The “Magic Bullet” is a Blank: We Cannot Create a Meaningful Education by Ignoring Race, Class and Poverty

Over the next month the Department will unveil the $80 million ARIS  system – data from a variety of databases will be rolled together into one platform – available on a “need to know” basis to school personnel. It imbeds the ability to manipulate and evaluate student achievement data, post lesson plans and create e-platforms and bulletin boards.

Linked to the data warehouse is the School Report Card  – each school, based primarily on student achievement and progress data, will be rated – on a scale – from “A” to “F” with serious repercussions for  schools with grades “C” or lower: lashings, pillory, removal of principals and school closings.

In Washington the reauthorization of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) is in the stretch run … currently NCLB requires that schools reach Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) goals, set by each State. In NYS the goal is moving from Level 2 to Level 3 – moving to “proficiency.” NCLB requires that States have a range of punitive steps – designation as a School in Need of Improvement (SINI), redesign, restructure and possibly closing.

Superintendents, principals, the eduwonks and foundation guys and gals are jousting back and forth over the arcania of the proposed law.

Richard Kahlenberg, the author is the new Al Shanker biography joins in with a “what position would Al have had” article.

When the dust clears will ARIS and the School Report Card improve teaching and learning? Will redefining and fine-tuning NCLB create better schools?

Can we improve teaching and learning and thereby create better, more effective schools without confronting issues of poverty?

Are we letting Bush, the Congress, Governors and Mayors off the hook when we de-link schools from poverty?

Class and race and poverty cannot be ignored. Richard Rothstein  carefully outlines the linkages and proffers a range of programs – with costs attached – to address the impact of poverty on schools.

A recent British study sharply questions whether the achievement gap can be narrowed by schools alone.

Those who ply their trade in the trenches of academe know that they are facing incredible odds. At times you feel like you are a lonely finger in an increasingly leaky dike. Yes, great school leaders combined with great teachers can create, and perhaps maintain great schools, they are the rare exception.

Leadership Academy “raw meat” is tossed into schools, Teach for America and Teaching Fellows are pushed off the end of the pier – they really, really want to succeed – for some it’s missionary zeal, “christianizing the poor natives,” for others it’s a career … for too many it’s too hard … they struggle for few years and move

on …

In Utah the privateers  simply want to destroy public schools and allow the marketplace, a marketplace without teacher unions, to “serve” the public, the equivalent of moving factories offshore.

Poverty is no longer a fashionable battle – we are expending all our energy fighting the war, fighting global warning, fighting the eroding environment, and ignoring the plight of tens of millions of our neighbors.

We will not close the achievement gap, create effective, meaningful eductions for inner city kids without addressing the problems that these kids and their families face each and every day.