Can School Reform Succeed Without Addressing Poverty

Can School Reform Succeed Without Addressing Poverty? Education reform, the goal of changing public education for the better, has been an idea in the minds of officials and parents since the 1800’s. There have been many effortful attempts to create effective school reform, however, many of them do not address major social issues such as poverty which must be dealt with. Although many reforms have changed our country, none have brought the amount of change necessary to make our schools fit to fairly and thoroughly educate each and every student. Recent reform acts such as the NCLB (No Child Left Behind Act) focused on holding schools accountable for student success; however, this, like many other acts failed in many ways. The NCLB†¦show more content†¦Due to the many large scale reform acts of previous, it is almost obvious that we need a change in the public schooling system. The aim of each act is to make a just system for each student to achieve. However, not all public school children are succeeding, in fact a lar ge fraction of students are failing. Not only are the students failing, but entire schools are failing. This make origin a predictor of success because each school, depending on origin, is financed differently. Origin, however, is ultimately based upon income, therefore, income is the ultimate predictor of success. This means that the paycheck of the family that a child is born into more or less determines the child’s educational success. This is one of the many reasons why reform is necessary; because school as it is does not offer each child the same opportunities. This makes a main issue of public schooling a social issue, poverty. Poverty changes the way that students and schools perform. In 1988, a national study was done on student poverty and performance levels of eight grade students. The results of the data led to the conclusion that: High poverty public schools in the sample show a considerably greater need for special educational support programs than do low poverty schools; that students in these schools, whatever their family socioeconomic status, have lower achievement than do students in the low poverty schools; and that schools with more than 50 percent of their