What actual research says is that cultural factors in the home and school effectiveness factors in the school matter even more than poverty as such in constrain

What actual research says is that cultural factors in the home and school effectiveness factors in the school matter even more than poverty as such in constraining educational outcomes. One thoughtful article on this point is mathematician Patricia Kenschaft's article from the Notices of the American Mathematical Society, "Racial Equity Requires Teaching Elementary School Teachers More Mathematics" http://www.ams.org/notices/200502/fea-kenschaft.pdf http://www.ams.org/notices/200502/fea-kenschaft.pdf Read the article, and see if you want any child from any neighborhood, rich or poor, to have elementary school teachers as poorly prepared to teach mathematics as the teachers Kenschaft found in New Jersey. Another interesting set of research articles are those by economist Roland Fryer, such as "Getting Beneath the Veil of Effective Schools: Evidence from New York City" http://scholar.harvard.edu/fryer/publications/getting-beneath-veil-effective-schools-evidence-new-york-city http://scholar.harvard.edu/fryer/publications/getting-beneat... or "Achieving Escape Velocity: Neighborhood and School Interventions to Reduce Persistent Inequality" http://scholar.harvard.edu/fryer/publications/achieving-escape-velocity-neighborhood-and-school-interventions-reduce-persistent http://scholar.harvard.edu/fryer/publications/achieving-esca... or "Teacher Incentives and Student Achievement: Evidence from New York City Public Schools" http://scholar.harvard.edu/fryer/publications/teacher-incentives-and-student-achievement-evidence-new-york-city-public-schools http://scholar.harvard.edu/fryer/publications/teacher-incent... Yet another good author on education policy is Caroline Hoxby, whose publications include "Competition Among Public Schools: A Reply to Rothstein (2004)" http://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/11216.html http://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/11216.html and "Would School Choice Change the Teaching Profession?" http://ideas.repec.org/a/uwp/jhriss/v37y2002i4p846-891.html http://ideas.repec.org/a/uwp/jhriss/v37y2002i4p846-891.html Sure, other things will help, too, like requiring all teachers have masters degrees Masters degrees in the subject taught, or masters degrees in "education"? There is no evidence in favor of the latter. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/19/us/19gates.html http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/19/us/19gates.html "He suggests they end teacher pay increases based on seniority and on master’s degrees, which he says are unrelated to teachers’ ability to raise student achievement." http://www.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/issues/2012/07/pdf/miller_masters.pdf http://www.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/issues/20...