Teacher: Family Background Has More Impact On Education Than Schools

In an op-ed in USA Today (6/21) Virginia high school teacher Patrick Welsh writes that "parents and family culture are the most important factors in a child's education," and suggests that policymakers are "loath to admit" this, "lest they appear powerless in the face of the staggering academic differences" in the nation's students. He notes that it is "in vogue for reformers to blame the achievement gap not on poor parenting but more on poor teaching," but he refutes the notion that "children born to single, semi-literate, poverty-stricken 16- or 17-year-olds can, with the right teachers, reach the same level of academic skill as children born to" literate families of means.