Gene Nichol, a law professor at the University of North Carolina, patiently explains that none of the “reforms” endorsed by the legislature, like charters and vouchers, will make a difference. The major obstacle causing low educational performance is poverty, not bad teachers or bad schools

He writes:

“The troubling correlation between education and poverty places North Carolina reform efforts in odd posture. For the powers-that-be on Jones Street and in the governor’s office, the obsession to “reform” our education system – through vouchers, charters, endless tests, performance measures and the like – is matched only by an unequaled, defining pledge to ignore and, in operation, actually increase child poverty.

“We’ll use every school reform tool in the arsenal except the one the entire world knows matters most: lifting kids from debilitating hardship. As if a child can learn effectively when she is hungry, sick, ill-clad, unsupported, unchallenged and unprepared.”

He adds:

“The marriage of poverty and educational underperformance should give pause to the many Tar Heels who claim, I can attest, that the only anti-poverty program they support is education. It’s a consoling thought, perhaps.

“But it is literally, quite literally, impossible to secure equal educational opportunity while 26 percent of our children – 41 percent of our children of color – live in torturous poverty.”