With a vigorous nod to my colleague, Susan Graham, for her insights over at Teacher Magazine on the recently issued "A Broader, Bolder Approach to Education" I offer a few additional thoughts.

On the surface, most of what the statement calls for is laudable and logical. But as I read it more closely, a few statements began to trouble me.

For example: "Education policy in this nation has typically been crafted around the expectation that schools alone can offset the full impact of low socioeconomic status in learning."  Oh, really? The children of the poor have been the primary concern of educational policymakers? And what is the evidence (or better yet, the results) of that concern?

I have long standing issues about "grade levels," and how they are determined, so I wonder about this emphasis on children coming to school equally prepared. "Every American child should arrive at the starting line of first grade ready and able to learn." Again, this sounds noble. But, to agree with that one has to buy in to the idea that all children should be able to do certain things by a certain age. Having raised 11 children and worked with thousands, that dog just won't hunt with me. I'm particularly leery of African American boys being mislabeled as non-verbal or having social or behavioral problems by pre-K and kindergarten teachers who are unable to connect with them culturally (sorry, that one was a grandbaby issue).  Whether or not children are "ready" for school depends largely on what it is we intend to do for them when they reach school.  Not having a home to sleep in before coming to school is an economic disadvantage; not liking or recognizing certain types of social customs is a cultural difference. Not everyone takes time to tell the difference.

I won't take time to go into it here, but the real history of the Head Start program, which began in rural Mississippi, is what I was thinking of when I read the statement's call for "increased investment in developmentally appropriate and high-quality early childhood, pre-school, and kindergarten education."  That kind of noble talk has been heard before, and it translated into the worst kind of paternalistic racist usurpation's of parental rights and community-based cultural practices.  It was well-intentioned educational policy during the desegregation of the schools that led to the dismissal of thousands of Black school administrators and highly effective teachers. Those same policies led to a dismantling of the cultural ties between communities (in our case Black communities) and our schools. These mostly unintended consequences were, nevertheless, debilitating. Collateral damage from poorly developed and implemented public education policy....Hmm...where have we seen that recently?

The same policy-making bodies that forced us, for example, to separate learning into discreet, unconnected bits of economically testable knowledge or to separate children into one-way developmental tracks, are now to be trusted to turn that around? Bold thinking for sure.

On another note, the statement's call for increased access to medical care by putting "full-service health clinics in schools" was enough to make me cry. Health clinics? The majority of schools here don't even have an occasional public health nurse visit. The shortage of nurses and medical personnel in our state is worse than the chronic teacher shortage, and affects the same high-need communities, urban and rural.  Overcrowded school buildings or trailers, some with outdated, even unsanitary conditions for students and teachers, would make curious, but certainly welcome settings for such full-service clinics.

All that said, however, I'm trying hard not to be cynical, just pragmatic. Making 'broader, bolder" statements is certainly much easier than making and implementing effective policy. But I'm glad there are those who haven't given up, and I'm glad to partner with them (paraphrasing John Wesley) to accomplish all the good we can, or at least, to learn from our past mistakes and not do more harm.