Plenty of people have argued that the problem is not the quality of the school but the quality of the students attending it - a.k.a the "culture of poverty" htt

Plenty of people have argued that the problem is not the quality of the school but the quality of the students attending it - a.k.a the "culture of poverty" https://thesocietypages.org/roundtables/culture-of-poverty/ https://thesocietypages.org/roundtables/culture-of-poverty/ In fact, some of them are referred to in the study itself as an example of the debate they are addressing - "Advocates of the community-focused approach argue that teachers and school administrators are dealing with issues that originate outside the classroom, citing research that shows racial and socioeconomic achievement gaps are present before children enter school (Fryer and Levitt 2004; 2006) and that one-third to one-half of the gap can be explained by family-environment indicators (Meredith Phillips, James Crouse, and John Ralph 1998; Fryer and Levitt 2004). In this scenario, combating poverty and having more constructive out-of-school time may lead to better and more-focused instruction in school. Indeed, James Coleman et al. (1966), in their famous report on equality of educational opportunity, argue that schools alone cannot treat the problem of chronic underachievement in urban schools. "