Education official: Poverty is No. 1 issue

from the Wichita Eagle

BY JILLIAN COHAN
The Wichita Eagle

The visitors in the back of the classroom looked on Tuesday afternoon while Marshall Middle School math teacher Robert Schrader ran his students through an algebraic equation.

"Remember substitution?" he asked the class.

Students nodded at his explanation of variables and inverse operations, a few sneaking glances toward the back of the room.


When the lesson was over, the taller of the visitors, Wichita schools superintendent Winston Brooks, introduced himself and the women at his side: State Board of Education member Carol Rupe and the state's new education commissioner, Alexa Posny.

"She's sort of Mr. Brooks' principal," Rupe told the class.

Posny heads the state Department of Education, which oversees regulations such as teacher licensure and assessments of student academic performance. She visited several Wichita schools Tuesday.

A redhead not much bigger than some of the eighth-grade girls in the class, Posny wore a crimson suit and a leather backpack that added to the impression that she was back in school for the day.

"I'm impressed with how much they remember from the summer," she told Brooks as the middle-school tour continued.

When a reporter asked her later what she had expected to see in Wichita schools, Posny replied that she'd hoped to witness "great schools, great educators and great leadership."

Wichita schools are more urban than many in the state, she said, but in spite of the poverty and diversity of student needs in the city's schools, "we know they can learn."

"It may not show up in all the test scores, but the (achievement) gap is being reduced," she said.

Later, at a presentation to the Wichita school board, Posny described coming revisions to federal No Child Left Behind legislation and laid out her priorities, including:

• That all students graduating from Kansas schools meet or exceed high academic standards and are prepared for the next step in their lives, whether it's entering the work force or going to college.

• Addressing the teacher shortage looming as Baby Boomer teachers retire and young people often choose other careers or choose to teach for only a few years.

• Working to improve conditions in urban school districts such as Wichita, which don't generally benefit from the state's school-finance formulas.

"To me, the No. 1 issue is poverty," Posny said. "We're talking about kids in inter-generational poverty. It is a societal issue, it's not just education. That is part and parcel of what we're trying to deal with. In education we're good, but I don't know how much we can change society. And yet we're preparing the future members of society. That's why the urban issues are so important."
Reach Jillian Cohan at 316-268-6524 or jcohan@wichitaeagle.com.