Purcell-Gates

"Having seen two of my own children through elementary schools and having garnered a wealth of experience with schools in general, I knew that teachers, specialists, and administrators would have created quite a big fuss if any middle-class child finished first grade knowing how to read only one word. Parents would be called and consulted, assuming they hadn't already been haunting the school corridors, testing would have been recommended and carried out, the instruction and teaching would have been questioned and examined, and elaborate educational plans drawn up to remediate this issue would have been drawn up. But no notice was taken of Donny's failure to learn."

I thought that this paragraph really illustrated the double standard that the article talked about. The difference in the educational quality between poor students and middle-class students is alarming. So many assumptions are made about certain students, like the boy Donny in the article, that they never really have a chance to succeed from the beginning. I know that we all know teachers who do this, put their students into boxes and categories even before the first day of class. Just like the teacher in the article who made assumptions upon hearing Donny's mother speak, these teachers believe that there is no hope for these students to read because of judgments made about their parents or background. Every student should be given a blank slate and an equal chance to succeed regardless of their home life or prior experience.