I came across an entreprenurial site I want to share with you, the Young Entrepreneur Society from the http://www.YoungEntrepreneurSociety.com. A great documentary about successful entrepreneurs.

Notice that the proposed solutions have a price tag that is far beyond anything contemplated for urban schools. If we want to address the increasing costs of segregation and generational poverty, we’d need capacity for up to 30 more days and up to 4.5 more hours per day. Or better, we could provide poor high school kids what they really need, respectful relationships with caring adults, apprenticeships and travel. (and I don’t mean a vo-tech dumping ground.)

Paraphrasing the discussion, I have no doubt that America could create … (the capacity for closing the achievement gap) but “I do have doubts about the commitment to pay for such a dramatic change.”

If we’re talking social science, the Eduwonkette clearly has made a more accurate summary of our knowledge, but we’re also talking politics. I still question your political stance. We teachers don’t need “soothing reassurance that they (we) can’t do much better …” Take a look at this week’s newspapers in Chicago and Philadelphia about the heroic police efforts that can’t even keep order when school is dismissed. Some individuals and some schools can be effective given current realities. But we know we can’t make a dent in the worst problems without addressing deeper problems. As Calkins wrote, “we have yet to figure out, broadly speaking, how to break the link between poverty and low achievement.”

And Carol, I would respond that I never hear the IQ argument except to ridicule it. But reading the blog comments, I was appalled. So I guess I should qualify my observations about politics. Maybe Ed Sector and others have to go along with the straw man of unions resisting change.Perhaps we all have to defend ourselves from the anti-education sentiments of society. But I still see honesty as the best approach and we must be frank about the challenge we face. That’s just one more reason why I’m so hopeful, perhaps overly hopeful, that Obama can give us all more freedom to say the things that we haven’t dared to communicate in public.

This leads to a different point that I’ve noticed about education, and a sentiment that one of the blog comments reminded me of. Mike wrote:

“Attempts to force it from outside of the community often seem patronizing at best, and can be downright destructive at worst… This isn’t to say that outsiders can’t have a positive effect, only that insiders are best able to *lead* the effort and ensure that the movement as a whole resonates with what the community needs and can accept… I see something like this as more effective than having well-meaning but still outsider university staff come and lecture at us, as has happened in the past.”

I think this bears repeating over and over again. Or until I can finally watch some discussion about education over youtube or fora.tv and have at least one person take note of the overwhelming homogeneity at these conferences.

on the point below – can you point me towards studies that find large school effects? perhaps i am missing something, but as i read this literature, school effects are tiny relative to teacher effects.

Different schools have different effects on similar students. That is the primary finding from social science research, and a fact around which education policy should be organized. Put more plainly: schools matter.