Dear JPEF and UNF, its poverty stupid.

The face book post from the Jacksonville Public Education Fund started innocently enough: We’re co-hosting with University of North Florida a Round table on Measuring Teacher Quality this afternoon at 5 p.m. this afternoon. Join us for live coverage on Twitter via #JaxTVAM — and submit your questions for the panel!

But the truth is this buys into the narrative that all it takes is a highly effective teacher for a child to learn and nothing could be further from the truth. You know what a highly effective teacher cannot overcome? If a kid has had enough to eat or not; if they are worried about violence in their house or neighborhood and/or if the students parents care about or discount education, along with dozens and dozens of other things and as long as we continue to ignore poverty then we can have these Round tables till we are blue in the face an nothing will happen, nothing will get accomplished. It’s despicable how the powers-that-be ignore poverty.

Dear JPEF and UNF, its poverty stupid. Now instead of wasting more time, why don’t you do something about it?