It’s easy for scholars to study statistics, and then provide solutions to change those numbers. Scholars perform massive amounts of research, but the field reporting is left to journalists. Recently, The Brookings Institution sponsored a panel to discuss policies that would aid in educating low-income children. After the panel had completed, four journalists took the stage to provide analysis on the presented ideas. The journalistic panel consisted of Adrian Wooldridge, of The Economist, Hugh Price, Senior Fellow of The Brookings Institution, Sebastian Mallaby, of The Washington Post, and David Wessel, of The Wall Street Journal; all four of whom have written about inequality and social mobility concerning education.
Indeed, Adrian Wooldridge holds that social mobility and opportunity are decaying due to the failure in education. Whereas the United States was once seen as a beacon of opportunity; that status is slowly beginning to crumble. Wooldridge contends, “Everybody, for a long time, has known that the system of primary education and secondary education is very badly broken in this country and that it tends to reproduce and reinforce inequality.” Wooldridge finds a major problem with the American universities, which he considers “the best higher education in the world when it comes to the quality of research that is being produced.” However, that system of higher education does not promote social mobility.
In fact, Wooldridge argues that in years past universities did promote social mobility, but due to cutbacks on funding for scholarships the reverse began to occur. The reduction in scholarships has led to a disproportionate increase in higher-income students enrolling in elite universities. It was thought that race-based affirmative action policies could fix this problem, but “it did little and is doing less and less to promote upward social mobility.” Heretofore, some universities deliberately favor students depending on their legacy or celebrity, which Wooldridge argued retards upward mobility, and must be solved to reflect a commitment to social mobility.
As Hugh Price sees it, “The level of proficiency for all children has been extended and escalated,” making it more difficult to advance in social classes. Also, there is a burden on schools to prepare all children for college, which is a shift from the past. However, although the rhetoric is different, children and schools have not received the resources to compete. Furthermore, general solutions, such as universal testing, small classrooms, and tough love is “simplistic and cheap” thinking that is “geared to how much we’re willing to spend, not how much must be spent to do the job.” Finally, in order to find practical solutions, Price contends, “The whole conversation…needs to shift into a much more sophisticated realm of how do we create whole schools…so that we are producing whole children that are ready and equipped for the future.”
Sebastian Mallaby is concerned, “A lot of the causes of inherited inequality are clearly beyond the reach of government policy.” Mallaby hearkens back to the genetic component and the socioeconomic component of inequality, and claims they are both out of reach. Furthermore, students with a higher socioeconomic status begin school with a higher degree of social capital, which frees teachers from discipline problems, and allows them to focus on learning. In addition, although low-income students are making vast strides in education, they are not succeeding at the same rate as high-income children. Therefore, if education truly is the best tool to counteract inequality, then “you have to give more to the poor schools.”
David Wessel does not perceive social mobility a serious problem, but instead, “the distance from the cellar to the penthouse has grown.” He warns against accusing educational programs of failing, “We would be worse off if we hadn’t tried a lot of those things…we would be even more unhappy and uneasy if we didn’t have those policies.” Wessel argues that education is a more eloquent engine to redistributing money than simply taking capital away from people, because politicians can market it as a remedy for inequality.
Wessel advises against new spending on education, and challenges the three previous panelists, insisting, “We have to assure people that the money being spent on Head Start is really well spent before we tell them we need to spend $50 million more on pre-K.” In addition, the lack of evidence concerning new policies geared toward primary and secondary education may “paralyze the process.” Finally, to the suggestion of raising tuition rates on the upper middle-class, Wessel explains, “The people that want to change college financing do need to think a little bit about political strategy.”
There were numerous notions batted around the panel, and at times the discussion became heated. Price took offense to Mallaby’s report of genetic components in inequality, even though Cecilia Rouse had discussed them on the first panel. When Wooldridge suggested that standardized testing be the sole basis by which universities consider admission, Price claimed, “That would be affirmative action for whites.” Mallaby claimed the alternative to standardized testing was “much, much worse,” and was promptly labeled a “romantic”—as the company he works for earns more revenue from Kaplan Inc. than their actual newspaper. Ultimately, everyone agreed that America had become more unequal and that education was not improving. However, just like on Capitol Hill, a unified solution was not founded, and appears to be completely distant.
Matthew Hickman is an intern at Accuracy in Media.
