PovRacers Vs. SchoolRefs, Revisited

No one could be blamed for not making it all the way through Paul Tough's NYT Magazine thought piece on school reform (What It Takes to Make a Student), which rehashes a lot of what we already know (the rise of NCLB & KIPP) and tries not entirely successfully to tie everything (accountability, charters) together. But there are some important and interesting points that he makes, including some about tensions within school reform about how much schools can be expected to accomplish.

In fact, longtime readers of this site might be reminded of a post from a year ago -- Two Warring Camps: PovRacers vs. SchoolRefs -- which began: "There are basically two main factions when it comes to thinking about education these days -- those who think underylying problems of poverty and race need to be addressed before significant improvements can be made in education, and those who believe that schools can get much better at helping children learn within the current reality."

UPDATE: This AFT blog (Right Questions) notes that Tough's article is covering old ground about things like the "word gap" and throws in the PovRacer argument that neighborhood segregation as yet another factor that should be addressed.