Anyone who objects to this utopian mandate, they maintain, is just making an excuse for low expectations and bad teachers.
He said, "The people who say poverty is no excuse for low performance are now using teacher accountability as an excuse for doing nothing about poverty".
"For a lot of people, the war in Iraq sounded like a good excuse for low retail sales," said Kurt Barnard, president of Barnard's Retail Consulting Group.
"Mount Vernon shows that neither race nor poverty works as an excuse for low performance," said Richard P. Mills, the state's education commissioner.
The past six years of speeding up traffic, keeping the congestion charge too low, and a flimsy excuse for a cycling and walking revolution, will mean a worse London for all of us, including from air pollution".
The public may well not want to hear much about inequality (that seems to be the conclusion from Labour's doomed campaign), and of course poverty should never be used as an excuse for low expectations.
"There is no excuse for low expectations anywhere in the system but schools must have the additional support they need, from the government and from other agencies, to help children overcome the challenges that life throws at them," said Brian Lightman, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders.
Mr Lightman said there was "no excuse for low expectations anywhere in the system".
An unnamed head teacher told researchers that the label of special educational needs might be "often used as an excuse for low expectations and under-preparation on the part of parents".
Reformers often respond to such complaints with feel-good, roll up your sleeves statements such as that poverty is no excuse for low achievement, and anecdotal evidence about how some of their friends have been laid off while ineffective teachers remain on the job.
