Network Schools – Wayne Gerseny to https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/04/03/magazine/thomas-piketty-interview u w B l.html?h I’ll smid=url-share the Is for

We experienced budget crises of varying degrees in over half of the years I worked as Superintendent, and invariably when the budget got tight we debated the worthiness of field trips. The headline of  Washington Post Jay Matthews’ most recent column,”Children Learn Much from Field Trips That They Can’t Get from Lectures, Textbooks”, describes the argument administrators and I would try to roll out whenever Board members would argue money spent on “frills” like field trips would come out of “essentials” like textbooks or materials of instruction.

I learned one indelible lesson in 7th grade when the Junior Geographers Club stopped at a large public dining facility in Delaware on a field trip to the Air Force Base in Dover. The sign above a drinking fountain read: “Whites Only”. Reading about segregation later that year was an abstraction… witnessing segregation was far more striking.

The NYTimes most emailed article today is falsely titled: “Is College Worth It? Clearly, New Data Say” The story leads with this compelling chart to prove in one quick view that college IS worth it. The chart shows the RATIO of college earnings (the top line) to the earnings of those with SOME college (the bottom line) since 1975.

What the chart DOESN’T show is that since 2001 the earnings of those WITH a college degree has stagnated. Why the increasing divide?

The pay gap has grown mostly because the average wage for everyone else has fallen.

Basically, the corporate race to the bottom in wages AND total compensation has resulted in stagnant salaries among college graduates and a LOSS of wages for everyone else. The headline of this should have been “RACE TO THE BOTTOM” because that’s what is really happening here for everyone except the very top .01%. The bottom line:”Get a Degree to Earn Stagnant Wages”.