The Broken Record - The Spuriousness of School 'Reform'

David Sirota has a piece in Salon about the growing body of evidence demonstrating that school achievement is tied to socioeconomic status.

http://www.salon.com/2013/06/03/instead_of_a_war_on_teachers_how_about_one_on_poverty/

Sirota points to a U.S. Department of Education study demonstrating that 20% of American public schools were considered high poverty in 2011 and another U.S. Department of Education study that found, "many high-poverty schools receive less than their fair share of state and local funding ... leav(ing) students in high-poverty schools with fewer resources than schools attended by their wealthier peers."  He then asks:

Those data sets powerfully raise the question that the "reformers" are so desperate to avoid:  Are we really expected to believe it's just a coincidence that the public education and poverty crises are happening at exactly the same time?  Put another way:  Are we really expected to believe that everything other than poverty is what's causing problems in failing public schools?

 The overwhelming evidence that has been generated in the last three to five years demonstrates that any problems with public education have little to do with public schools or teachers and nearly everything to do with growing poverty and a shrinking social safety net.  Sirota cites an apt example supporting this point:  "America's wealthiest traditional public schools happen to be among the world's highest achieving schools."  To cap it off, he notes that most of those schools are unionized.

The growing achievement gap in American public schools should horrify everyone, regardless of political stripes.  When the evidence irrevocably demonstrates that socioeconomic inequality is driving the growing achievement gap then the discussion ought to center around what we can do as a society to limit socioeconomic inequality.  We should stop listening to the 'reformers' message, which is, as Sirota points out, funded by the major corporations that benefit from "the dominant policy paradigms in America - tax cuts for the rich, deregulation, and budget cuts to social services."  Instead we should be listening to the growing chorus of the impoverished that portends social and cultural failure for America and figure out how we can return to a nation in which success was not wholly dependent on the wealth of one's parents.  Whether we like it or not, this will involve sharing.  Unfortunately I fear that many Americans have failed to absorb that kindergarten message.