"It Is Tiring To Make This Point Over And Over Again"

Can Teachers Alone Overcome Poverty? Steven Brill Thinks So [The Nation] The research consensus has been clear and unchanging for more than a decade: at most, teaching accounts for about 15 percent of student achievement outcomes, while socioeconomic factors account for about 60 percent. It is tiring to make this point over and over again.

I'm sure it's no more tiring for Dana Goldstein to say than it is for me to hear. But there's so much more that needs to be said.

For instance (assuming the data are reliable), is this across all 13 classes of primary school (K-12), is she trying to convince idealistic young teacher graduates out to Change The World that their efforts are better spent almost anywhere else than in the classroom?

Is she saying that because it's been true for ten years, it will always be true? And if it is true, why is it true?

Now, APS had a reported graduation rate of 69% in 2009 (since questioned, but let's leave that for now), which is depressing enough. Is Goldstein saying that IF every one of those teachers was doing the best she could, and IF they had instead just been counting days until retirement, the rate would only have dropped to 66%? Then what accounts for the 43% graduation rate -- yes, less than half -- in 2003? Did 25% of APS families suddenly get rich?

I really need to see the source.

Yes, it is certainly true that a child's home situation is more important than his schoolteacher. But it's also true that children can overcome pretty much anything they want to overcome.

You have to catch them very young. If you wait until high school to start moaning about low graduation rates, there's nothing to do but count the bodies. Even middle school is far too late. You have to surround them from pre-k to grade 2 (and beyond) with people who demonstrate that those little ink marks on paper mean something, and that it's important to learn how to figure out what they mean.

The academic damage done in a lower-income household has almost nothing to do with money per se. It happens because the parent (statistically, there's only one) doesn't read and doesn't see any reason why anybody should. She (again, statistically, it's a woman) may have reasons that look pretty good to her, biggest being she doesn't have time. But if this environment is allowed to stand until the child reaches, say, third grade, there's no recovery.

But because teachers with seniority get to choose where they teach, the schools who need experienced quality teachers the most are almost guaranteed not to get them. Low-prestige elementary schools in lower-income neighborhoods are nobody's first choice. The cycle continues.