In the Arctic tundra a creature called the lemming undergoes wild fluctuations of population. Every few years, these small rodents experience a population boom, followed by a crash. At the height of the boom, lemmings carry out their well-known behavior of following one another into the ocean to drown. Ecologists seeking to understand this looked...were surprised to learn that the critical factor was the availability of calcium, which gets depleted as the population of lemmings expands - and calcium becomes concentrated in their bones. When calcium gets scarce, the plants have trouble growing, and the lemmings run out of food. When food becomes scarce, the lemmings set out in all directions, even across water. Although the vast majority will drown, some small number may succeed in colonizing remote locations that have not been overgrazed.
It matters a great deal what factors we consider when investigating an ecosystem, because how we understand what is happening could be greatly influenced by what we consider, and what we choose to exclude... With our schools, we have identified a problem. Students are not performing at the levels we desire, and too many are dropping out. There is a problem with the way we are looking at this ecosystem, however. In the materials publicizing the latest education reform propaganda vehicle, Waiting for Superman, it is clear that, according to the "experts" in this film, poverty should not matter, family background, violent neighborhoods, all of this is of minimal importance compared to the all-important teacher...
In the case of our schools, similar to the Arctic circle, there is a nutrient cycle that is driving student performance. There are clear and consistent scientific data that indicates that poverty is the critical factor affecting student performance.
As Stephen Krashen pointed out in this space a few months ago,
"American students from well-funded schools who come from high-income families outscore all or nearly all other countries on international tests. Only our children in high poverty schools score below the international average. The US has the second highest percentage of children in poverty of all industrialized countries (22.4%, compared to Sweden's 2.6%) which of course pulls down our overall average. The success of American children who are not in poverty shows that our educational system has been successful; the problem is poverty."
This is more pertinent than ever, as we see the number of children living in poverty steadily climbing, at the same time attacks on teachers as the source of the problems in schools reach a fever pitch.
http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/living-in-dialogue/2010/09/the_lesson_of_the_lemmings_sch.html 
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