The Boston Globe «weighs in» on closing the achievement gap between socioeconomic haves and have-nots. Their conclusion:

‘“Teach everything” should be a motto: academics, time management, study skills, and the value of a positive attitude. Instead of laboring for hours over opaque material, students should be trained to ask for help early and often. … Achievement isn’t about genes or race. It’s just making a choice to work hard. Good schools give students a personal map and the tools to do that work.’
—Boston Globe

Would that it were so pat and easy.

The editorial cites a New York Times article written by Paul Tough, in which Tough writes:

‘The evidence is now overwhelming that if you take an average low-income child and put him into an average American public school, he will almost certainly come out poorly educated.’
—New York Times

Who is Paul Tough?

‘Paul Tough is a print and broadcast journalist, originally from Toronto, now residing in New York City. He is a features editor at the New York Times Magazine, the author of a forthcoming book on poverty, race and education, and the son of Invitation to ETI founder and chief scientist Dr. Allen Tough. He recently produced a radio story on the Invitation to ETI, the history of human attempts to contact extraterrestrials, and the ways in which the search for extraterrestrial intelligence has affected his relationship with his father. The story aired in 2005 on “This American Life.”’
—IETI.Org

And what is ETI?

‘The mission of the Invitation to ETI is to establish communication with any form of extraterrestrial intelligence able to monitor our World Wide Web.’
—IETI.Org

Hmmmmm. What was that about ‘poorly educated’?