Ending poverty, not adding tests, is solution to school woes | Mercedes Olivera Columns – News for Dallas, Texas – The Dallas Morning News

Mercedes Olivera, Dallas Morning News … recent studies also reveal that U.S. students from middle-class families and well-funded schools outscore students in nearly all other countries.

“Our average scores are less than spectacular because the U.S. has the highest percentage of children in poverty of all industrialized countries,” said [Stephen] Krashen, professor emeritus at the University of Southern California

Poverty means inadequate nutrition, inadequate health care, exposure to toxic chemicals in the environment and little access to books. All those factors are strongly associated with lower school performance, he said.

“If all of our children had the same advantages middle-class children have, our test scores would be at the top of the world,” Krashen said. He criticized the Obama administration’s move to spend billions on new standards and tests, which he said will do little to improve a child’s ability to learn.