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Poverty Issues in Public Education

Randi Weingarten, President, American
Federation of Teachers writes:

Sonya Romero-Smith is a kindergarten teacher in Albuquerque, N.M., where three-quarters of the students are poor. Before class each day, she feeds hungry students, cleans others with bathroom wipes and toothbrushes, and offers clean socks, underwear, pants and shoes to those who need them. This past fall, she became the foster mother of two of her students, twin girls, who had been living on the streets with their father while their mother was in jail. Teachers truly are a combination of first responder and Mother Teresa. But it takes more than just a great teacher to give disadvantaged children what they need to succeed.

Thousands of educators like Sonya and their students who live in poverty show us why it so critical that we get the Elementary and Secondary Education Act right. When ESEA was signed into law in 1965, 23 percent of children lived in poverty. They were the reason why President Johnson zeroed in on providing targeted federal funding to children with the most needs. Today, half of all public school students live in poverty.

In the first 25 years of ESEA, the achievement gap narrowed measurably. Between 1973 and 1986, the achievement gap between black and white students closed by 22 points in math and 28 points in reading. Sadly, in the last 10 years, we’ve seen nominal progress to narrow the achievement gap.

ESEA’s successor, No Child Left Behind, along with the Race to the Top grant program and waivers to the law, led to the obsession with high-stakes tests and sanctions. They eclipsed interventions and ignored investments aligned with great high-quality teachers, professional development, funding for community schools and other strategies to really turn around struggling schools.

The recent bipartisan bill that cleared the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee will go a long way to help level the playing field for disadvantaged children. The committee’s very rare 22-0 vote not only shows the power of collaborative, determined leadership but also bodes well for its chances as the measure heads to the Senate floor. As the bill stands now, federal dollars are targeted for schools with high concentrations of poor children. Annual tests would still be required to let teachers, parents and other know how students are progressing and to inform instruction. But states, not the federal government, would bear primary responsible for developing accountability systems—a slap to current federal policy of demanding such sanctions as closing schools and evaluating and firing teachers based on test scores, policies that have not worked to narrow the achievement gap. The hyper-testing, sanction-based accountability systems that have pervaded education have sucked out the joy of teaching and learning. This bill is a big deal and critically important to get us back on track to help disadvantaged students.

Much work remains as the bill moves to the Senate floor—with even more work to be done in the House—to get it on President Obama’s desk and over the goal line to help every child in America—poor or not—climb the ladder of opportunity and achieve the American dream.

nationaljournal:

Poverty Issues Lurk in Senate Education Debate

Legislation to rewrite No Child Left Behind, however it turns out, will have a magnified impact on poor schools.

Last week, something amazing happened. Senate committee members representing a broad swath of political viewpoints voted unanimously on new education legislation that would substantially alter the current, haphazard laws on the books. They did it in the wake of political and pragmatic concerns from every direction, including a host of big ideological questions from one presidential candidate, Rand Paul, who held his fire for the sake of advancing the bill. They did it because they knew this compromise bill—shrinking federal punitive measures on schools but retaining requirements to test students annually—is far better than the current mishmash of state attempts to please the administration. They did it because they knew that if they pitched a fight now, the chances of the bill making it to President Obama's desk would greatly diminish. read more

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