We need a war on poverty, not teachers

[Coyotl]

We need a war on poverty, not teachers
The right loves to demonize unions, but economic factors are much more important to success in the classroom
David Sirota, Nov 7, 2013 http://www.salon.com/2013/11/07/we_need_a_war_on_poverty_not_teachers/

Google the phrase “education crisis” and you’ll be hit with a glut of articles, blog posts and think tank reports claiming the entire American school system is facing an emergency. Much of this agitprop additionally asserts that teachers unions are the primary cause of the alleged problem. Not surprisingly, the fabulists pushing these narratives are often backed by anti-public school conservatives and anti-union plutocrats. But a little-noticed study released last week provides yet more confirmation that neither the “education crisis” meme nor the “evil teachers union” narrative is accurate.

Before looking at that study, consider some of the ways we already know that the dominant story line about education is, indeed, baseless propaganda.

As I’ve reported before, we know that American public school students from wealthy districts generate some of the best test scores in the world. This proves that the education system’s problems are not universal — the crisis is isolated primarily in the parts of the system that operate in high poverty areas. It also proves that while the structure of the traditional public school system is hardly perfect, it is not the big problem in America’s K-12 education system. If it was the problem, then traditional public schools in rich neighborhoods would not perform as well as they do.

Similarly, we know that many of the high-performing public schools in America’s wealthy locales are unionized. .............

[wildeyed]

1. It is pretty obvious that poverty, not the educational system is at fault for much of what ails us.

I read an article recently that proved that poverty affected IQ, and significantly. Kids who were living in high poverty and then moved to more stable circumstances gained 10-20 points, which is significant. The kids in high poverty also had more problems with impulsivity. You could see their brains behaving differently on the scans. So to improve our country's performance on these standardized tests, all we need to do is improve the circumstances of our poorest children. It is pretty definitively not the teacher's fault according to all the research I could find. But the plutocrats want to privatize education and they have managed to convince a large portion of the regular citizens that those "others" are getting what they deserve. And the downward spiral continues. Sad.