Speaking at the National Press Club last week, NYC School Chancellor Joel Klein declared:

Schools matter and they matter big time in America. Sure, poverty matters, families matter, but schools can be the game changer…We’re never going to fix poverty in America if we don’t fix education.

Klein is absolutely correct. But sometimes our insistence that schools alone can play the role of superhero means we don’t even talk about how high poverty and crime and poor health care and nutrition impact children trying to learn. And we talk even less about the role of culture in education, even though it can play a huge role. Reihan Salam has some spot-on thoughts on crime and despair in low-income neighborhoods:

A new and dangerous equilibrium emerges in these neighborhoods, where children turn to a tough demeanor to protect themselves against victimization. The tough demeanor, of course, has to be defended when challenged. Gang membership is another way to protect yourself.

What’s worse is that above a certain level, and we appear to have long since passed that level, higher incarceration rates are themselves criminogenic. When the proportion of young men who wind up incarcerated passes a certain point, the stigma associated with doing a bid starts to go away. And because most crime happens in a handful of neighborhoods, those same neighborhoods are overwhelmed by a huge number of ex-offenders every year.

Not surprisingly, these men have a hard time finding and holding jobs. Habits formed in prison cut against the habits necessary to flourish in the world of work. The crime-fighting regime starts to lose its legitimacy. Far from a fair and reasonable system designed to protect law-abiding citizens, it looks like a racist plot to a lot of inner-city residents, not least those with brothers and fathers and spouses in the system.

Having taught in an impoverished neighborhood, I’ve found all of the above to be distressingly true. Schools can create their own culture - lots of successful schools do - but it’s not easy and it means not only modeling expected behavior but being incredibly explicit about expectations because the rules in school are different than the rules outside of school. A teacher can say to students, “you have to earn respect to get respect,” and students are smart so they understand that concept. But earning respect in school is markedly different than earning respect in the street. When you’re a 70-pound 7th grader who’s being bullied on the way home from school, you earn respect by punching someone in the mouth the first time they come at you. Then hopefully no one messes with you the next time. Unfortunately, I really can’t even tell a 70-pound 7th grader that that was the wrong thing to do in that situation. But that’s obviously not what he should do if someone is bullying him in the classroom.

It’s clear, also, that more progressive criminal justice laws and job placement programs would help improve the environments in which some children live and learn. The Obama administration’s plan to close the sentencing disparity for those dealing crack versus powder cocaine would be a good start.