POVERTY DEFEATS EVEN CHARTER SCHOOLS
Today’s Chicago Tribune has an article about how research has suggested that many charter schools in Chicago are performing no better than traditional neighborhood schools and some are actually doing much worse. The article shows the test scores to back up the research that was done.
Does this really surprise anyone? What is so difficult to understand about the fact that children from poverty-stricken areas will almost always do worse than their peers from non poverty areas? Yes, there are some charter schools in poor neighborhoods that have had great success, but I doubt even those have their students testing on a par with their middle class and affluent peers.
What really irritates me about so many education reformers is their idea that we could lift up the children of poverty if only the teachers were better, or the methods were innovative, or the curriculum was changed, or we had merit pay, or longer school days, and on and on.
We have had decades of reform and changes and innovations, and yet very little has changed in our schools that