The Last Page

Bob Chase, the president of the National Education Association, recently declared that its members should “move beyond ideology” and “Politics must stop at the school door.” As I daily try to weave my way through the politics of schooling in order to focus on children, faculty, and families, I find it hard to be unsympathetic to this sentiment. But the truth is that public education needs more, not less, “ideology.”

When “ideology” is missing what we often have is an id...