In this post, Paul Horton reviews an important book, and its implications for public schools today.
He writes:
“An important new study, The Long Shadow: Family Background, Disadvantaged Urban Youth, and the Transition to Adulthood by Karl Alexander, Doris Entwisle, and Linda Olson, casts doubt on the current policy push to starve neighborhood public schools and fund charter schools that are not connected to supportive communities.
“The 2014 Russell Sage Foundation study emphasizes that it does take a village to raise kids, and to the extent that schools are not a part of a supportive web of extended families, mentorship opportunities, institutions that provide constructive activities, health care, child support, and access to entry level and skilled jobs through community networking, they can not deliver success to disadvantaged urban youth.”
Horton adds:
“Although the authors of The Long Shadow do not come down on one side of the public vs. charter school debate, they do emphasize that building stronger communities and neighborhoods is the key to building schools that can leverage resources to strengthen schools to help construct more positive job pathways for underserved black urban youth.
“At a time when many charters are encouraging the segregation of students living in “hyperpoverty” neighborhoods schools need:
to desegregate beyond the selective magnet model
to develop quality preschools
to create smaller class sizes
to create high quality, engaging summer school and after school programs
to hire highly qualified, well prepared, well-supported, and committed teachers
to develop high standards and strong curricula
to support meaningful integration across SES levels
to create classroom environments that respect children’s background and builds from their strengths
to build an it-takes-a-village mindset that addresses children’s and their parents’ needs.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“hire highly qualified, well prepared, well-supported, and committed teachers”
I am ready to be committed.
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Diane, I think you should try to publicize the fact that the SUNY Charter Institute is about to approve 14 new Success Academy schools, and many (arguably most!) of them are designed to compete with reasonably strong community schools instead of creating new strong schools where the community school is failing. We just saw a rally that purported to be about the 143,000 students in failing NYC public schools. The SUNY Charter Institute has a chance to address it by approving charters that give lottery priority to the low-income students zoned for those failing public schools. Let’s make sure that the public and politicians are well-aware that SUNY could be approving charter schools that make those students a priority, instead of charter schools that locate in neighborhoods where those 143,000 students don’t live or are shut out in favor of affluent students. If SUNY is showing favoritism to the well-connected charter school that refuses to give any of those 143,000 students lottery priority to attend their schools, then the public needs to know that and ask why. It would show that SUNY Charter Institute doesn’t care about those kids, except as props for rallies.
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Yes, we need ALL those ideas in operation to make a good school environment for kids! We need one more idea, the MOST important – envolved PARENTS. Without these (and I mean two real parents, not fake parents), the perfect, ideal school will fail!
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