Your Moment of Sanity

Courtesy of Gordon MacInnes:

Note to NJDOE: Admit That Poverty Is the Real Problem

For four decades, the nation has wrestled with the problem of what to do with schools where everyone comes from poor families. Usually, the policies and public discourse have avoided focusing on the implications of concentrated poverty, choosing instead to find convenient, fast-acting, and unproven "reforms." The waiver application is faithful to this failed tradition. In fact, it makes no mention that the failed schools are all in very poor places, while the high-performing Reward" schools are in the state's most affluent towns.

I would have hoped for a hint that turning around failing schools in the poorest neighborhoods is hard work. Most highly advertised, over-promised efforts over the decades have failed. I would like to see it acknowledged that improvement might take some time and require adjustments to off-the-shelf plans. But that is not in the vocabulary of cocksure reformers.

"Cocksure" - yep.