New post at Policy Shop. Excerpt:

What’s so bizarre about the education focus is that there is a totally dominant strategy for fixing our distributive woes: change our institutions so that the national income is more evenly distributed. This would make dramatic dents in inequality, poverty, and social mobility right now. There is no need for any intermediate educational step that would take generations to implement if it works at all. Changing the distribution is the best, fastest, and easiest way to, well, change the distribution. As a bonus, it is also likely to improve education in the process, which should make the education-obsessed happy as well. Sadly this strategy will never see the light of the day in our discourse because we are drowning in an endless stream of education bromides.