All I can think about is The Wire

For ourselves, we spent more than a decade with such kids, and we pretty much know what that passage means. We understand the chaos of their so-called education, and we understand how confused they are—how badly they lack basic skills. (We also know how hard they try to ignore the intellectual chaos around them—chaos they didn’t create.) But no—they don’t belong in ninth-grade algebra, in service to “a relatively new idea in the faddish realm of education reform.” We want to see those kids pushed hard; we want to seem them required to perform. But demands on students must be reasonable. In a world where ninth-graders “still count on their fingers,” we’ll assert that this new demand isn’t.

It’s very hard for middle-class people to understand what goes on in those schools. It’s hard to grasp what that passage means—to understand how bad things are for the kids whom that passage describes. It’s very hard to picture that world. We’ll assert that—understandably—many readers can’t do it. And in the absence of such understanding, simple “solutions” will come to mind. For the latest beguiling but tragic example, see David Broder’s new column.