Ain't Nobody Be Learnin' Nothin': The Fraud and the Fix for High-Poverty Schools

By Caleb Rossiter

America's most challenged families are segregated into high-poverty schools. Despite a 20-year experiment in nationwide school reform, few students make it over the slippery bridge to the middle class. In this book you will meet the students, families, teachers, and administrators who struggle inside this failed system, and consider proposals to give them a fighting chance.Using pseudonyms but real stories, Rossiter introduces the reader to fascinating students, families, teachers, and administrators who are caught up in a tragic cycle of poverty, dysfunction, and educational fraud. He shows why and how the result is half of the students dropping out and the other half graduating years behind and helpless before a community college curriculum.Rossiter then steps back and seeks solutions that would greatly increase the number of students making it to the promised land of the middle class. His solutions come from the same principle used by private schools and schools for wealthy families: build the school around the needs of the students. For high-poverty families, this means addressing the need to remain alive, healthy, and out of parenthood during the teenage years; it means building basic skills and then offering a real choice of college prep or vocational training,; it means separating students based on behavior and effort, so that the strong can achieve without disruption and the weak can received remediation and try again.Finally, Rossiter reviews efforts to address the underlying legacy of slavery, segregation, and racism that has created the culture of poverty. He offers solutions in this area as well, such as high-wage jobs programs for parents and programs that strengthen young families during pregnancy and then stimulate language development during the crucial first year of life.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1628941022
• ISBN13: 9781628941029
• Release Date: March 2015
• Publisher: Algora Publishing
• Length: 264 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.7" x 6.0"