Joel Klein: Education key to ending income inequality
Joel Klein, a leading voice in the national conversation about education reform says it’s impossible to close the income gap without addressing shortcomings in our public education system.
Klein, who served as Chancellor of the New York City public school system from 2002-2010, sat down with Yahoo Finance Editor-in-Chief Aaron Task to discuss his thoughts on how to confront the challenges faced in public schools across the United States, which he also outlines in his newly-published memoir “Lessons of Hope: How to Fix Our Schools.”
Klein says “kids who are not well-educated have no economic future in the 21st century.” Klein, himself a product of New York City public schools, recalls that when he graduated from high school, 60% of the workforce was comprised of high school dropouts. “Today that number is 6% and declining,” he says.
Students in the U.S. are out-performed by their counterparts in many other European and Asian countries according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which ranks the performance of 15 year-old students in Math, Reading and Science in 34 countries across the globe. The most recent data shows that in 2012, the Unites States ranked 27th in Math (below average), 17th in reading (average) and 20th in science (average). The report also notes that these rankings have remained largely unchanged over time.
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In his book, Klein writes: “Today’s global high-tech economy—and the job market it has spawned—demands much more of most American workers. Consequently, even given the high incidence of unemployment, many positions remain unfilled because applicants lack the requisite skills.”
According to Klein, addressing our shortcomings in education is not the only step we must take to address income inequality, but “it’s absolutely essential,” he says. “The best cure for poverty is a great job. Without a great education you don’t get a great job.”
“The kids with the greatest needs -- who come from poverty and the most challenged backgrounds -- they’re getting the crummiest education, and it’s wrong, it’s inequitable and it’s unfair,” says Klein. “Until we say to every kid ‘you’re in a school where I would send my own kids’ …we’re not going to close this income gap, because without skills in the 21st century market how are you going to compete?” he asked Task. “This is the biggest issue domestically we face as a country.”
Klein appears hopeful that elected officials around the country are taking meaningful steps to confront the diverse set of issues surrounding public education. “Increasingly it has become a bipartisan set of issues but in fact the trouble with education is that it takes too long to discover failure… whereas unemployment is right front and center, but the truth is we’re breeding tomorrow’s unemployment by failing today’s kids.”
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