Well, not quite, but what he did say (in this excellent Columbus Dispatch article on school turnarounds) was almost as preposterous:
The only way you change communities is by having great public schools in those communities?It isn't about saving one set of students. It's about changing outcomes in a community for decades to come.
OK, so let me get this straight: Turning a bad school into a good school is going to ?change outcomes in a community for decades to come?? So we take a typical down-and-out urban neighborhood, a place where the only people who remain are those who can't afford to leave. It's got all the social pathologies of extreme concentrated poverty: crime, drug abuse, lack of social capital. But because the local school starts to improve, that community is going to be transformed? I'd love to believe it but can anyone name a single community in the entire country where this scenario has played out?
My colleague Jamie said it right when she told me in an email:
The schools need to improve despite the neighborhoods; improving poor neighborhoods is beyond the capacity (or purpose) of public schools.
Precisely.
Don't get me wrong: some schools improve, and some communities are transformed. But asking one to lead to the other is a bridge too far.
-Mike Petrilli
