Diane Ravitch and Anthony Cody encouraged teachers to write letters to President Obama relating their experiences of Race to the Top and high stakes testing. They are amazing: the voices of people who work so hard for kids every day only to be treated as though they are the ones standing in the way, demonized as union cronies or second rate hacks. They have been publishing some of them to their respective blogs and I would encourage you to read them.  Here’s the one I tweeted out this morning. Shelley Barker from Washington State thinks about the differences between her honors kids and her not-so-honors kids and comes to this wrenching conclusion:

Obviously, the variable is the vast differences in my students’ lives. We cannot ignore the fact that some kids come to us programmed to learn. They’ve had amazing experiences in their short lives. They have parents who support their endeavors, be they academic, artistic, or athletic. They do not come to school hungry and they do not go to bed scared. They travel during school breaks. Their houses are warm and their many pairs of shoes fit. My students who live in poverty do not have their basic needs met. In addition to lacking food, shelter, water, and clothing, many live in chaos. Violence, missing parents, low wages, drug use, loss of employment…the list goes on. How can a child focus on crafting a good title or writing an engaging lead when so many forces, out of her control, take center stage in her brain and her psyche? I’m positive you studied Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs in your academic years. NOTHING that propels growth can happen in a person’s life until those very basic needs are met.

The letter is eloquent and raw at the same time as you feel her anguish over these students. No five point plan or extra testing or charter school or voucher program is going to solve this.  Lyndon Johnson declared a War on Poverty and many of the programs like food stamps and Medicaid that are now under fire were put into place in his administration.

Yet, poverty wasn’t mentioned once in any of the debates, and one of the candidates famously said that he didn’t really worry about the very poor since they were taken care of, as though we had somehow solved the issue of poverty in this country.  We can talk all we want about having a first class education in this country but until we figure out how to reduce the 15% poverty rate, we’ll never succeed.