It's the Poverty, Stupid

New article by David Berliner, one of the most incisive thinkers about the current educational scene, on what he says we have all known but fail to acknowledge: that until we confront the effects of poverty upon schools, school reform, such as the much trumpeted and misguided No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB, Nickleby...) will fail. We continue to go on looking for the wrong reasons for underachievement in schools, while poverty remains, as Berliner vividly puts it, the 600 pound gorilla in the classroom.