CHILD POVERTY AND THE EDUCATION WARS.

Matt Yglesias flags this Washington Post report on research showing that poverty creates so much stress in children's lives that it leads to permanent cognitive impairment, including a depleted short-term memory. According to one study, kids who experienced long-term poverty scored 20 percent lower on memory tests than kids whose families were never poor.

All this suggests that the coalition of education experts that calls itself the Broader, Bolder Approach was barking up the right tree during election season, when it formed to discuss how poverty and inequality deplete student academic achievement. It was another education reform effort, however -- the Education Equality Project -- that created the bigger media splash. The pro-charter schools and merit pay group, headed by New York City schools Chancellor Joel Klein and the Rev. Al Sharpton, counted rising Democratic political stars such as Mayor Cory Booker of Newark and Mayor Adrian Fenty of D.C. among its ranks, as well as conservatives such as Newt Gingrich, Jeb Bush, and former Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings. And of course, everyone loves a story of opposites attracting.

Last week, the Klein/Sharpton project held a convention in New York. Barack Obama's education secretary, Arne Duncan, attended, and participants debated whether Mayor Mike Bloomberg should continue to control the New York City public schools. But on Wednesday, the Daily News' Juan Gonzalez broke the story that Sharpton had accepted a $500,000 donation to his tax-troubled non-profit group, the National Action Network, in exchange for his involvement with the EEP. Indeed, Sharpton's headliner role with the reformist coalition had always surprised education experts. In the past, Sharpton's work had been heavily supported by teachers' unions, which identify more with the Broader, Bolder approach.

In other words, the science and politics at play in the education wars remain fascinating. There is no reason, of course, why a societal approach to alleviating poverty can't go hand in hand with support for charter schools and greater innovation in how to recruit, train, and pay teachers. There is a natural synthesis between the views of these two competing education reform groups. But in reality, the personalities involved -- Sharpton, Randi Weingarten, Bloomberg, Michelle Rhee -- are big and complex, and have been sparring for years.

--Dana Goldstein