Poor kids can’t learn

There’s a great article in this week’s New York Times magazine about the new educational landscape in New Orleans. With the slate wiped clean by Katrina, many educational entrepreneurs see it as an opportunity to prove that, with the right innovations, even the country’s poorest can succeed academically. For those in the right mindset, it looks like a chance to change the world.

There is, of course, the old debate about whether that change is possible through education alone. Diane Ravitch, a historian of education (and former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education) thinks not:

Poor children, Ravitch said, simply face too many problems outside the classroom. “If you don’t buttress whatever happens in school with social and economic changes that give kids a better chance in life and put their families on a more stable footing, then schools alone are not going to solve the problems of poor student performance. There has to be a range of social and economic strategies to support and enhance whatever happens in school.”

I like response of Paul Pastorek, the new Louisiana Secretary of Education. Well, duh, he essentially says. It would be wonderful if we could provide all these services to our students, but his job is to provide an education to students, many of them poor. He has to either operate under the assumption that it’s possible, or just give up and wait for some broader change.

To me, it’s a chicken-or-egg debate. This idea that you can put families on a stable footing without education is silly. South Dakota made me more conservative on some of this idea of stable footing for families: economic and social safety nets aren’t going to provide it; ultimately families and communities have to build it for themselves. How are they going to get there without education?