Let the blind lead the blind

My discouragement is overwhelming. Optimism tends to be my trademark - that is how I am characterized by friends and colleagues. Often, however, I find pessimism creeping its way into my brain and my thoughts. At this moment (and fairly often for that matter), I feel like urban education is a losing battle and I see no way to make that change. Through observation of other teachers, through my own work, and through my students' capabilities and shortcomings, I do not feel very positive.

Many of my colleagues spit the same defeatist rhetoric day in, day out.
"They just don't want to learn!"
"They have so much potential!"
"He will be in jail or dead in the next few years."
Many of these children are certainly born into less than privileged circumstances to parents who may not be adept at raising children. Many of their parents did not complete high school. The drug and alcohol use and abuse that we all hear about are realities in many of their every day lives. I am often told that "we can't reach them all." Well the fact is that we aren't reaching many of them. How many students pass through the halls of my school and deserve, on merit alone, to pass from grade to grade? How many of them lack skills one would expect a person to have several years their minor?

Teacher education and professional development seems to stem from a belief in a series of norms in the field that do not seem to include the population I work with. I don't think that schools give these kids what they need, and I don't think that we will reach our goals of making significant changes. I desperately want to make these kids' lives better. I want them to be successful and happy, but they way we teach, the way the system works, and what is expected of teachers does not put student success within our means. Of course their will always be the teachers who say that the few who are successful make our jobs worth it. The few who listen, who do their work, and who succeed make up for the failures and continued ruination of others? That seems a bit much for me to swallow.

Day after day, I am faced with students who are absolutely in no way prepared to learn or skilled enough to perform on grade level. The things I am expected to do are beyond the capabilities of the student body. For teachers at my school, it seems we are given three main options:
Option 1: Follow the pacing guide and give students work they are unable to do [failure and no skill acquisition]
Option 2: Follow the pacing guide but dumb the work down to the point it could be completed by an elementary students [passing but no skill acquisition]
Option 3: Spend time on topics students should have already learned. not follow what we are supposed to be teaching, and thereby given students basic skills but leave them behind where they are supposed to be, setting them up for further failure in another grade.
Over the course of a single school year, there is not enough time to assess student needs, fix the problems, re-teach and teach new skills and present new information. My frustration and uncertainty are on high. I don't know what good I am doing in my profession and it doesn't seem that anyone else can tell me how we can fix things. I can't just say "forget it" and move on to a school with students of privilege and help reproduce the inequities that keep us separated along racial and financial lines, but staying put in a position where I feel I am not learning nor am I aiding these children does not leave me by any means satisfied or even feelings that I am doing the right thing.

I just don't know how to make things work out. It's hard to raise your expectations when your observations show you time again that your students have difficulty comprehending and summarizing a short paragraph, writing a logical sentence. or having even a minimal understanding of the world around them.

I need radical change.