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At a conference last Monday, Geoffrey Canada raised a very important concern: In a sputtering economy, funders' single-minded focus on reading and math results could spell disaster for vital education programs. Canada pointed out a glaring double standard:

We're giving huge amounts of money to people who admit that not only have they failed but they almost destroyed the whole economic system of the world. Then somebody asks me if kids should take violin and do I have evidence?! [via the Core Knowledge Blog and Gotham City Schools]

The temptation to divest from anything that doesn't immediately inflate math and reading scores will grow as budgets shrink. Canada reminds us that divestment will create trouble over the long haul.

For years, business leaders have offered public educators all manner of advice--some for better, some for worse. Here, too, we can learn a valuable lesson from the business world: That an exclusively short-term "results-oriented" focus may kill long-term dreams, especially if we don't fully trust our measures of success.

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