America's Education Problems Way Deeper Than 'Good' or 'Bad' Teachers

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Educational disparities may be getting worse, not better, yet the heated debate over school reform has paid little attention to the hard realities families and teachers face.
May 30, 2011

Last year in East LA, Jose Pedraza was struggling mightily in his classes and drifting listlessly through his days. It was worrying enough to his teachers at Oscar De La Hoya Animo Charter School, where he was then a junior, that the principal called his mother Pascuala Jaramillo and asked for an urgent meeting.

Jaramillo, a seasoned education activist who had organized other parents and made it a point to get to know her kids’ teachers, grabbed what she calls her “bible” and ran straight to the school. It’s actually not a holy book, but rather a binder of her kids’ education documents and information about her own parental rights—“everything I need to defend myself,” she explains. Her years of organizing other parents taught her that teachers and administrators are often too burdened by their work to be effective advocates for their students. She went ready to fight, if she had to.

“When I got to the school, I got notes telling me that my son wasn’t really working,” Jaramillo says. “The principal said, ‘His body is here, but his brain is not in the room.’ “

Jaramillo immediately understood what was going on. She told the principal what their family had been dealing with at home. Her husband, Guadalupe Pedraza, had been abruptly laid off from his maintenance job recently. After 12 years working there, he was told on a Wednesday that his last day would be that Friday.

more . . . http://www.alternet.org/story/150909/america's_education_problems_way_deeper_than_'good'_or_'bad'_teachers?page=entire