The firing of teachers at Central Falls High School is the unfortunate but not unforeseen clash between the sad history of urban education in our country and the testing-dominated measures for accountability and high student performance in all of our schools. We are learning that there is much difficult work ahead if we are to free children in our cities from the stifling poverty that has been passed from one generation to the next.

First, we should understand that the context of the Central Falls problem lies in the evolution of public education. Since the 1900s the story of our public schools has been one of increasing access on one hand, and the struggle to maintain high quality on the other. At the turn of the previous century, public schools were primarily for white advantaged children who could take time away from work or the farm to go to school.

With child-labor laws, schools accommodated millions of less well-off children who were suddenly unemployed as well as uneducated. With the influx of these children, the schools began teaching life skills and vocational education, as well as traditional subjects built around the three “R’s” and the classics. As waves of immigrants came into the country, public schools were asked to assimilate them into our culture.

After 1954, when the Supreme Court decided that separate was inherently unequal, black children flowed into the mainstream public-education system and public schools led the rest of the country in grappling with issues surrounding civil rights. With the passage of special-education laws in the ’60s and ’70s, once again, public schools were where social justice first appeared for people with disabilities, confronting some of our most basic taboos with the simple belief that the opportunity for children to achieve their potential extended to everyone.

Still, it was not until the early 1980s that the concept of “all children” appeared on the agenda of public education — first as a catchy slogan, and later as a serious mission. Until that time, children throughout the country often tried out school, only to learn that they really didn’t fit the system because of inadequate preparation, unacceptable behaviors, undiagnosed learning disabilities, or cultural or religious differences. Many found school just too boring. All these sorts of kids still exist today and it is the unfortunate tendency of many of us, including some educators, to blame the kids, or the parents, for their disengagement from school.

The “all-kids” agenda gained traction because it was no longer possible for most young people to lead a reasonably productive, fulfilling or happy life without the absolute minimum of a good high-school education. There are very few skills or trades that, once learned, will sustain a person for life. Instead, students need to learn how to learn again and again.

Not surprisingly, the system we built over the past century is kinder and more generous to children of advantage than to those who grow up in poverty. Today, our public schools are not “the great equalizer” as Horace Mann suggested long ago. Instead they tend to reinforce the inequities handed out at birth. Once again, nothing about this should shock us.

Having limited opportunity is simply what it means to be poor.

In many of our urban schools, the students who dropped out yesterday are the parents of our children today. We cannot expect these children to exhibit behaviors never learned in the first place. Few students have large vocabularies enriched by educated parents in homes filled with books. Many lack the intellectual curiosity to question and explore the world beyond their TV screens or neighborhoods. They often lack the skills to persevere through the frustration brought on by academic problems. Their attitudes and habits of mind are developed for the challenges on the streets of their neighborhood and not necessarily those of the classroom.

But these are our kids, and one benefit of federal and state efforts to make better schools is that, at least on paper, we are talking about reform for all kids. It is unfortunate that we measure the quality of schools with the blunt instrument of standardized tests, which may be most unfair to many urban children who are culturally distanced from the test. At the same time, as educator Deborah Kenny suggests, students should not be satisfied with merely passing a standardized test.

However, what may be more harmful to our children is letting more time go by before we accept the challenge to do whatever it takes to help them succeed. No longer can we make excuses about the children not fitting the schools. We know who they are, as we have for decades. It is up to us, the adults, to make sure that the schools fit the children. We must take on the institutional inertia that has been dragging down schools, especially high schools, for too long.

I do not know whether or not our country is ready to do whatever it takes, especially for youth who are generally deemed to be “other people’s children.”

We will see what happens as the struggle for all kids and high quality continues.

Certainly, one of the ironies of the whole situation is that the very institution regarded as being comfortable with mediocrity is demonstrating the kind of tough accountability that is lacking on Wall Street, in politics and in sports.

Maybe this is just another example of our schools showing us how to confront a serious challenge.

Rob DeBlois is the director of the Urban Collaborative Accelerated Program, an alternative middle school in Providence.