Perhaps these authors knew the New York Times would continue with its neoliberal bashing of schools in its piece about making "better" teachers.
If you can't fix the underlying problems of poverty and the increasing economic stratification of this country, then there is no point bitching at the teachers.
As Lehnhoff notes, "Schools are always the whipping boy for the failures of society." The problems dragged to school each morning -- neglect, abuse, domestic violence, bulimia, drugs and alcohol -- can not be resolved in a classroom.
The little red schoolhouse is just a terribly convenient place to assess the damage and assign the blame.
When a kid is beaten up at home, no one blames the cops for failing to respond to the domestic violence call that's never made. Only when the child comes to school, and either fails classes or takes out his anger on another student, do we have the drop-out statistic or lousy test score that tells us something is wrong.
"We have to fundamentally rethink what schools are supposed to do," Lehnhoff. "If we're expecting schools to perform miracles and fix these social problems, we must fund them like a social-service agency."
I love his sticking it to Obama, the biggest enemy of public education the presidency has ever had.
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