What every child needs for learning: love and stability

I agree with a reader at Andrew Sullivan's blog, who writes:

I'm a foster parent, in a school district that still engages in integration motivated busing. Our black foster child was behind grade level when she came to us last summer, even though she was coming from a suburban school with very high test scores. We live in the significantly more affluent (predominantly white) neighborhood of the two this school serves. The other neighborhood is low income and a mix of Latino and black families. The test scores from our neighborhood match the high scores of our school district, while the test scores from the other neighborhood fall well below acceptable levels.

To give her an opportunity to catch up, our daughter was placed in a class with one of the top teachers in the school and in a reduced sized classroom (16 kids). This classroom was divided between kids who were performing well (majority white) and kids who needed work (mostly students of color). Over the course of the year, our daughter made significant strides in her test scores, reading ability, and math skills. I do not believe the other struggling children who entered her class saw the same level of success.

It was clear to me that as beneficial as the smaller class size and skill of her teacher were, they would have all been wasted had our foster daughter not been getting four simple things from us:

1. A regular bed time
2. Regular meals
3. Set time to do homework every night
4. Parental involvement and expectation

I'm a huge liberal, who believes in proper school funding and smaller class sizes. However, I'm tired of the belief that schools are failing simply because of underfunding.