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>>Campbell Brown: The educational establishment is very wedded to a status quo that is horribly
broken and is willing to accept failure on the backs of our children at the expense of
some sort of truce or peace or a pass that never existed in terms of educational equity.
It's puzzling to me. >>Joel Klein: No, no, the reason that disrupters
are disliked and are driven out oftentimes is because the system actually works pretty
well for the bureaucrats and the adults and for the politicians.
So they come together to protect the system, but I want to frame this discussion with two
points that if they don't get you upset, then nothing will. The first is there's not a person
in this room who doesn't care about income and equality and the growing gap in our country
today. We talk about it, we worry about it. And yesterday today the kids with the greatest
needs get the crummiest education. Systematically throughout the country, and we tolerate it.
So what hope is there for these kids who start out with the deck stacked against them, and
then they pile on top of that a crummy education, and then we wonder why the gaps keep widening
in the country. And the second thing that strikes me to frame
this debate is everyone in this room insisted on choice for their kids. There's not a single
person here who would allow me to randomly assign your kid to a school in Newark or L.A.
or anyplace. And you all are privileged people and you insist on choice.
The kids with the greatest needs are told it's one and done and if the school sucks,
that's too bad. Let's hope it gets better sometime during the kids' lifetime. So when
we have a meaningful discussion about the gaps in America and where we're going, we
ought to start with the very basics, which is those kids with the greatest challenges
should have choice, and they should have opportunity. And that isn't going to happen if we relegate
them to the worst kinds of education, the kind that none of us would tolerate for our
own children. And to me, as long as the status quo serves
the needs of adults and not the needs of kids, we're not going to have a 20th century education
system. We've got a 19th century education system, resistant to innovation, resistant
to change, and really resistant to any meaningful accountability.
