In the accompanying CNN interview, educational historian Diane Ravitch has some common sense thoughts on the state of public education, but since they do not go along with the current "reform" movement, the people who are setting policy at both the federal and state levels will likely not pay much attention to them.
She notes that we do not have a public education system that is failing, but a poverty problem, something you would think people would grasp the minute they see that the overwhelming majority of failing scores come from children of poverty. That has nothing to do with privatizing schools or eliminating teacher tenure and it is a much more difficult problem to address- so we simply leave it unaddressed year after year, and many times even eliminate the things that are helping those who are in poverty.
Poverty has always been the elephant in the room when it came to education. For the last fifty years, State Legislatures were reluctant to spend public money on inter city schools because of the presumption that poor children in those schools would never have a use for the education anyway. But then again, it is not just Legislators who believe we should not waste money on the poor, but pretty much mainstream America at large. Reality is, without a large segment of working poor, namely large labor pools of unskilled workers, we would not have people willing to work for minimum wage. We have always talked equality but we never really meant it.
ReplyDeleteI understand that you are educators and so look at things from that point of view. But, I think poverty is basically ignored everywhere. School is just one part of that, a really important part, but it's just hard to learn when you're hungry at school, and cold all night, etc.
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