Public Education Has Lost Its Social Soul

A blog post from a former teacher and current impact evaluator. 

I venture to say that public education is in the midst of an identity crisis. Government-provided schooling is one of the world’s oldest social institutions, yet it overwhelmingly fails to act as an institution driven by a social mission. The United States is increasingly admitting that its public schools fail to deliver the social impact necessary to equip every young person to achieve the American dream. We acknowledge that students aren’t satisfactorily proficient in reading and math and that many are not graduating from high school. But why is this happening, and how can we fix it? How can we maximize the effectiveness of our schools? Continue reading

Volunteerism & Social Entrepreneurship

One question I think about a lot is why social entrepreneurship has become increasingly prominent in the past decade. I do not have a definitive answer, but some of the growth can likely be ascribed to the tremendous role volunteerism plays among today’s youth. As Robert Putnam notes in his classic book Bowling Alone, volunteerism is much more popular among young people today than it was for the generation that came before it.

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