"The New Public" Tackles Poverty and Education | The Poverty Line, What Matters Today | BillMoyers.com

"The New Public" Tackles Poverty and Education | The Poverty Line, What Matters Today | BillMoyers.com:

“The New Public” Tackles Poverty and Education

November 12, 2013

by Greg Kaufmann and Elaine Weiss

We’re proud to collaborate with The Nation in sharing insightful journalism related to income inequality in America. The following is an excerpt from Nation contributor Greg Kaufmann’s “This Week in Poverty” column.

---

The negative impact of poverty on a child’s educational achievement is indisputable. Whether the metric is school grades, state assessments, the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP), the SAT — the scores of low-income children are far lower than those of their wealthier peers. The reasons for that gap — and how our nation should respond — is the subject of heated debate and is explored by filmmaker Jyllian Gunther in the award-winning documentary, The New Public.

A still from ‘The New Public.’ (Courtesy of the filmmakers)

The film is inspiring and sobering as it examines the experiences of students and teachers at the Brooklyn Community Arts & Media (BCAM) High School. BCAM is a new, small public school in Bedford-Stuyvesant, where one-third of the residents live below the poverty line and the graduation rate is 40 percent.

With nuance and humor, Gunther shows how poverty presents many obstacles to effective teaching and strong learning. It showcases BCAM’s ability to overcome some of those obstacles through relationship-building and teaching to students’ strengths. But it also demonstrates that no matter how dedicated and focused the teachers and