Traditional Education Reform Founded on the American Dream?

In this day and age, the phrase "public education" has become code for the education of the poor and the achievement gap that exists between lower and higher income students. Many public education reform efforts target improving or shutting down failing schools in light of the conventional wisdom that failing schools are the cause of the problem--the achievement gap--and should thus be the point of intervention. Unfortunately, conventional wisdom puts the cart before the horse.

Solving the problem of public education in America requires more than just school reform. Schools should not be ignored, but they only account for a fraction of the problems that face American public education. There are extrinsic social, emotional, physiological, and psychological challenges related to socioeconomic status that leave children living in poverty playing catch-up from the minute they enter school. In particular, children living in low socioeconomic households are not adequately prepared to learn what schools are in place to teach when they enter school in PK or K.

Research has shown that low-income parents use fewer words with their children on a daily basis, engage in less two-way conversation, and expose their children to books and reading less compared to middle and upper income parents. There has been much discussion about the significant role that parents have to play in their child's education, but when it comes to educational reform efforts that reach out to parents most programs fall flat. This is what makes programs like Geoffrey Canada's Harlem Children's Zone unique. The HCZ and other prospective "Promise Neighborhoods" offer parents the educational opportunities and resources that they need to learn about early childhood education so that they can intervene as soon as their child is born. The program takes a more holistic approach to educational reform, providing poor parents with resource and support they need so that they can devote the necessary time and energy to prepare their kids for academic success.

Sadly, holistic approaches such as Canada's threaten the very platform upon which most traditional education reform programs are built: demography is not destiny and the American dream lives on! According to Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, every child can learn and thrive despite the challenges at home. This requires that reform efforts do not attempt to lower standards because certain students face significant challenges at home. However, maintaining high standards is not the idea being challenged. Rather, education reform should seek to maintain high standards while also providing poor students and their families with the resources that they need to achieve such standards. In this way, the holistic approach to educational reform places the horse in front of the cart in the hopes of moving forward.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-jim-taylor/failing-students-not-fail_b_534797.html