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The superintendent of the state's largest school district requested a state investigation Monday into his allegations that charter schools are turning away homeless and disabled students in violation of state and federal laws.

As the closing of "failing" schools becomes an annual ritual, along with the opening of brand-new schools (some of which will eventually join the ranks of "failing" schools), it is time to ask about where accountability truly lies. I wonder if  it ever occurs to anyone in the New York City Department of Education that their own policies of closing schools and shuffling low-performing students around like checker pieces on a checker board have actually created "failing" schools. Every time they close a large high school with large numbers of low-performing students, those students are then pushed off into another large high school (like Dewey) that is doomed to "fail." Why doesn't the leadership of the DOE ever take responsibility for helping schools that have disproportionate numbers of students who enter ninth grade with low test scores, including students with disabilities, homeless students, and students who are English language learners? Their methods of "reform" look like 52-pickup: Just throw the cards in the air and hope that somehow you come up with a winning hand.

American teachers deal with a lot: low pay, growing class sizes and escalating teacher-bashing from politicians and pundits. Federal testing and accountability mandates under No Child Left Behind and, more recently, Race to the Top, have added layers of bureaucracy while eliminating much of the creativity and authentic learning that makes teaching enjoyable. Tack on the recession's massive teacher layoffs and other school cuts, plus the challenges of trying to compensate for increasing child poverty, homelessness, and food insecurity, and you get a trifecta of disincentives to become, or remain, a teacher.

I literally am sitting at my desk with tears in my eyes as I type this article.  I don't think  I have felt this much shame about being an American since the execution of Troy Davis.  It is times like these I am reminded that no matter how noble our written intentions are in the Constitution, our system is really only as "good" as the people who run it. If you don't know the story of Tanya  McDowell she made headlines last year when she was arrested for using a friend's address to send her son to a school in a better neighborhood.  At the time, McDowell was homeless but wanted her son to have access to a quality education.

"A good teacher is the most important factor in a child's academic learning" Every time I hear this statement, my blood pressure goes up. I usually respond by saying that yes, a child's teacher is very important. But teachers have a relatively small effect on children's academic success when compared to the effect of out-of-school factors like economic insecurity, poor health care, unhealthy diet, homelessness and all the other ills of society. Educational "reforms" that ignore these factors are tarnished silver bullets, doomed to fail. Years of this type of wishful thinking has diverted Americans from having the undistorted, fact-based conversation we must have before educational outcomes can improve.