"blaming the victim crap"

In response to my posting yesterday, a teacher friend wrote:

You need to teach in a public school for a few months. Any school will do. After that, you will probably get over the blaming the victim crap. I teach in a public school and I can tell you lack of student motivation, lack of parental support and dysfunctional homes are major issues. So are poor teachers and principals as well as expectations, but don't think for one minute that the other issues are just blaming the victim. They are real and are major barriers to educational achievement. That’s my experience.

My reply: I don't for a second discount the difficulty of trying to engage, motivate and educate children who come from single-parent, low-income, broken and/or dysfunctional families and communities, in which almost no one graduated from high school, much less college.  But there's a huge difference between something being hard and something being impossible (not to mention between something being hard and worth doing vs. hard and not worth doing).  You need to come visit a KIPP or any other similar school that takes these exact students (and parents) and turns them into scholars, sending 80% to four-year colleges and reversing the achievement gap.  It can be done and I'm sick of hearing excuses!  When 58% and 54% of African-American and Latino children nationwide can barely read (testing below basic on the NAEP) in 4th grade, after they've been in schools for nearly five years, I view that as criminal negligence on the part of schools.