To the Editor,
While Lulu Chang highlighted an important issue in her recent column about education in the Upper Valley ("Inequity in Our Backyard," April 24), her broad generalizations about school quality with respect to socioeconomics missed the mark in some significant ways. She took a complicated educational issue and boiled it down to an unhelpful stereotype based on just a few tutoring sessions at Mascoma Valley Regional High School. While this may have been the easiest way to make her point, it does little to move the conversation about this frequently discussed issue forward in helpful ways.
Inequity in public education is one of the many issues we explore at the Tucker Foundation through our local volunteer programs. We work with a variety of local school districts to develop enrichment activities for their students while providing learning and leadership opportunities for Dartmouth student volunteers. Through these reciprocal relationships in which we are all learners, the Tucker Foundation hopes that Dartmouth volunteers come away with a nuanced understanding of the communities in which they serve, focusing on both the gifts and the challenges. It is through new understandings that we can work together to make change.
Instead of resorting to stereotypes, teacher blaming and unhelpful comparisons, Chang's column should have looked more broadly at successful public school innovation nationally and highlighted programs that are making a difference.
Helen Damon-MooreDirector of Service and Education, Tucker Foundation
