I returned from spring break this week as was immediately confronted with the many ways in which out of school factors influence the success we have with many of our children.  I had been thinking about this having taken with me to read during the down time David Berliner's report, Poverty and Potential: Out-of-School Factors and School Success.

Monday brought us three new students.  One returning to live with mom, having bounced back and forth between parents at least a dozen times during her school career leading to a rather thick file of schools attended and potential yet to be realized.  Another came from the youth prison system, a 16 year-old ninth grader without any school records from the for-profit electronic charter school that she herself felt was a joke.  The third was a drop out, who, having lived on his own for a year had landed in a house in our district and wanted to try school again.

Each of these children had been battered by forces much larger than they or their schools.  Substance abuse, broken homes, lack of health care, lack of housing or adequate nutrition has stacked the deck against their success.  There best hope is now us, I believe we are up to the challenge, but it won't be easy.  (And, as I write this, I have been informed that our drop out, after just two days in school, is gone again, having been kicked out of the home in which he had found temporary refuge.)

But America needs to get the message that schools alone are not the answer to achievement gaps.  As we have insisted in all of our work, including our national petition drive, we have an educational debt that must be paid if we expect all children to succeed in school and more importantly as citizens.  This includes operating as if every child was your child--making sure that he or she has adequate health care, nutrition, housing, and a safe and healthy environment and neighborhood. Berliner's report does as good a job as any of outlining what these needs are and how they can be met.

I am not excusing my school from our obligation to do what is best for kids each and every day.  But I an also not excusing a nation that refuses to take care of all its children as if any one of them might someday grow up to be president.