Education Part II

    So as I discussed earlier, America will never really tackle the home/student side of the teacher/student equation.  Our American ideology, based on individual rights, our economic system based on maintaining a large population of working poor and a culture that values entertainment over education ensures that the educational system can only really exist within the walls of the school.  Families have to value education in order for students to value education.  Families have to provide a stable environment for student to exceed.
    Its no mystery why parents of "A" students overwhelmingly show up for student conferences, while the parents of "F" are like ghosts, even their phones don't work.  Its no mystery why after spending 20 minutes looking at district test scores you'll find that high achieving schools are in the middle class neighborhoods and lower achieving schools are in low income neighborhoods.  Are those schools underfunded?  Not where I live, these schools get tons of federal funding.  Are the teachers bad?  No, not where I live.  I theorize that if you could exchange the people,  or transport the school, things would not change.  So are lower income kids dumber?  No, not where I live.  There are very smart kids who have distinct, and learned, anti-intellectual beliefs.  Their parents either don't value education or are not around.   More and more their entertainment instills their values, how many rappers value education over women, guns and drugs?  How often is education valued over physical power or attractiveness on TV?  How are smart people portrayed in our country?
    So we can't go into everybody's home, we cannot raise peoples children.  We cannot tell people what to believe.  So in order to do "something" our society hammers on teachers.   This will never produce the results we want.  Part of the political answer is to institute mandatory testing.  Not surprisingly, many of the deadlines race ahead into the future and many states, including Washington, have applied for wavers.  I believe that if mandatory testing was actually, and honestly, implemented our society would quickly realize that there is a huge socioeconomic problem.  Schools in low-income areas would struggle and society would question, why are these teacher failing our students.  They would never wonder why all the "bad" teachers magically ended up in the low income areas.  Or ever realize, maybe their not really bad at all.