Re: “A realistic, proven plan to create better schools”

To Mr. "I'm sorry, but this sounds like..." I am one of the authors of the proposal Mary Anna refers to, a journalist for 34 years, a members of the Great Schools steering committee. First, children are neither horses nor fish. Second, you are entitled to your "feelings" that this is a bad idea, or your "feeling" that the real problem is the parents or the kids themselves. But as the late Sen. Pat Moynihan used to say, Sir, you are not entitled to your own facts. To assert that there is no scientific basis for our proposal is utter nonsense. The effects of poverty on educational outcomes is the subject of 50 years of research--deep, wide and varied, Few subjects related to education have been more carefully studied and documented. Go to our website (www.gs4a.org), review our proposal and dig into the references at the end. There are links to easy-to-read articles in popular magazines, as well as citations for scholarly research from the 1960s to the present. And what we have posted just scratches the surface of the research. Everything we propose is based on evidence. That's why we propose it. I suspect you won't be digging into the research. That's your choice. But to disparage the research is intellectual malpractice, even for a lay person.--Mark Hare