The Year They Began Calling Poverty and Homelessness an 'Excuse'
The last paragraph is spot on:
"The notion that rising unemployment, declining real wages, and a shocking increase in family poverty are mere 'excuses,' with little or no impact on student learning, is unworthy of our nation's top school leaders. It tells me that current school reform policies have little to do with sound social or educational research, but instead are ideologically or politically (in the worst sense) driven. In this political environment, Duncan's chants of "poverty is not destiny" sound downright pollyannish and even cruel in light of current conditions and his own policies"
