D-Ed Reckoning has a great post on “The Poverty Meme Elephant in the Room.”
The biggest distraction in education policy is the poverty meme (or, more accurately – the low socio-economic status meme). It goes something like this: Being poor prevents poor kids from succeeding in school; therefore reforming schools is largely a waste of time.
When you look at the statistics, though, you find out it isn’t poverty that is the issue. It’s culture. And that is what D-Ed Reckoning finds as well.
She has two great graphs to show her point, the first of which I will include here, just to get you thinking.
But then go and read it all.
