poverty affects education

Why do reformers continue to see it necessary to pour money into charter schools that prove to be less successful than our public schools?  Since they have labeled our public schools as “failing," why not help them with additional funding?  We could reduce class size, add pre-school programs, add innovative programs such as New Tech, Montessori, arts programs, and additional technology.  Taking our funding away is not going to help us compete with these other schools.  Public school teachers know how to educate our children, and they’ve still been successful despite the many budgets cuts they’ve had to endure.  Reformers are not looking at the real issue of poverty in this education issue.  Why don’t we get to the real issue of children living in poverty and do something about that?  How do they expect children living in poverty to be able to function at school?  Children in poverty live a stressful life because they may come from single parent homes where the one parent isn’t home due to working two jobs; they may go to school hungry; they may be experiencing physical or sexual abuse; they may be responsible for their younger siblings meals, baths and welfare; they may have no help with homework or the necessary supplies to assist in homework; they may have poor nutrition which results in frequent illness; they may experience deaths of friends and relatives due to violence or drugs.  Let’s fix these problems first before we begin labeling our public schools as failures.