Steven Brill The Rubber Room

In 2009, Steven Brill publish and article that overall helped the common everyday person to take notice to the corruption that education school systems poses. He published the article “The Rubber Room”. The article was published by The New Yorker and was electronically available on August 31, 2009. When this work came out Steven Brill raised a lot of eyebrows. He gave people insight as to what they education system really does and how all its branches work. Steven brill has a close relationship with education based on his prior observation in the rubber rooms. He started his work by visiting these rubber rooms. A rubber room is where teachers are sent when held on trial. All the teachers have to do is go to this room stay content until the

In Goldstein’s argument, she believes that environmental factors are one of the biggest leading causes to a server problem. She argues that the children who face poverty in their life and children who face harsh environmental factors in result perform poorly in an educational environment. Goldstein claims that “family poverty exerts a crushing influence over children’s lives”. With this being she thinks that you can have the best teachers out there but if your outside life is degrading it will overall impact the success a child has in a classroom. She states a claim that back up this inference, stating “no matter how great the teachers are” the outside factors always outweigh a classroom setting This tells us that in her eyes the biggest cause come from outside factors and if you do not have a strong support system at home you will be unlikely to success academically. When focusing on Brill’s argument, he takes upon a different view as to what the biggest problems derive from. As previously stated Goldstein thinks environmental factors are the biggest leading problem, where Brill believes that teachers are overall the leading cause to educational problems. Brill claims that teachers unions, tenure, and seniority rank highly on the list of educational problems. Brill explains teachers unions as being a protection plan for teachers against “political patronage” (Bril). This leads us to seniority rank, when you reach your third year and first day you have accomplished tenure. Once you reach this point teachers become stagnant. Most teachers coast along because they are guaranteed a job. This leaves the children’s education up in the air and leave little to no improvement in the curriculum or test scores. This is where Brill believes hurts the student overall because the students do not receive the proper