Playing the blame game.

As a doctoral student in Education Policy, with a focus on disparity and equity I think it is time to stop the blame game entirely. The more we try to point fingers at one group or another the less learning is going to get done.
It is very concerning that only 50% of student in cities across the country fail to complete high school. Schools are supposed to be the places in our communities where our children are cared for while we work. We all hope that something good happens during the hours our students are in school. Yet we constantly continue to lengthen the school day, decrease physical activity, be surprised when children act out in class after having 20 minutes for lunch and physical activity, drug the ones we don't think fit in and if all else fails we just kick them out.
We expect teachers to get respect from students and don't often think of this as a reciprocal act where our children, ALL of them deserve respect.
We keep trying to put band-aids on the system increase accountability, increasing the teachers' work loads, decreasing educational funding, playing a numbers game that can't really measure learning, and at the same time. Take away students' human rights, privacy, we treat them as criminals, act as if they haven't any brains, but instead of leading the way we demand respect and give little.
Very few of us sit still and are rarely expected in our work a day world to maintain focus for hours on end, yet we demand this daily of our students.
The system is broken, the only way to fix it is to rebuild with the help of everyone, teachers, parents, communities and children and stop trying to find a single culprit. School is the place where we seek to prepare the future, teach them the important basics including stewardship and leadership of our country. Yet again and again we fail to model these skills and blame everybody but ourselves. I applaud students who take on the difficult task of working in schools that trained and licensed teachers eschew.