A teacher knows how the achievement gap grows:
My wife and I are both elementary teachers in the same district but at completely different schools. She teaches at a school with over 80% free and reduced lunch whereas my school has 7%. When I ask her about the policies in her school versus the policies we have in my school IN THE SAME SCHOOL DISTRICT, it led me to this conclusion: rich kids get taught, poor kids get tested.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Love this. Who can I attribute the quote to? Is there a longer article or reflection it comes from?
Look through comments today and you will find it.
Great quote! Who can I attribute it to? Is there a longer article or reflection it comes from?
Also, why are our policy makers just NOT getting this yet?!
This isn’t the case in my district. I live in a low poverty area, and teachers teach to collect data. And they use “scientific” based programs that came out during NCLB, WHICH were very political. This research was one sided and not best practices. Instead it’s skill, drill, and kill.
That sums it up accurately. It should be a bumper sticker.
We live in a middle/upper-middle class suburban neighborhood in Southwest Austin. Our kids get reading and math, math and reading and sometimes they get a little science or a little bit of social studies. At our school there is NO foreign language instruction, NO enrichment programs, NO project-based learning, NO student writing portfolios and NO outdoor education. The testing treadmill is scheduled to kick in next month when students begin to take benchmark tests. After that, it’s all data-driven instruction and test-based learning, with tons of anger-producing homework assignments. Sad to say, the grass is not greener on our side of the fence.
We are in a blue ribbon school that is high SES and they are tested to death too. I think private school is the only escape around here.
My son attended K-2 in a school that had an extremely high percentage of free/reduced lunch. We moved across town and now his school has a much lower percentage (same district). My experiences at these two schools lead me to believe that that statement is completely true.