responsibility. Only naturally, then, it is the wealthier states which are best able to fund their students, leading, oftentimes, to better, brighter, and more financially stable futures for those students.
 
Yet while few sources actually track the disparities between just how much states across the U.S. invest in public education, the effects of those disparities—from graduation rates to college readiness to performances on standardized tests—are readily apparent. We recently followed Amazon’s national search for a site for a new corporate office and found, somewhat unexpectedly, an illustration of states’ investments in education—for in noting which areas a massively successful company like Amazon seriously considered, we found the mega-corporation itself tracking one of the greatest indicators of an educational system’s efficacy: local economic development. 
 
And Amazon, of course, is not the only company to evaluate potential business sites in this fashion. Also recently but much more quietly, Google also established new offices. And again, the chosen sites are hardly surprising: one in New York—and in close proximity to New Jersey and Connecticut—and another in Arlington, Virginia—and in close proximity to D.C. and Maryland.
 
For beyond the obvious wealth of these chosen business sites, Google made these moves because they are searching for talent, and there is a definitive connection between a region’s wealth, its access to talent, and the quality of its educational system. Talent is what it takes to sustain innovation and development, and education, in turn, sustains talent.
 
As we discussed last week, funding is not the only guarantor of educational efficacy—but it is an undeniably important one and one which is highly correlated to post-school success. For part of the reason that money begets talent and educational success is because money attracts the most effective teachers, the most talented educators. Money also buys technological advancement, thus enabling more advanced educational practices in our increasingly tech-driven world. Money buys experiences and opportunities, thus expanding a student's worldview.
 
Just something to think about as we continue to work to improve the modern state of American public education. Let us know what you think in the comments below, and for a particularly astute and in-depth analysis of economic disparities—with examples and precise figures—check out a recent study by USA Today​.