Stephen Henderson, Free Press Editor, responds to my communication to him.

Good grief. What a ramble. I’ve covered schools, and reform, for 20 years – in Kentucky, Detroit, Chicago and Baltimore. I’ve spent more time writing about education than anything else, that’s for sure. The most pernicious untruth I’ve ever come across is the idea that “poor kids can’t learn,” or kids without stable parents can’t learn. The second most pernicious untruth is that test scores don’t matter. Or that they matter less than other measures of learning. Bubkus. And if you believe that, then you ought to believe that we should get rid of public schools altogether. I do have kids, and I expect the schools they attend to teach them whether I’m rich or poor, whether I read to them or not. That’s the point – public schools were invented as a great equalizer in this society. I agree we don’t fund them properly to achieve that, and they aren’t structured the right way, either. But the idea that we expect too much of schools is infuriating. The idea that we expect too much of teachers is infuriating. We expect too little – of everyone..