But these values must still be communicated by our leaders regardless. Demanding "a great education for children" from teachers is also a nice and wonderful sentiment - in theory. There's no reason we can't make demands on parents and try to eliminate the negative aspects of poverty simultaneously.
Dianne Ravitch originally supported No Child Left Behind and charter schools, she later became "disillusioned," and wrote, "I no longer believe that either approach will produce the quantum improvement in American education that we all hope for." In the major national evaluation, 17% of charters got higher scores, 46% were no different, and 37% were significantly worse than public schools, she said. High-stakes testing, "utopian" goals, "draconian" penalties, school closings, privatization, and charter schools didn't work, she concluded. "The best predictor of low academic performance is poverty—not bad teachers."
My wife is a kindergarten teacher at an inner city public school - she's been teaching there for over 20 years. The teacher is an extension of the parent/authority figure in a child's life. If the parent doesn't establish positive expectations and continuously monitor the progress of the child from grade to grade, then the chance of success in learning is extremely difficult.
Most of my wife's students come from one parent families (14 out of 18 last year), usually female, and a lot of those are grandmothers. These are children born out of wedlock to teen age women (some as young as 12) with no parenting skills. The father abandons them in most cases and the kid is passed off to the grandmother many times. A typical parent/teacher night or open house attracts maybe 2 or 3 parents in her class.
The ability to learn is severely impaired by the stress on a child from one or a combination of things... when the parent is single, unemployed, on drugs, alcoholic or abusive. A teacher is almost powerless to overcome these obstacles. My wife has seen a direct correlation with parental apathy, abuse etc. vs. learning ability, comprehension and staying on task.
Kids with learning disabilities are usually from abusive families and also suffer from personality disorders as well. These are angry children where learning is way down the list of priorities. They're angry about being abandoned and not cared for by a mother who's more concerned about getting high then how they do in school.
By the time these kids get into high school with 3nd grade reading skills and realize what opportunity was squandered - it's too late. They become unemployable following the path of their role model parents by dropping out of school, abusing drugs, having babies out of wedlock - and it becomes a vicious circle. No amount of money, vouchers, de-unionization will fix this problem.
If I could point to one sector of society where change could make the most difference with in our education system it would be to focus on young, unwed single mothers. The money that is wasted trying to raise the standards of teachers and increase the performance of those students who are abused, unwilling or unable to learn would be better spent on drug counseling, sex education, parenting skills and life coaching for teenage single mothers.
My wife can attest to the accuracy of Ravitch's observations... the "teaching to the test" mentality of teachers who are terrified of losing their jobs and thus focus on math and reading to the detriment of students learning history, science and other subjects. My wife related to me the other night that students in her K-8 school have not been on a field trip in three years due because there’s no value to it as it relates to reading and math.
So much one-on-one time is spent on kids with major behavioral problems, abused kids from drug using single mothers with and kids with way below average IQ’s that the "normal" kids who have the ability to learn and achieve are neglected. There is no shortage of aids and tutors in her public school but they are all focused on the dregs.. trying to bring their test scores up so the school is not classified as in "academic emergency".
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