Public education has long served as a convenient scapegoat for a host of society’s defects. Each election cycle contains a component that promises to fix our “broken” system and return society to a fictional era of moral virtue and soaring test scores. The pundits try to tell us that our underperforming students and our social woes belong to the ineptitude and values of those who work in our schools. They want us to believe that society is a reflection of our system of education. This viewpoint lets parents and governments off the hook. For educators it represents an intensely flawed stance.

The fundamental question is this: Is society a reflection of our system of education or is our system of education a reflection of society. The short answer is, at once, both and neither.