Foxes and Hedgehogs

Matthew Yglesias reads a Kevin Drum post in which Drum argues

[G]aps arise early and persist. Schools do little to budge these gaps even though the quality of schooling attended varies greatly across social classes. Much evidence tells the same story as Figure 1. Gaps in test scores classified by social and economic status of the family emerge at early ages, before schooling starts, and they persist. Similar gaps emerge and persist in indices of soft skills classified by social and economic status. Again, schooling does little to widen or narrow these gaps.

And Drum suggests,

If we spent $50 billion less on K-12 education—in both public and private money—and instead spent $50 billion more on early intervention programs, we’d almost certainly get a way bigger bang for the buck

Yglesais concludes that

[t]his, however, is why I’m genuinely confused about the extent to which the current debate tends to construe people like me and my colleagues on the CAP education team as the enemies of K-12 teachers. If it’s true that we don’t need to shake up the K-12 school system because what happens inside K-12 schools doesn’t alter socioeconomically determined achievement gaps, then the policy remedy is random across-the-board cuts in K-12 school spending.

If, in other words, teachers are all that matters we need to fire teachers if teachers don't matter at all we need to fire teachers and why would anyone think that all he wants to do is fire teachers.

Neither explains why the 50 billion ought come from education, which didn't cause the inequality, instead of from, say, corporate welfare, the defense budget, or what have you.  And neither seems to realize that if we decreased socio-economic inequality and continued to improve educational opportunities then the end result would be yet even better for all involved.

Educational reform needs to be understood as part of a larger effort dedicated to shrinking economic inequality and improving educational  opportunity which includes helping teacher be more effective, by limiting class size, including teachers in the conversation instead of bullying, ignoring, and scapegoating them, understanding that administrators play an important role in creating a successful or unsuccessful school as well as factors outside of the control of anyone in the school system, to say nothing of the various missions schools fulfill and the various audiences and interest groups inside schools to which we can add students.

In short, the reason people think that Yglesias et alia unfairly blame teachers is that they unfairly blame teachers.