Some educational reformers keep telling us that 2+2=5. Why don't you get it? They will say it again and again and call you stupid if you don't finally realize that 2+2=5.

These are the privatization voucher reactionaries in our midst. No matter how many studies show decisively that private schools, in general, do no better in educating children than public schools, these diehard standard-bearers of the radical right won't quit. This is because they have a cause and they are not moved by data, science or evidence. Their cause, ever since, "A Nation at Risk," has been to destroy public education. And they try to use every trick in the books. They sometimes use selective data, they sometimes exaggerate teeny differences as big victories and they sometime just simply lie.

Their cause is not educational, but political. They dislike government at all levels and believe that anything that government does must be bad. But the facts speak otherwise.

The United States has led the world in so many things, partly due to our public school system. Right-wing radicals are willing to toss out the baby with the bath to achieve their strongly-held goal of privatization. One prevalent trick is to repeat, over and over, the same mantra, our public schools are broken, our public schools are not what they could be or our public schools spend too much. One extreme case was John Stossel's inane, "Stupid in America ," 20/20 Special, full of generalizations based on single examples, which is the most overused right-wing trick. But people like Stossel have no shame. He had the raw temerity to cite an example of a public school teacher who was involved in a sexual situation with a student, trying to prove that public school teachers are corrupt. Did he forget the massive sexual scandals involving private schools during the entire last decade? What nerve!

Before his 20/20 Special, Stossel was apparently shown a copy of a recent study that shows clearly that, in that study, when controlling for demographics, public schools do at least as well as privates, and often better. Stossel's obvious, one-sided scheme is not intended to enlighten or educated, but rather to defile public education, regardless of the truth.

The Edison Schools are the best example of an elephant in the room. Privatization radical extremists like Jay Greene, Bill Bennett, Checker Finn and John Stossel conveniently ignore the greatest failure of their ideals in American history. In the early 90's, Chris Whittle and Lamar Alexander believed that private schools could outperform public schools and at a lower cost. They posited that, without the bureaucracy and red tape, unions and inept principals, performance could be enhanced and costs could be controlled. That hypothesis seemed reasonable at the time and Whittle set off to prove it. He started Edison Schools, expecting voucher legislation to pass in the G.H.W. Bush administration, but it did not happen. Whittle continued, nevertheless, expecting parents to flock to his schools to receive an elite education. That didn't happen either.

So, being an astute businessman, Whittle changed courses and began appealing to failing school districts to manage their schools, promising turnarounds at lower costs. That, more often than not, also didn't happen. In fact, Edison has been thrown out of many districts due to failure to make good on promises made.

If ever there was a large scale experiment to disprove the vast superiority of private schools, it has been the Edison experiment.

Studies in places like Cleveland and Milwaukee have shown that only minuscule differences occur between private and public schools in terms of educational success when you control for demographics and compare apples to apples.

How many more clear demonstrations are necessary? When will these radical reformers read the literature and understand the true causes of academic failure? It seems pretty obvious to those who are willing to study the data that the culprit is poverty, not school organization. In every state and practically every school district, the average scores of kids from poverty are far lower than their more fortunate peers. It occurs in state tests, NAEP, SAT and ACT. This is called the academic achievement gap. It exists in private schools as well, even though most privates will not reveal their data and are not held to the same standards as publics. SAT scores dramatize the point that is similar for almost all standardized tests.

One of David Berliner's insightful and profound works describes the monumental, destructive force of poverty on youngsters. He compares American students with the rest of the world, succinctly outlining the problems. (1) If we ignore for a moment the test scores of children from poverty, our public schools would be among the few leaders in the world. The problem is that we have so much poverty. And it is easy to understand: most of these kids start school far behind other children who have had the advantage of books and magazines in the home, more educated parents, better grammar in the home, being read to and a whole variety of educationally enriching opportunities. And, the out-of-school environment of so many poor kids is fundamentally unhelpful to them.

While we have had a hundred reform proposals, and as many champions of the latest fad, the one program that appears to very often effectively deal with the poverty monster, is KIPP Schools. A decade ago, Michael Feinberg and David Levin looked around and asked the question, what makes success and came up with the obvious: "There are no shortcuts; success is built through desire, discipline and dedication; the path to success is education; and excellent education is based on quality teaching, administrative support for the teachers, support from parents and increased time on task." Wow! How revolutionary, all the way from the 1940's. Why can't the privatization hawks realize what Feinberg and Levin know: there are no easy answers. The simple-minded mantra of, "Just privatize and all of your problems will be solved through competition," is just a naïve notion that ignores reality. But that does not stop the hawks.

KIPP students seem to generally excel. They attend school from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday and spend four more hours in the classroom on some Saturdays with two hours of homework every night. They also spend one month of each summer in classes. In all, KIPP kids spend nearly twice as many hours on task as traditional public school students.  In addition, before KIPP children can be accepted, their parents must sign a contract stipulating that they and the children will adhere to the expectations of the school.   Finally, the KIPP principals hve hiring and firing authority over the teachers.

It seems as if hard work, not rhetoric, is the answer to success in any endeavor and not some cockamamie simple-minded notion that 2 + 2 = 5.

(1) David C. Berliner , August 02, 2005, Our Impoverished View of Educational Reform

Dr. Solomon is a retired professor from the University of Kentucky