Educating the Disadvantaged: Does Anything Work?

The first thing I thought when delving into Sandra Stotsky’s The Roots of Low Achievementwas “How come I didn’t read anything like this when I was teaching?” The answer quickly brought me back to reality: because public education today is much less about common sense than it is about progressive and racial politics. You might say the book’s theme is failure; over the last five decades, educrats have continually ignored things that actually show promise for low achieving students, and in their place have foisted upon teachers and students one dubious idea after another. Stotsky spends much of the book proving these ideas for the folly they are. Nevertheless, it comes down to a philosophical difference: should schools continue the trend of being (much) more than just a place to get an education, or revert back to that original