Last week, I posted a link to a NYT article, which showed that the PTAs in middle class neighborhoods can be incredibly effective in fund raising. Some PTAs have gathered enough money to pay for teachers and smart boards and other big ticket items. It's more than just bake sales, people.

On Friday, Steve and I are going to a fund raiser for Ian's school. We've already spent $200 on the tickets, and since it's a casino night, I expect that we'll have to plop down more when we're there. That money goes to yoga instruction, smart boards, and monthly field trips.

I asked whether the PTAs increase school inequality. And other bloggers chimed in to discuss their experiences. Please read GeekyMom, Jackie, and Elizabeth. An excellent conversation.

These fund raising efforts are just one way that the middle class has a huge advantage in education. Reading to kids, having books available, taking them to museums and sports activities, talking to them and imposing bed times also mean that the average kindergarten student from a suburban, middle class home is leap years ahead of their poorer peers.

What to do about this? Clearly, we can't prevent middle class parents from donating money to their schools or from reading bedtime stories to their tots. Efforts to level down schools to create equity are stupid politically and morally. But at the same time, we just can't have such a disparity in our schools. If government is providing a service, it has to be the same service for everyone.

Slight tangent — My buddy, Suze, were comparing teaching literature/writing with teaching political science. I preferred teaching politics, because even though there were more lectures and current events to deal with, the grading burden was lighter. I would rather write lectures than grade papers. She just finished her student teaching in an urban school, where the class time was spent writing papers and reading the books — very little direct instruction. In suburban classrooms, they expect the reading and paper writing happens at home, so class time involves other projects. That means that the suburban kids get twice as much instruction as the urban kids.

We have two tracks of education in this country. A school in one town is a completely different entity than a school in another town. 

When I first got thrown into the special education world three years ago, I was shocked to learn that it was nearly a full time job dealing with it all. I asked a more experienced friend, "how does someone with less resources than myself deal with all this?" She told me that I didn't have the luxury to worry about other kids, shut up, and just worry about my kid.