Should we focus on poor schools or poor kids?

There is a great exchange in the current issue of "Education Next" between two different camps of Democratic education reformers. It's really worth reading to understand the tension within education circles as the Obama administration formulates its policies. In fact, the article starts out talking about how President Barack Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan must negotiate this split between Democratic school reformers.

One camp, represented by Pedro Noguera of A Broader, Bolder Approach in Education (BBA), believes that better schools are more likely to result from dealing with the poverty that afflicts many kids, whether that means creating universal pre-K, expanding health care or teaching parents how to participate in their child's education.

The other, represented by Joe Williams of the Education Equality Project (EEP), believes that we're more likely to get better schools by focusing on what can be controlled within the walls of the school or within the boundaries of the district, such as measuring school progress, paying teachers for excellence and giving students choices of where they want to attend school.

I'm not just trying to be a squishy moderate here, but there's truth to both sides. Teachers do deal with many social factors that kids bring into their classrooms. That speaks to the BBA approach of dealing with the poverty that surrounds many schools.

On the other hand, there are only so many resources and so much time that Capitol Hill, state legislatures, school districts and individual campuses have at their disposal when it comes to setting education policy. Deploying them as precisely as possible seems a much better way to use limited resources and time.

If I had to pick one camp, I would go with the Education Equality Project. Measuring progress, rewarding quality teachers and expanding charter schools can be done fairly quickly, while the worthy goal of beating back poverty can take decades. Meanwhile, we risk losing another generation of kids.

What do you think? Where do you fall on this continuum? This is an important issue to consider because it gets at what's going on in Washington.