Must-Read Brent Staples

NYT’s Staples lays a complicated and important issue on the table in a must-read column from today’s paper that already has folks buzzing. Well worth a moment of your time to read…

This is a difficult moment for the civil rights movement, which is understandably fearful of taking positions that would discomfit the teachers among its supporters. But standing silently on the sidelines of the debate about teacher preparedness and No Child Left Behind is hardly the answer. Unless the civil rights establishment adopts a stronger and more public position, it will inevitably be viewed as having missed the most important civil rights battle of the last half-century.