Involvement without Efficacy
By:  Bruce Knecht





The PISA is the standardized test that is flogged by the major  media (it’s conducted every three years), purportedly to show the sorry state of American schools. The actual results depicted by the graph Julie Sellers has shared are sharply at odds with the narrative that has been an accepted part of conventional wisdom for more than two decades, i.e., that American schools are failing. Rather, schools are serving as a convenient scapegoat for an array of social ills that schools neither created nor have the power to remedy. Elite-driven education reform is a strategy for creating the appearance that something is being done about these social failings, while, in reality, it’s a case of involvement without efficacy. By this diversion, elites are able to avoid any fundamental social change that would be required to ameliorate the actual problems. At the same time, it cracks open the half-a-trillion dollar market of K-12 education.

The cartoon below clearly illustrates the current reformist mind-set. The woman in this strip is ruling out every measure that might actually make a difference. Again, involvement without efficacy.