We have had a lively conversation on this blog about whether poverty matters in relation to test scores, whether it is a cause or merely correlated with low scores, and whether schools alone (as some “reformers”) claim, can end poverty.
TeacherEd weighs in here:
This is just a red herring. It’s been over 45 years since the “War on Poverty” started, which first aimed the focus on “fixing” poor school children, beginning in Head Start, rather than requiring that highly profitable corporations pay their employees a livable wage. We have had decade after decade after decade of subsequent education “reforms” imposed by politicians and big business, aimed at “fixing” schools and “fixing” teachers, and now aimed at replacing schools and career teachers entirely.
We should not still be having a conversation about IF poverty is the cause of the achievement gap. Whether it’s causal or just a very high correlation does not matter when it’s so evident that this is a global issue: “International tests show achievement gaps in all countries” http://www.epi.org/blog/international-tests-achievement-gaps-gains-american-students/
This is a problem that does not just exist in America; all nations have an achievement gap between lower and higher income students, and countries such as England have been researching it, too: http://www.jrf.org.uk/work/workarea/education-and-poverty
Continuing to raise questions about the causes and effects of school failure among low income students is just a diversionary tactic. This is a planned distraction. It’s a strategy for avoiding having to deal with the root cause of poverty, which is simply not enough jobs with livable wages.
It’s a pretense for diverting attention away from the increasingly inequitable distribution of wealth in countries like America, so that while everyone is busy looking the other way, questioning whether poverty is the culprit, blaming schools and scape-goating teachers, the elites can continue to bankroll the privatization of public education, while labeling their investment “reform” when it’s really a business plan.
Poverty is the issue, in EVERY country. So forget all the bogus “research” that billionaires can purchase to support the diversion.
Instead of taking all those hundreds of millions of dollars from corporations to “reform” education, it’s time to hold them accountable for perpetuating poverty and require that companies like Walmart, and all the other highly profitable corporations that are culpable, pay their employees a living wage, because “Low-Wage Workers Employed Mostly By Large, Highly Profitable Corporations” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/19/low-wage-workers-_n_1687271.html and “more Walmart employees on Medicaid, food stamps than other companies” http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2012/dec/06/alan-grayson/alan-grayson-says-more-walmart-employees-medicaid-/
And they can well-afford equitable pay rates for their employees, instead of giving them brochures about how to apply for Food Stamps, etc: “Walmart heirs own more wealth than bottom 40 percent of Americans” http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2012/jul/31/bernie-s/sanders-says-walmart-heirs-own-more-wealth-bottom-/
This is corporate welfare and Americans should not stand for it, “Hidden Taxpayer Costs” (scroll down to see state by state) http://www.goodjobsfirst.org/corporate-subsidy-watch/hidden-taxpayer-costs
Wal-Mart is not alone and this is just the tip of the iceberg:
“Top Corporate Tax Dodgers” http://www.sanders.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/102512%20-%20JobDestroyers3.pdf
These are the conversations the billionaires investing in privatizing education want to avoid, so we MUST have THOSE talks and take action now, instead of falling for their red herring technique for another 45 years.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Fortunately there are some who say we need to work to reduce poverty and to help improve public schools. It’s not either or. While I understand that some who participate here are not fans of President Obama he has worked hard to
*expand the number of people receiving good medical care
* expand the number of people receiving assistance with college costs
* increase the availability of high quality early childhood education.
* pushed for higher taxes on the wealthiest Americans to make more funds available for anti-poverty strategies such as those described above.
Shortly after President Obama was elected, two major statements were circulated about the federal government’s role in improving public education. One stressed the view of Teacher Ed, that we have to focus on reducing poverty. The other stressed the view that we need to focus on improving schools.
One person in the country signed both statements. That was Secretary of Ed Duncan.
Seems to me that we can and should simultaneously work on both reducing poverty and improving schools. I also recognize that there are vigorous debates about what strategies should be used to accomplish both goals.
Did you know that Joe Biden’s brother runs a for profit charter in Florida?
http://thesecondalarm.com/2011/11/23/frank-biden/
Mr. Duncan will not reduce poverty and he will not improve education. His policies are not based on sound education research. He is experimenting with failed ideology. It is tough to have a conversation about reducing poverty and improving schools when the narrative and the debate is completely on the wrong path. You simply set up a straw man argument here. Nice try. Obama and Duncan make lots of statements on education. But their actions rarely reflect them.
Well, no one can dispute “simultaneously working on both reducing poverty and improving schools”, but holding Arne Duncan out as any sort of exemplar of this must be some sort of joke. “Clueless ideology” comes to mind. Of course, it’s all about “what strategies should be used”, but I’m willing to lay good odds that when people of the future look back on this period they will be amazed if not perplexed that given the strong and ample evidence that the strategies now being employed will not work and simply encourage profiteering at the public expense while destroying the stability of the teaching profession, anyone could have reasonably thought this would work. .
Diane,
It struck me that the US Department of Education has actually funded a program, Promise Neighborhoods, that addresses many of the issues you raise. However, I think it is underfunded and probably is too young to have demonstrated any impact. As far as I know, it is the only program that gives substantial attention to a comprehensive approach. It would be interesting to compare the level of education funding across different programs, e.g. charter schools, teacher incentive funds, turn-around schools, high-stakes assessment, promise neighborhoods, etc. That would provide an order of priority and weighting regarding which theories of change they most believe in. I address some of this in an article, Why Schools Alone Can’t Cure Poverty. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/why-schools-alone-cant-cure-poverty/2012/09/18/0c18b858-fd08-11e1-a31e-804fccb658f9_blog.html)
Thanks,
Arthur
Arthur Camins,
I like the Promise Neighborhoods but they are a tiny drop in the bucket and they pale in significance in comparison to the administration’s support for privatization and high-stakes testing, silence as teachers and unions are attacked, silence on vouchers, silence on charter scandals, silence on charter resegregation, etc
Honorable Mr. Nathan would have us believe that Obama is throwing his office into eliminating poverty. Not true. Under Obama, income ineq has continued soaring. Data tell us that almost all gains of post-Wall St crash “recovery” have gone to the top 1%, little or none to the 99%. Obama/Duncan Educ Policy is not improving schools but is funneling billions of fed dollars to states that authorize more pvt charters and enforce more high-stakes testing.
Wealthy people spent hundreds of millions trying to defeat President Obama. I think Obama has done a number of wise things, some of which are summarized in a previous column. Thanks for Mr. Camins for pointing out the Promise Neighborhood efforts…and there are others, such using federal funds to help school districts retain educators.
Overall unemployment is down (a huge source of poverty) over several years ago and employment is up.
Another wise thing that Obama has done is remove troops that a previous administration put in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is freeing up $ to more constructive purposes.
Obama has faced enormous opposition from the Republican controlled House. He’s not perfect but I’m very glad he was elected and re-elected.
Joe Nathan,
I too am glad Obama was re-elected. I endorsed him and voted for him.
However, his education policy has unleashed privatization, for-profit entrepreneurs, vouchers, and attacks on teachers.
His education policy is a nightmare for public education.
In fact, my comment regarding Promise Neighborhood was intended to point out that the Department of Education was prioritizing market-based solutions that have no evidence base over comprehensive solutions that do.
One thing Romney and Obama agreed upon was their education agenda.
My vote for Obama was a choice between the lesser of two evils. The only reason he was ever elected was because Kennedy, Schumer and Reid worked hard to make sure Hillary wouldn’t receive the nomination. btw, he also agreed to reinstate the payroll tax which hurts so many middle class families. He also didn’t take the rise of the Tea Party seriously. His health-care plan is costing more in premiums and higher deductibles for middle class families to help offset the cost of Obama Care.
Let’s not put him on a pedestal. Had he put the economy ahead of his legacy we would be in a better economic position because at that time we had more Democrats in Congress.
Those troops coming back are being neglected and ignored. Their injuries are costing us millions, and rightly so! They DESERVE every support we can give them and we are not giving them what they need without another battle they have to fight. There are so many troops on food stamps. losing their homes, medicaid (IF they can get it) waiting months to even get seen in the VA. The VA has still not recognized agent orange from Vietnam as an injury they exposed our troops to!
They brought out troops home from one battle field to another.
This freeing up of dollars is bogus. It just changes the line item in the budget.
Hey, friends! Any of you read Teachered’s post? It’s about holding highly-profitable corporations accountable for living wages and not falling for the diversions. Then you all went right back to the diversions. How discouraging.
That is the role of Joe N. He is their water boy….nothing but diversions. Skim, delete, ignore.
I agree but also want to add this: if education is “the civil rights issue of our time,” let’s look not only at what high-performing nations do, but what high-equity nations do. They provide every child with the same opportunities; they do what it takes to ensure every school is a good school, equally well resourced and equally well equipped with a sufficient number of experienced teachers. When I look at what the high school in my blue-collar, inner-ring suburb of Chicago struggles to provide (bare minimum of academic credits, a 5-period school day, no opportunity to retake failed classes, a smattering of electives including Spanish, the only language offered — which you cannot take if you also want 4 years of science and/or math — a few clubs and a marching band) compared with what the much wealthier suburb to the north provides (a 7-period school day; French, German, Italian, Latin, Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, as well as Spanish; a gospel choir, two jazz bands, two concert orchestras, a symphony orchestra, a dance team, a television studio, over 60 clubs), and consider that the school in the wealthier district also has more counselors and health services, plus a lower student-teacher ratio — well? Should all our children have equal educational opportunities, or not?
I’m 56 and from Detroit originally. I have lived all over the place. I guess my heavy sigh gut reaction to the phrase “civil rights issue of our time is”:
Why in 2013 are we still having civil rights issues?
Diane’s post says that TeacherEd’s comment is about “taxing corporations,” but it’s actually mainly about requiring corporations to pay higher wages. This is always a very interesting topic, and several questions come to mind.
1. What should the “livable wage” be?
2. Would all employers have to pay this living wage, or would it apply only to “highly profitable corporations,” as TeacherEd writes?
3. If it only applied to “highly profitable corporations,” what would the profitability threshold?
4. If there were a profitability threshold, would corporations have an incentive to manage their business so as not to trigger the threshold (the triggering of which would necessarily make them less profitable)?
5. If there were no profitability threshold, would the increase in labor costs lead some companies to hire fewer employees — whether because they truly can’t afford to, or because it’s more profitable to require existing employees to work longer hours, or because of increased outsourcing?
On the question of increasing effective corporate tax rates:
1. If we assume that higher effective corporate tax rates do NOT lead to negative employment effects (such as layoffs, less new hiring, outsourcing), how much money could the federal government raise in this manner?
2. Is this assumption correct?
flerper, All of your questions and issues of detail are irrelevant diversions. Raising the minimum wage to the point that the use of the EITC, food stamps and other gov’t supports for the working poor become rarely used programs is a simple, well proven solution. No harm to the economy has ever resulted from raising the minimum wage. In addition to that, closing tax loopholes and ending subsidies to highly profitable businesses and industries so that they pay their fair share in taxes for the benefits they receive has to be done. If shareholders have a problem with profitability, they can reduce the massively inflated compensation packages of top management. This has been done and is continuing to happen in other industrialized nations with zero negative consequences for their economies. It has been done in those places by the citizens since the majority of shareholders are in the same economic class as the CEO’s and are loath to vote their peers a needed pay cut.
There’s never a point at which a minimum wage will change employers’ behavior? This seems a very odd assertion given that we already know that one of the reasons that multinationals outsource is because labor costs are lower elsewhere.
In 2012 the threshold for the EITC for a family of three children and a single parent was $45,060. Assuming the head of household worked 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year, the minimum wage necessary to make the household ineligible would be a little over $22.50 an hour.
For a household with one child and one adult to lose eligibility for EITC, that figure is $18.46 an hour.
The income limits can be found here: http://www.eitc.irs.gov/central/abouteitc/ranges/
The minimum wage in Australia is around $16. Their dollar is as strong as ours (last I checked, it had even become slightly stronger). They also have universal healthcare (not corporate-friendly health insurance mandates). There’s no need to worry about raising the minimum wage to $22 an hour at the moment, although that would be far more reflective of the rise in productivity and CEO profits since the ’80s – just raising it from $7.25 to $16 an hour and adopting universal healthcare would be enough to impact sweeping positive changes for hundreds of millions of citizens.
I picked 22 because poster CitizensArrest wanted to eleminate the need for the earned income tax credit and that is what would be required for a family of four with one working adult.
I am puzzled though that you want to set the wage at $16. Would not the higher wage of $22.50 an hour be better?
*Stands and applauds the original author*
The EITC or earned income tax credit is another form of corporate welfare. In the same way that WalFart gets corporate welfare by pushing it’s employees onto foodstamps etc. made necessary by the sub standard wages they pay, the EITC is a way to make tax payers subsidize corporations and businesses that do not pay a living wage by helping those who are working yet have the lowest levels of earned income.
I suppose national, universal-access healthcare would also be a form of corporate welfare that “make[s] taxpayers subsidize corporations and businesses” that don’t provide health benefits?
Arguably (or, as economists would probably put it, “certainly”), the most efficient to give workers more money is to . . . give them more money. That’s what a tax credit does.
So before the EITC all firms payed a living wage?
National universal access health care is not a corporate subsidy, business should not be the conduit through which health care benefits flow. Single payer would relieve them of that burden. Though we have a fantastic knowledge and skill base in health care in the USA, we pay massively more for far worse results than other nations due to the absurd structure of our current system. We can most certainly do better by emulating the efficient and successful systems other nations use in achieving their superior results. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/26/charts-health-care-costs-americans_n_2957266.html?utm_hp_ref=fb&src=sp&comm_ref=false#sb=875959,b=facebook
Tax credits are paid for by tax revenue collected from others. As it stands now, they are a subsidy, not a safety net. That has to change. Do you not see the hypocrisy of those who complain of a nanny state being the primary cause of it by not demanding the payment of a wage that a person/family working full time can live on? Or is it preferable that people make so little money that they cannot drive the economy with any discretionary spending whatsoever? Tax credits are the worst possible way to give people more money. Do you really favor redistribution over earning a living?
I tend to agree that we can improve our health care system in the ways you mention. I just don’t see the basis for your distinction between “subsidy” and “relieving corporations of burdens.”
Tax credits have consequences, some positive and others negative depending on your point of view, like every other action in the universe, including wage controls. Redistribution is definitely a more direct and efficient way to get money into people’s hands than mandating a living wage. (Same with “job creation.” It’s more direct and efficient for the government to hire people than to mandate or encourage private entities to do it.) That’s not to say it’s a better way or necessarily a good policy, but the devil is entirely in the details. Hard to have this discussion without first identifying (1) what the living wage would be and (2) what entities would be required to pay it.
What is it about redistribution that you think is bad?
Here’s a column about some school districts, colleges and universities that are working together to help youngsters. Students who participate in these programs are more likely to not only enter, but graduate from some form of higher education. Students and their families also are able to save thousands, even tens of thousands of dollars.
When the Post-Secondary Options law, that helped encourage this cooperation was proposed in 1985, many education groups criticized and tried to convince legislators to oppose it. However, on a bi-partisan basis, the law was adopted.
Last year the law was expanded, as noted in this column. It has been very popular with families, and helped encourage new college level courses in high school. It’s good to see district and charter educators responding positively to new challenges and opportunities.
http://hometownsource.com/2013/03/28/new-high-schoolcollege-collaborations-are-win-win-win/
This column will appear in a variety of Minnesota newspapers over the next week.
Enacting policies and laws that absolutely require companies to pay the true cost of doing business, rather than allowing them to externalize the costs on tax payers while privatizing the profits, would go a long way toward solving inequity, inequality and poverty. We have for too long looked up to wealthy bankers and businessmen instead of locking them up for their unethical business practices.
I really believe we should stop extending the multitude of tax breaks to corporations and just lower the corporate tax. But with that reduction there should also be a restriction that (good) job growth increases. And, to also receive that tax reduction, corporations must conduct business within the USA. Outsourcing is what’s killing the job market. We are now seeing a correction in the job market, and that is good. As an investor, I am happy. But I also want profits for better goods and services and that’s not what’s being produced outside of our country. If the economy was strong, you wouldn’t see so many greedy bastards looking to education as the next quick buck. Wall Street will do to education what they did to housing and banking just to get a fast rate of return. And that will also destroy the economy. Under Obama, RTTT funding does not go directly to schools. Instead it lines the pockets of privateers.
It is hard to distinguish between reductions in job growth because of technology change and reductions due to outsourcing. The good news is that outsourcing is close to reaching it’s limits. China has run out of workers and labor costs are growing quickly (though admittedly from a low base)
In honor of Passover, and what brings us together, I thought I’d post a link to a wonderful NY Times story about a person who helped free people at a horrible concentration camp. For some it will be a “diversion”, for some a reminder about evil and compassion.
I am still left wondering what ACTION TeacherEd is advocating. He offers a critique of the present approach to poverty, but only implies a solution. TeacherEd would you please provide details of your plan for legislating a living wage?
What’s so bad is that politicians know this yet refuse to do anything about it. Its an old boy’s network where the boys are part of the problem. These people will continue to get over without paying their fair share and middle America will continue to suffer and pay the lion’s share. Even yes we can Obama stays away from imposing any real meaningful changes on the tax code or wall street or the large mutinational banks, If it gets done, saving public education, I don’t think poiiticians will help in this matter.
There is a great deal of debate about what a fair tax schedule would look like. How would you like to see the tax schedule changed?
Notice, all of the ‘program’ mentioned are aimed at the EFFECTS of poverty, rather than pverty itself. None of them addressed the reality of families without heat or hot water, children or parents going to bed hungry, students unable to buy basic school supplies. Not a single one of the programs looked at, much less addressed, poverty itself.