Now who would disagree with Howe's words? Certainly not David Berliner, Alfie Kohn, Jonathan Kozol, perhaps Ted Sizer and Deborah Meier, to mention just a few of the countless progressive educators who are out there thinking first of the kids.

In fact, at first blush we would probably all agree. For how can you teach a child to read who hasn't had enough to eat? And what about the preschooler who has seen his Mom taken from him during the night and who has that mostly on his mind when he arrives at school?

And then there are the homework assignments, always having to be done in the same room with the big screen television set that is never turned off, or even down? Who is going to win that competition?

And then there are the children who get to school in the morning, well almost at 7:30 and almost on time, but they're still half asleep because bedtime was midnight and the alarm went off at 5:30 in order to make the hour long subway and bus ride to school. Are they going to be listening to their teacher?

So is there any sense in teaching, let alone testing kids, whose lives are seriously deficient in proper food and shelter, and the no less important rest and quiet, and most of all, whose lives are mostly without close contacts with caring adults?

The liberal (and yes common sense) response is to say, "let's not blame the kids for their failure in the classroom, let's direct more resources towards improving their lives outside of the classroom," or in Doc Howe's words, "first improve their lives and schooling and then give them the tests."

And what's wrong with this response? Why aren't we all pushing along with Jonathan Kozol to direct increased resources to our impoverished inner city and rural school communities?

Well this sort of response acquired a name, the war on poverty, and it began some 44 years ago, when then President Lyndon Johnson declared his War on Poverty in his first state of the union speech on January 8, 1964.

Johnson's war created programs such as Head Start, food stamps, work study, Medicare and Medicaid, all of which still exist today. But the poverty rate, the percentage of those falling below a government determined poverty threshold, since an initial reduction probably as a result of these programs, has remained steady since then, right up until today, fluctuating between 11 and 15% of the population.

Would another series of anti-poverty programs, comparable in weight and substance to Head Start, food stamps, Medicare et al. bring about another 5% reduction in the poverty level? We'll probably never know because neither republican nor democratic politicians, with the exception of John Edwards who is now out of the presidential race, have any interest in doing such.

Therefore, it's probably just not going to happen, that kids lives are going to be improved outside of school before we get them in school. We get them in school the way they come to us and we have to take them that way and teach and test them.

There are those who have accepted this state of affairs and have decided to go ahead and teach and test regardless of the gaping inadequacies of kids' lives outside of school. These individuals have been properly recognized by Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom in their book, No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning, their "no excuses" meaning that the excuses kids bring to school with them, no less than guns and knives, must be left at the door before coming in.

I think, for example, of the MATCH School, a Commonwealth Charter School in Boston. I sent Doc Howe's not unreasonable statement to the founder of the school, Michael Goldstein. Here is what Goldstein said in response:

"If teachers believe that kids' 'overall lives' must be improved (and this never comes to pass), it undermines the idea of teachers taking responsibility for driving big gains in student learning.  [And instead of being accountable, we have teachers saying] "Well of course my students continue to be bad readers, even after a year of my teaching them, for nobody has improved their lives!" 

He's right. You have to go ahead with what you have, and most important take responsibility for what you do with what you have. Now I say that realizing with some trepidation that my position comes dangerously close that of Donald Rumsfeld, who in December of 2004, in response to a question from a member of the Tennessee National Guard, said, "You go to war with the Army you have. [Even if] they're not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time."

But of course the analogy to the war situation doesn't hold. For yes, we could have adequately armed our combat vehicles. But no, we can't by our government programs diminish, let alone do away with, the poverty in people's lives. For this poverty is one of human, not so much material, inadequacy. Afterall we are the world's wealthiest country.

So yes, we have to do as Michael Goldstein does at the MATCH School. We have to teach our kids, whether or not they've had a good night at home before walking into our classrooms, and we have to hold them accountable for their learning, or not learning, while they are there.

For otherwise we are abandoning them to be members of another failed generation, the second or third since Johnson's War on Poverty in 1964, not to mention all those undocumented generations of impoverished kids that came before.

Indeed, Olmert, now back in Israel, and as a follow-up to Annapolis, has been telling his countrymen that Israel's very survival as a viable state depends on there also being a viable Palestinian state. I wonder if he wonders why Bush didn't have more to say about all this. I do.

Everyone knows what a peace agreement depends upon. For one, the Palestinian refugees must be permitted to return, although most likely to Palestine, and not to Israel proper. Then Jerusalem must become the capital of both peoples. Finally, Israel must surrender Israeli land to the Palestinians as compensation for any Israeli settlements in the West Bank that are allowed to survive.

During the conference President Bush was eerily silent in regard to all three, although he did side with the Israelis regarding the refugees not being allowed to return to their homes in Israel. Why didn't he do more? Shouldn't he have pushed Olmert to in turn push his countrymen to do what had to be done? Why didn't he?

In fact, Bush's almost complete silence at the Conference in regard to the concessions the Israelis would have to make, if they would ever have peace, makes one wonder if the Israeli Washington lobby isn't indeed all powerful.

In fact, the Annapolis Conference was hardly necessary. For we heard on day one about the only decision that would be made by the attendees. Olmert and Abbas would agree to resume thepeace talks that had been stalled for the past seven years. And they would pledge that during these talks they would reach an agreement on the creation of a Palestinian state by the end of 2008. They could have announced all that without the trip Annapolis.

Do you believe that what has been pledged will happen? I don't. And in any case, why wait a year? Everyone knows what has to be done, and it could be done today.

What does keep the two state settlement from happening? The answer is two-fold, history and religion, not enough of the one, and too much of the other. A history going back only a few thousand years, and two all powerful, totalitarian religions, curtailing the freedom of action of these peoples in the present.

Both are huge obstacles in the paths of these peoples otherwise highly suited to becoming friends, neighbors, and trading partners, that which they probably were at an earlier time in their pasts.

If in fact they were to go back a bit further into their pasts and obtain additional knowledge of their very similar histories, they would see that they were really one people, and that the so-called differences between them were all historical fabrications, not fundamental to who and what they were and are.

I take as an illustration of what I mean the following passage from an article in the New York Times by Nicholas Wade,Scientists Rough Out Humanity's 50,000-Year-Old Story. 

"Analysis of the Y chromosome has already yielded interesting results. Dr. Ariella Oppenheim of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem said she had found considerable similarity between Jews and Israeli and Palestinian Arabs, as if the Y chromosomes of both groups had been drawn from a common population that began to expand 7,800 years ago."

And this, of course, is not a single isolated example. For we are constantly learning how much we all, not just the Palestinians and Israelis, are one people. Yet there are those among us who don't want to hear this and prefer to go on killing one another, in the name of what? Their recent past? And at the very time when their deep past is telling them to make peace.

A couple of things to say about this. First, this particular finding is not new. In the sixties Japan (the author of the so-called economic miracle), and then later, in the seventies and eighties, the Asian "tigers," showed us what their work forces, that is, the graduates of their schools, were able to accomplish in regard to the exceptionally rapid growth in size and strength of their national economies.

Second, we hardly needed the international comparisons. The brilliant performance of the Asian-Americans among our own student populations had been telling us the same thing for a long time. Asian-American students are already, at Berkeley, or are rapidly becoming, at MIT and Harvard, by their high scores on standardized tests, the largest single ethnic group of students at our top colleges and universities.

Third, and this is the sort of thing that no one ever says publicly, Asian kids may just be better at math and science. O.K., this is not necessarily true. It may not be an innate superiority, but something from the environment in which they have grown up, the parental influence, the work ethic etc., not primarily something in their genes. So better may mean better prepared, but how many of us really believe this?

We want to believe the opposite, that all kids can achieve at the level of the Asian tigers. We want to believe in the "proficiency myth," that proficiency in anything will follow effort and hard work. We want to believe that algebra, say, can be learned by all. We want to believe that only externalities, — poverty, the home environment, the classroom teacher, the class size and classroom discipline etc., are holding our students back, keeping them from achieving at the level of the tigers.

We could have made a much more meaningful comparison, our Asians against theirs. Wouldn't it be interesting to see if our Asian students do better than those of Hong Kong, South Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan? For if so wouldn't that mean that our way of life, our educational system are more effective, if not better, than theirs? I don't know if this comparison has ever been made.

Two final thoughts about all this. One, why do we go on comparing diverse or heterogeneous student bodies, such as those of the typical American suburban high school, with the homogeneous student populations of Singapore or Taiwan? Isn't this apples and oranges? Diversity means among other things diverse gifts and talents, and to measure any single one of them, such as math aptitude and or math achievement, among a diverse population will inevitably lead to lower test scores overall. Didn't we know this?

And two, achievement (and ability?) across ethnic and racial boundaries is not equal. The best distance runners are East African. The best chess players are, or at least were, Russian. The best musicians are now Black and Latino, whereas they perhaps were French and German? The best physicists and mathematicians are Indian, Jewish, Chinese, French, and German? The best basketball players are Black. And so on. Why are we afraid to say things like this?   

Isn't it obvious by now (wasn't it always?) that innate ability is not equally distributed? And there's nothing wrong with this, just as there's nothing wrong with children in the same family having different abilities and natural talents. To go on expecting American students to match or better the achievement of students of other countries is to go on adhering to the proficiency myth. And in any case it's just not going to happen that our diverse student bodies are ever going to lead the pack in regard to achievement.

If our country is truly exceptional it must be because it has within it the whole world. We are a country of immigrants. (The anti-immigrant forces among us are shooting themselves and us in the foot.) Within our country are representatives of all racial and ethnic groups. We really don't need to resort to international comparisons. The unequal levels of achievement, the achievement gaps, are all here among us. We don't have to look for them elsewhere.