Read the entire op-ed and post a comment on sfgate.com.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?...FEDSK1MA8D3.DTL

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Money proves best tool for improving schools

David Sirota
Friday, December 9, 2011

As 2011 draws to a close, we can confidently declare that one of the biggest debates over education is - mercifully - resolved. We may not have addressed all the huge challenges facing our schools, but we finally have empirical data ruling out apocryphal theories and exposing the fundamental problem.

We've learned, for instance, that our entire education system is not "in crisis." On the contrary, results from Program for International Student Assessment exams show that American students in low-poverty schools are among the highest-achieving students in the world.

We've also learned that no matter how much self-styled education "reformers" claim otherwise, the always-demonized teachers' unions are not holding our education system back. As the New York Times recently noted: "If unions are the primary cause of bad schools, why isn't labor's pernicious effect" felt in the very unionized schools that so consistently graduate top students?

Now, at year's end, we've learned from two studies just how powerful economics are in educational outcomes.

The first report, from Stanford University, showed that with a rising "income achievement gap," a family's economic situation is a bigger determinative force in a child's academic performance than any other major demographic factor. For poor kids, that means that the intensifying hardships of poverty are now creating enormous obstacles to academic progress.

Because of this reality, schools in destitute areas naturally require more resources than those in rich ones to help impoverished kids overcome comparatively steep odds. Yet, according to the second report from the U.S. Department of Education, "many high-poverty schools receive less than their fair share of state and local funding."

Put all this together and behold the crux of America's education problem in bumper-sticker terms: It's poverty and punitive funding formulas, stupid. ...