Harry beat me to the punch this morning. I was going to write about a "Room for Debate" post by Richard Rothstein at the New York Times, but he trumped me with a better Rothstein essay.

Rothstein questions whether union bashing will do much to change school quality, because teacher quality, while important, isn't THE most important factor in determining the success of a child. Rothstein says that, "Decades of social science research have demonstrated that differences in the quality of schools can explain about one-third of the variation in student achievement. But the other two-thirds is attributable to non-school factors."

When the president says that the single most important factor is parents, he does not mean the parents’ zip code or income or skin color, as though zip codes or income or skin color themselves influence a child’s achievement. Joel Klein and Michelle Rhee’s caricature of the research in this way prevents a careful consideration of policies that could truly raise the achievement of America’s children. What President Obama means is that if a child’s parents are poorly educated themselves and don’t read frequently to their young children, or don’t use complex language in speaking to their children, or are under such great economic stress that they can’t provide a stable and secure home environment or proper preventive health care to their children, or are in poor health themselves and can’t properly nurture their children, or are unable to travel with their children or take them to museums and zoos and expose them to other cultural experiences that stimulate the motivation to learn, or indeed live in a zip code where there are no educated adult role models and where other adults can’t share in the supervision of neighborhood youth, then children of such parents will be impeded in their ability to take advantage of teaching, no matter how high quality that teaching may be.

President Obama put it this way: “It’s not just making sure your kids are doing their homework, it’s also instilling a thirst for knowledge and excellence….And the community can help the parents. Listen, I love basketball. But the smartest kid in the school…should be getting as much attention as the basketball star. That’s a change that we’ve got to initiate in our community.”

I've been thinking a lot about non-school factors lately. I volunteered to give a talk on school reform to the local education foundation, and I've been putting together a powerpoint presentation in my head. The first slide was going to be about how wealth of a community is the primary determinant of school outcomes.

We've talked about the Iron Law of Money and Schools before. It's not just the actual money in the schools that makes a difference in the schools though that surely helps, but it is also a culture and commitment to education, a freedom of poverty, and a freedom from social upheaval that has to exist for a child to prosper.

I should note that it is tricky to separate school factors from non-school factors, because a wealthier community that has a commitment to education will also have parents who have the time to get involved with school practices and will demand better teacher quality. They will march into a principal's office and complain about practices. They will attend school meetings. They will be active members of the school board.

So, what can we do about it? Schools aren't going to change without major changes in society. Less poverty, better housing, better nutrition. Sure. But what can one particular school district do about those things? Not much. We have to change the entire culture of a community to change a school. I would love to see new policy ideas towards that end.