Urban Schools Public Will

I wanted to make at least a cursory mention of one of the books we sorta got to, sorta didn’t this semester.  Urban Schools, Public Will by Norm Fruchter is probably the most enjoyable book I’ve read this semester - and I have sort of like all of them.  I also happen to think that it is the densest of the reading materials that we’ve examined - I find it to be far-reaching in scope, and highly technical, but on subject matter that I find intriguing enough to make the book quite enjoyable (For a slow reader like me, however, it takes forever to get through a chapter).

I, however, wanted to critique one of his approaches to examining eliminating the Achievement Gap between white and minority students in this country.  He proposes to use schools run by the Department of Defense (DoD) that cater to mainly children of military personnel as an example of a school system that can successfully minimize the achievement gap.  But you’ll have to forgive me if I have a hard time accepting this as a valid comparison.  Sure, it’s interesting to see that there has been success made in this most critical of education challenges, but I cannot believe that the results can ever be anything more than interesting - I see relatively few application potentials.  You see, it would be my belief that much (in not all) of this success revolves around the unique position that DoD schools find themselves in.  The cater to children of parents that have all been instilled with a sense of great discipline and responsibility, with respect for the chain of command and authority in general.  Doubtless, many of these parents have instilled at least some modicum of this discipline and respect into their children, making testing results all that much better across the board.  Also at issue is the fact that many of the neighborhoods that these students come from because of the military presence should tend to be quite well-adjusted which also skews test results.  

Now I’m not against turning every school in the country into a military school, I’m really not, but I have a feeling that I would be in the minority on that vote, so I simply can’t see the value of this comparison.  Sorry if that sounds harsh, but my opinions are my own.