When Reform Addresses Poverty, Not Just Schools
So I’ve been running around town for the last six years yelling “the problem isn’t bad teachers, the problem is poverty” and finally somebody did something about it. Okay, it wasn’t just because I was yelling. In the factionalized world of education, most people outside of the Ed Reform camp hold the same view: that the fundamental reason students of color in low-income communities fare less well than more affluent students is the trauma caused by poverty, which often leads to overcrowded living situations, parents in crisis, transient families, violence in the community, lack of access to medical care and sometimes lack of food, and until we improve those conditions, the achievement gap will not change (as indeed it has not despite over a decade of Education Reform and several decades of other various education crazes.)Now the Department of Education is testing the theory by investing heavily in a program called Promise Neighborhoods, loosely based on Geoffrey Canada’s ongoing experiment in the Harlem Children’s Zone. Billed as a new kind of education reform, Promise Neighborhoods turn schools into neighborhood hubs of community services, including health care, tutoring, academic enrichment, college counseling and intensive outreach to involve parents. Los Angeles received the largest grant of any city: $30 million for five years, to be matched by private grants and administered by Youth Policy Institute, a non-profit whose mission statement is “to reduce poverty by ensuring families have access to high quality schools, wrap-around education and technology services, enabling a successful transition from cradle to college and career.” The new funding targets 19 LAUSD and charter schools in East Hollywood and Pacoima and has a stated goal of “creating a cradle-to-college-and-career pipeline.”
They have five years to pull it off.
In order to maintain their funding after five years, the Promise Neighborhoods need to When Reform Addresses Poverty, Not Just Schools | Gatsby In L.A.: