Borderland

I’ve learned a few things about education policy from Wall Street the past few days.

The first thing I see is that the “education establishment” has made a serious mistake in trying to defend and justify itself in the face of its many critics. When A Nation at Risk was published 25 years ago, we should have embraced its inflammatory message that, “If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.” We’d have saved ourselves a lot of grief, and the nuisance of endless debate, if we’d been able to scare the crap out of everyone, like the finance people are doing now.

If education reform worked anything like the $700 billion Wall Street bailout plan now on the table, we’d have seen government officials immediately call for implementing a plan that, as George Bush would argue, “matches the scope of the problem.” We’d see the debt ceiling raised, with hundreds of billions of dollars committed to resolving the crisis, and no demand for accountability.

The quick willingness of the Bush administration to commit public funds to the Wall Street bailout exposes the duplicity behind objections that the Broader, Bolder proposal for education reform is too expensive. The Broader, Bolder proposal recommends paying off the education debt [pdf] that accrues throughout the lives of disadvantaged people who need to make-do with inadequate housing, employment, and health care resources. Now, with public money committed to bailing out Failing Investment Houses, maybe we can generate some sympathy for the plight of actual poor people.

But who ever really believed that public education is so critically important that we should commit real money to it, and to other social service supports? All along, the “education crisis” has been manipulated as just so much hot air, a cheap all-purpose solution to major economic problems, effectively obscuring the neglect of our public infrastructure.

On the other hand, if a Wall Street bailout worked like education reform, we’d have a long drawn-out debate about the financial sector, accountability, and what we’ll count as real indicators of economic well-being. Even though there is not much time, now, for debate, Robert Reich has a proposal for some demands we should make immediately, before we write that $700 billion dollar check. This is his list:

1. The government (i.e. taxpayers) gets an equity stake in every Wall Street financial company proportional to the amount of bad debt that company shoves onto the public.
2. Wall Street executives and directors of Wall Street firms relinquish their current stock options and this year’s other forms of compensation, and agree to future compensation linked to a rolling five-year average of firm profitability.
3. All Wall Street executives immediately cease making campaign contributions to any candidate for public office in this election cycle or next, all Wall Street PACs be closed, and Wall Street lobbyists curtail their activities unless specifically asked for information by policymakers.
4. Wall Street firms agree to comply with new regulations over disclosure, capital requirements, conflicts of interest, and market manipulation.
5. Wall Street agrees to give bankruptcy judges the authority to modify the terms of primary mortgages, so homeowners have a fighting chance to keep their homes.

We need to get something back for this. The way it plays out will tell us a lot about whose interests the US Congress is really looking after. There’s nothing like a major screw-up to highlight the hypocrisy of people in power.

No matter what happens to the economy now, I’d really like to see the rhetoric about school reform move beyond the simple-minded bankrupt slogans that have been coming from charlatans in the business community, bent on tearing down the public sector.