Childhood key to success

Re: “School vouchers are about fairness, not politics,” Another View, Tuesday:

The author, identified as an employee of the San Antonio Independent School District, leans hard on the invalid concept of “failing schools” to argue in support of tax-financed vouchers to pay for enrollment in private, often church operated K-12 schools. He should know better.

The ability to succeed academically varies widely from child to child. What appear to be “failing schools” are nearly always schools that enroll a larger-thanaverage proportion of failing students. How well children perform academically is not a function of the school they attend.

How well children perform academically is nearly always a function of two other factors. One is the innate academic ability of each student. The other is the quality of each student’s life during the time spent someplace other than school. Neither factor is within the control of any school or any school’s teachers.

Children are not the customers of a K-12 school. They are a school’s raw material. The quality of the finished product of any manufacturing process is always limited by the quality of the raw material used — irrespective of the skills of the particular artisan. Teachers cannot enhance the innate academic ability of any child. Teachers can teach, but no teacher can teach a child any lesson that the child is incapable of learning.

Children who fail to achieve their academic potential do not need better schools. They need better childhoods. Schools cannot provide better childhoods.

Rob Bligh