Kay McSpadden, a high school teacher and writer in South Carolina, notes a striking irony. In the midst of School Chiice Week, two major reports appeared that showed the success of our public schools.

The federal National Center for Education Statistics “report shows that in schools with less than 25 percent poverty rates, American children scored higher in reading than any other children in the world. In. The. World.

“The takeaway is simple. Our middle-class and wealthy public school children are thriving. Poor children are struggling, not because their schools are failing but because they come to school with all the well-documented handicaps that poverty imposes – poor prenatal care, developmental delays, hunger, illness, homelessness, emotional and mental illnesses, and so on.”

A second report, by the Horace Mann League and National Superintendents Roundtable, says the United States is, “by far, the wealthiest and best-educated of the nine G-7…