Deborah Meier and Elliott Witney have been attempting to bridge differences about ideology and practices associated with Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) charter schools, a “no excuses” view of children, poverty, education, and the world.

I admire Meier’s patience and diligence in this discussion and strongly reject KIPP and other “no excuses” schools as racist and classist. Witney’s responses do nothing to change my mind, but do expose a strategy found among “no excuses” advocates that is burning bridges, not bridging differences. In Witney’s 23 April 2013 response, he makes two claims:

“Today, there are literally hundreds of public schools—both district and charter—that are proving that zip code does not define a student’s destiny.

“Because of this movement, we now find ourselves at a point in which no one in our country can logically argue anymore that students from underserved communities can’t achieve at high academic levels. We still have a long way to go before we see entire school systems or states achieving these types of results with students. We have proof, however, that it can be done.”

The direct and subtle claims in these comments are repeated often, but fail both the weight of evidence as well as the rules of civility and logic (in other words, start with a false claim about the other side, and all else proves false).

Numerous recent studies (see citations HERE and HERE) reveal that children in poverty are still victims of the socioeconomic status of their homes and the communities, as Gennetian et al. detail:

Because low-income individuals comprise nearly one-half of the 8.7 million people living in census tracts with poverty levels of 40 percent or higher (Kneebone, Nadeau, and Berube, 2011), poor children growing up in neighborhoods of concentrated poverty may be “doubly disadvantaged”—they face potential risks from growing up in a low-income household and in an economically poor neighborhood.

In 2013, while poverty shouldn’t be destiny, the evidence shows that poverty is destiny.

In fact, the top and bottom segments of affluence in the U.S. are more stagnant today than ever; well over 60% of people at the top and bottom will remain in the social class into which they were born. Sawhill and Morton explain:

Most studies find that, in America, about half of the advantages of having a parent with a high income are passed on to the next generation.11  This means that one of the biggest predictors of an American child’s future economic success — the identity and characteristics of his or her parents — is predetermined and outside that child’s control. (See also HERE)

The “no excuses” ZIP code claim—”poverty is not destiny”—is pure rhetoric that ignores evidence about the lack of equity of opportunity in the U.S., but it also shows a powerful misunderstanding outliers.

If there are high-poverty schools with high achievement (and the evidence again suggests that almost all claims of such miracle schools prove to be misleading or simply false), the existence of outlier data does not discount a norm; thus, the norm in the U.S. remains that poverty does equal destiny—both in terms of access to education and economic success in adulthood.

But possibly the most incendiary comment among these misleading and inaccurate claims is the suggestion that people in education exist who genuinely believe and/or claim that high-poverty children cannot learn: “no one in our country can logically argue anymore that students from underserved communities can’t achieve at high academic levels,” as Witney states.

For the record, no one has claimed that, no one claims that now, but the only people who ever utter such nonsense are the “no excuses” advocates attempting to smear their critics.

While Meier appears committed to bridging differences through careful and evidence-based discussion, Witney represents the bridge burning all too common among today’s self-proclaimed reformers, blind to evidence but quick to toss out slogans and false accusations.