When It Rains, It Pours
Having gone to school in a middle-class community, and having been placed in classes with similarly-motivated peers, my first year teaching in a low-income school caught me off-guard in lots of ways. That only three or four of my students would do the homework I assigned; that the consequences I assigned for coming late were generally greeted with apathy; that I only met three parents on open-house night....all of those things astonished me.
I think we generally blow over the vast differences that exist between schools in our national education debate. As many erudite observers have noted, the problem with education in the United States is NOT that we don't know how to do it; the problem is that we're unwilling to do it for everyone. Public education is stillcatastrophically inequitable.
On a daily basis, I am reminded of the myriad ways the students I teach are disadvantaged. I am, however, far less often cognizant of the widespread public ignorance regarding schools like mine and the challenges they face.
Students coming from low-income urban communities generally receive a vastly inferior quality of education for
I think we generally blow over the vast differences that exist between schools in our national education debate. As many erudite observers have noted, the problem with education in the United States is NOT that we don't know how to do it; the problem is that we're unwilling to do it for everyone. Public education is stillcatastrophically inequitable.
On a daily basis, I am reminded of the myriad ways the students I teach are disadvantaged. I am, however, far less often cognizant of the widespread public ignorance regarding schools like mine and the challenges they face.
Students coming from low-income urban communities generally receive a vastly inferior quality of education for