My mother taught at Title 1 schools for years. She said the biggest gap was always family support. Teachers don't have enough time to make up for a missing hom

My mother taught at Title 1 schools for years. She said the biggest gap was always family support. Teachers don't have enough time to make up for a missing home environment, and (said in seriousness) it's a misuse of their time to play social worker (because there's no one else / no funding for anyone else). We do a lot of dumb things in American public education, but one of the worst is misdeploying resources we do have and focusing on symptoms instead of root causes. There was a school district (Kansas? Nebraska? Maybe?) that got stellar results just from co-locating county social services for parents at the school (unemployment offices, food stamp distribution, clinics, etc). If a community needs help, don't send only teachers to fix it.