LOWER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Naomi Schaefer Riley: How School Reform Became Cool.

In fact, a whole lot of 20- and 30-somethings across the political spectrum now believe something’s seriously flawed in our public-education system. (You can bet Gyllenhaal wouldn’t have taken the role otherwise.) But why the sea change?

Start by “blaming” Teach For America — which for decades now has placed recent graduates from top colleges as teachers in some of America’s worst public schools.

This year, TFA has 10,000 corps members working in 36 states and the District of Columbia. It has 28,000 “alumni,” more than two-thirds still in education-related fields. But even those who’ve left for other lines of work have had a glimpse of how bad our inner-city schools have become. The incompetence and corruption are hard to forget.

Oh, and they talk to their peers about it, too.

As they should. By the way, I’m going to be doing another Broadside for Encounter on the Lower Education Bubble, tentatively entitled The K-12 Implosion. So if you see interesting stuff on this topic, please send it along!