[G-Kue 1911]

Who implied that free or reduced lunch made you poor...I didn't. And the eligibility requirements are only that you receive free or reduced lunch (not your State Standardized test scores). But you hit the nail on the head with your thoughts on other factors why students fail to achieve better grades. This is what so many people educators included fail to realize.

Originally Posted by AGDee

Implying that only poor kids who don't pass the test need tutoring? That's absurd.

The real problem with this philosophy of blaming the teacher and the school system when kids don't learn is that there are a million factors that determine where a child is academically. My kids would pass any standardized test in the world no matter what the skill level of the teachers who taught their courses was. They are intelligent kids who get good nutrition, don't live in fear of crime 24/7, who have parents who value education, who have an innate desire to know things and takes initiative to learn things on their own, whose parents have heat in the house and electricity and a computer for every person in the house, who don't have learning disabilities or mental or physical illnesses that prevent them from learning, who get their hearing and eyes checked regularly, etc. They've had good teachers and not so good teachers and when the teachers were not so good, they learned it on their own or asked for more help from their educated parents. A far cry from a kid who is living in poverty with no heat or electricity, who might eat the one free meal a day from the school, who has a learning disability and needs glasses but can't afford them, who is in a high crime area and is far more worried about staying safe walking home from the bus stop than getting their home work done, who don't sleep well because they live in fear of an alcoholic, abusive parent, etc.

Education is about so much more than how well a teacher can teach a subject.