Quotes from Robert Pondiscio

Genuine education equity will be achieved only when schools serving low-income children mirror in number, variety, and access the options that affluent parents have come to expect for their children.

we must also recognize that aspiration is a poor substitute for rational policymaking and ask whether we have accidentally conspired to undermine the very outcomes to which we aspire.

There is no moral reason for government at any level to prevent the children of engaged and invested Americans of any race, ethnic group, or income level from reaping the full rewards of their talents and ambitions, nor interfering with parents' best efforts to do what they deem best for their children.

What Eva Moskowitz appears to have created is something unprecedented in contemporary education: a mechanism for a critical mass of engaged and invested low-income families of color to self-select into schools where their attitudes, values, and ambitions for their children make them culture keepers and drivers, not outliers.

a comprehensive and equitable system of public education does not require that every school be exactly the same; it requires an ecosystem of schools that collectively can serve the need of every child.

That lesson is unambiguous: culture matters. But it cannot be imposed. If a government takes its legitimacy from the consent of the governed, so does a school. The full benefit and effect is obtained only when all parties involved share a common vision, entered voluntarily and by choice.

The more challenging question is the moral one: If a child is seriously disruptive, whose interests should we prioritize? The one who needs extra attention and resources to succeed? Or his classmates, whose class time is reduced by his issues and outbursts? It is difficult to overstate how common this dilemma is in schools serving almost entirely low-income children—and how rarely it goes unresolved in schools where affluent Americans send their children.

If Eva Moskowitz is to be charged with creating an opportunity for parents like Ayan Wilson, Evelyn Ortega, Vanessa and Andre Farrer, and other families with more ambition for their children than means, it is a curious charge. If you demand that engaged and committed parents send their children to school with the children of disengaged and uncommitted parents, then you are obligated to explain why this standard applies to low-income black and brown parents—and only to them.

If we define a good school as one that serves all children equally well and effectively, we might as well concede there is no such thing as a good school and never will be.

The more challenging question is the moral one: If a child is seriously disruptive, whose interests should we prioritize? The one who needs extra attention and resources to succeed?

But to worship at the altar of "just read" fails to see reading for what it actually is: a complex and nuanced interplay of decoding, vocabulary, subject matter, and contextual knowledge. Well-intended but misguided teachers and administrators have imposed a kind of illiteracy on low-income children of color by focusing their attention relentlessly in the mirror, instead of out the window. Reading comprehension is not a skill you teach but a condition you create.