Paul Thomas here takes on some of the most sacred beliefs of U.S. culture. He argues that poverty is destiny, and that education is not the great equalizer. He says that wishing it were so does not make it so.
He writes:
“In the U.S. both poverty and affluence are destiny, and those who shudder at that reality are confusing verbs: Yes, poverty should not be destiny, but false claims will never allow us to achieve that ideal.”
Thomas quotes Matt Bruenig, who wrote:
“One convenient way to describe what’s going on is that rich kids are more likely to get a better education, which translates into being richer and wealthier as adults. It is certainly the case that richer kids are more likely to get a college degree, and it is certainly the case that getting a college degree leaves you much better off on average than not getting one. But this does not explain the full picture of social immobility. Take a look at this super-complicated chart, which I will describe below….
“So, you are 2.5x more likely to be a rich adult if you were born rich and never bothered to go to college than if you were born poor and, against all odds, went to college and graduated. The disparity in the outcomes of rich and poor kids persists, not only when you control for college attainment, but even when you compare non-degreed rich kids to degreed poor kids!
“Therefore, the answer to the question in the title is that you are better off being born rich regardless of whether you go to college than being born poor and getting a college degree.”
Thomas says that our popular myths have a dark side. They allow us to blame the poor for being poor, for not working hard enough, for lacking “grit.”
We do not live in a meritocracy, saysThomas, but in a society where race and class determine most people’s destiny.
He does not wish to be considered a fatalist. Instead, he says, we must “Commit to social and education policy grounded in equity, and not in competition or market forces.” So long as we believe that it is up to each individual to rise or fall on their own, without regard to large social and economic forces, nothing will change.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This paper is one of the largest studies of intergenerational income mobility in the United States. It finds that income mobility differs a great deal between different locations in the country.
The link: http://obs.rc.fas.harvard.edu/chetty/mobility_geo.pdf
Raj Chetty again.
What’s his story?
Akademos,
Raj Chetty is an applied micro economist who usually works on taxes (his most cited article in the economics literature is about the tax incidence of sales taxes). Once you have put all the hard work into constructing and using IRS data bases (which he does in the tax work), income mobility becomes a natural question to look at, especially with the concerns about income distribution in the economy.
And he’s the Bloomberg Prof of Econ at Harvard.
It does not surprise me that the former mayor wished to endow a chair in applied micro. I think Bloomberg appreciated empirical analysis of large data sets.
Pure junk.
MathVale,
Why did you reach that conclusion?
I agree. This is what infuriated me during the Presidential debates. Romney claimed that what is achieved is not through the help of anyone else, not society, not government, not roads, not infrastructure, not bought and lobbied loopholes that wind up excluding the masses.
He and others can talk all they want about how patriotic, truly American, law-abiding, wholesome, faithful, God-fearing, and charitable they are, but it is a sham. They help make the laws that create their opportunity to get wealthier and not contribute in a real way to the success if anyone else. They are the exclusive club. Their donations are tax deductible. True charity doesn’t expect a tax break. I am disgusted with the inequities that continue to expand while these Pharisees calmly pat themselves on their backs acting like they have proven that they care for the down trodden. Meanwhile they educate their children that they are the “chosen ones,” and their kyss believe it.
Just go to your parents and borrow tens of thousands of dollars to start your own business and live the American dream, Romney said. He’s just a well-behaved Donald Trump. But truly, I don’t dislike either of them because they are rich, but because they are unpatriotic…hiding their silver-dollars abroad and dropping them through loopholes and refusing to build the wealth — in terms of quality of life and GDP — of our nation. That, and that their breed thinks they can litigate their way out of anything and live above the law. They pay to write the rules they want to live by…the epitome of undemocratic. That is why public education is on the chopping block…cut the rising star pupils of Phila, Detroit, NOLA at the knees.
But, but, but … they did it all on their own or at least their PARENTS told them so … I agree it is NOT patriotic to take and take and pretend to give … with a tax write off for the giving … Creates quicksand for the masses …
Probably more accurate to say that poverty and family are destiny. Too often, we just focus on the economic aspect of socio-economic background. Family income, parental education, and parental occupation all matter when it comes to educational attainment and are somewhat correlated. Parental income increased in influence relative to the others for future income.
I was born to parents who lived in poverty. Both were high school drop outs but they were avid readers and they imparted that love of reading to me even though, as a child, I fought (and lost to a determined mother who was supported by my public school teacher) to retain my ignorance and be illiterate like my brother.
My dad was a gambler and an alcoholic. My older brother was illiterate to the day he died at age 64. Richard was an alcoholic, a smoker, and he worked at hard labor all his life and it, along with his addictions, broke his body. He used to brag that he never applied for welfare.
On the other hand, I ended up going to college on the GI Bill after serving in the U.S. Marines along with a tour in Vietnam right out of high school and eventually found my way to teaching for thirty years after earning a BA and then eventually an MFA.
I’m not rich but I do have my CalSTRS retirement that I paid into for thirty years (8 percent of my gross pay went into that defined retirement program)—-a retirement program that the fake education reformers and their billionaire supporters want to take away from people like me who were born to poverty and from all the other public school teachers no matter what class they were born into.
Some of these billionaires want to destroy the labor unions who stand up for the poor and the middle class—their strongest voice even if unions are susceptible at times to corruption. After all, labor unions are led by humans but the democratic organization of unions allows for course corrections from those leaders who become corrupted by big money from billionaires.
In addition, some of these billionaires want to turn Social Security over to the private sector where ti risks being bankrupt and destroyed while they increase their fortunes and the profits of corporations from the Social Security tax that workers pay their whole workign life.
We are living in an era where the rich rob from the poor and manage to manipulate the middle class and poor to support the agendas of billionaires to become even more powerful and wealthy.
Lloyd,
Thanks for your post. You wrote, “…a retirement program that the fake education reformers and their billionaire supporters want to take away…”
Please explain to me exactly how we will lose our retirement benefits.
Thank you.
Let’see. If we are shoved out of our jobs before retirement age and can’t collect because we don’t meet our STRS formula, if we are forced into lower salaries and have no matching funds from local districts because unions are banned, if we are forced into temporary jobs by the prevalence if TFA “teachers” not professional teachers, if we have privatized schools that won’t offer any retirement, or if STRS goes bankrupt, it will diminish or eliminate retirement for teachers under age 40 or possibly 45. It is yet to be seen.
I didn’t say the billionaires “were” going to take the retirement plan away. I think I said they wanted to take it away. If they succeed in crushing the public schools, what do you think they will aim for next?
If you want a look at one example of the PR campaign aimed at teacher retirement plans, here’s one example:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/12/millionaires_billionaires_and_teachers.html
Or there is this from David Sirota: “How an Enron billionaire, Wall Street and a major “nonpartisan” foundation are quietly robbing American workers”
“These pension-slashing initiatives are part of a larger movement that aims to reduce or eliminate guaranteed retirement income for public workers.”
http://www.salon.com/2013/09/26/exposed_enron_billionaires_diabolical_plot_to_loot_worker_pensions/
You lose retirement benefits when pensions are converted to defined benefit. 401ks and similar are a gift to Wall Street, bur the biggest fraud on American workers in our history.
As salaries are reduced or teacher turn over increases, the pool of contributions shrinks, stressing the system for current and future retirees.
Pension funds have power on Wall Street individual investors do not. When pensions are gone, so goes that representation of labor.
Yes. As older people retire early, the funds are used up sooner and their larger salaries with larger contributions are no longer funding the pool. When younger teachers’ salaries stagnate, less is put into the fund since it is a %age of their salaries, usually with some matching from the district, and, therefore, there is less in the pool for themselves later when they need it. In addition, investments are not making as much as they did in many cases. As we replace teachers with TFAs and computers, even less will go into the pool.
Deb,
The good news for long term teachers is that all of the districts contributions for young teachers can be used for long term teachers if the younger teachers leave before they are vested.
But that isn’t good for the younger teachers. I feel bad for them.
Deb,
It is indeed bad four the younger teachers. Money that they earned that should have gone to their retirement ends up paying for someone else’s retirement.
Deb,
So based on what you wrote, Lloyd, who is retired, loses his retirement benefit only if CalStrs goes bankrupt. The billionaires might not have an effect on his retirement, correct? Thus, Lloyd’s retirement benefit depends more on the fiscal solvency of the government of California.
As for the rest of what you wrote…thanks.
I don’t know. I just retired on 2012. Ohio. Many of us did. Most, earlier than they planned. I could have gone several years more.
My retirement is safe probably until I die. Others, who are younger, probably not. I don’t know about CA STRS.
The market value of the CalSTRS Investment Portfolio was $165.8 billion as of
June 30, 2013. CalSTRS is the nation’s largest teacher public pension fund.
CalSTRS lost $50 billion from the 2007-08 global financial crises and the Governor and legislature passed legislation recently to replace what was lost so the retirement plan will be solvent again.
I should have added this: In April 2014 Cal Watchdog.com reported: “The California State Teacher’s Retirement System faced $73.3 billion in long-term liabities. Left untouched, that would spe3ll bankruptcy in 2043. If still alive, I’d be 98.
The governor and state legislature recently passed legislation to patch this problem.
Tort,
Don’t forget what caused the 2007-08 global financial crises. The same thing could happen to any public retirement plan if some of the same people that brought the world to the brink have their way.
I’ve heard that if CalSTRS goes bankrupt—which is unlikely unless the billionaires that want to get their hands on that money have their way—the state and/or the feds would pick up the tab for teachers who are already retired but there may be no retirement for teachers still in the classroom—they may get a lump sum for what they contributed out of their pay checks and that might be it. But hearing something doesn’t mean it will happen. I hope that never comes to pass but as teachers we need to be active to make sure it doesn’t happen.
For starters, I took a 40 percent pay cut when I retired at sixty, left without any medical coverage and could not collect Social Security even though I had paid into SS for fifteen years before I started teaching at 30 and started to pay 8 percent of my gross pay to CalSTRS that reports even after the $50 billion dollar loss caused by the 2007-08 global financial crises, CalSTRS would still have enough funds on hand to pay 100 percent of benefits for about 27 years and then, like SS, CalSTRS would cut retirement benefits for members by whatever percent would be necessary to not go into the red.
There is a big difference between SS and CalSTRS. SS has no money because Congress spent it all as it came in. All SS has is IOUs from Congress. CalSTRS, on the other hand, has a lot of cash that been paid into the fun for more than a century.
Here’s a question that deserves an answer: How much of a burden are all levels of public education on the State of California?
In 2013-14, the state budget allocated $39,785,076,000 to fund K thru 12 Education. The Contributions that go to CalSTRS comes out of that account. That’s 27.4% of the state budget
Higher education got $11,395,347,000
The state budget was $145,300,007,000
How much went to the Teachers Retirement System? $1,359,827,000. That’s less than 1 percent of the total state budget that went to CalSTRS in 2013-14.
Social Security is more or less a pay-as-you-go system, unfunded by design. It will built up reserves in trust funds at times, but the basic design is that today’s taxpayers pay for today’s social security beneficiaries. For that reason, the statement that “Social Security will go broke by [insert date]” isn’t that significant. The nature of its design can allow relatively minor tweaks in funding to bridge whatever gaps arise.
A pension fund is designed to be pre-funded. Unlike with Social Security, persistent funding gaps can have catastrophic consequences for pension funds, because the today’s contributions are supposed to compound into next year’s contributions, and the next year’s, and the next year’s, etc. Funding gaps bigger on a non-linear curve.
Lloyd,
CalSTRS holds about 2.5% in cash. Most of the assets are in global equity, that is owning shares of companies all over the world. If you are interested in seeing where those funds are invested, you can look here: http://www.calstrs.com/current-investment-portfolio
Lloyd,
You stated that ” For starters, I took a 40 percent pay cut when I retired at sixty, left without any medical coverage and could not collect Social Security even though I had paid into SS for fifteen years before I started teaching at 30..”
No one can collect Social Security retirement benefits at age 60 no matter how many years they have paid into the system. The earliest age anyone can collect is 62. Here is a link to the Social Security website. It may clear up any questions you had about eligibility: http://www.ssa.gov .
TE,
Thanks for the information. When I reach the age for maximum SS benefits, I’ll apply and see what happens. As for health care–to be transparent—I left teaching with no health care but within a year had health care through the VA.
When I retired from teaching, I didn’t know that because of my service in the U.S. Marines and serving in combat in Vietnam where I was exposed to Agent Orange and ended up with PTSD that I was eligible for medical care through the VA. I found out through a friend of my wife’s about the VA. I guess they don’t do a lot of PR to reach veterans.
I’m almost 70 today and the VA has been my medical provider for about 8 of the 10 years I’ve been retired from teaching. When I became eligible for Medicare, I opted to stay in the VA system. Because the VA rated me with a 30-percent combat related disability, my copay is better than through Medicare.
I had an uncle who served in World War II and he came home from serving in India and then Southeast Asia with a severe skin disease that the VA treated all the way to his death at age 96. He had no idea what they soaked him with to kill the fungus or virus that was eating his skin causing it to rot and fall off in sheets, but he said the liquid was purple and it controlled the disease so he wasn’t devoured by it.
Lloyd,
Like you, I understand the risks in today’s world for our pension. Not too long ago, CStrs sent teachers a survey which wanted to gauge our confidence levels. I’ll bet they didn’t like the results. But, then again, I did not take many econ classes, and took zero finance classes. Should have.
I have a few more questions.
You wrote, “’Ive heard that if CalSTRS goes bankrupt—which is unlikely unless the billionaires that want to get their hands on that money have their way…” Please explain how the billionaires can get their hands on the pension fund, which is guaranteed by state law. I can understand the government saying, “Sorry,” but i don’t see how else it can be threatened other than by economic and fiscal conditions.
Also, if you worked and paid into SS for 15 years, shouldn’t you be receiving some SS benefit, even though it may have been, or is, reduced under the WEP?
Thank you, and thank you for serving in Vietnam.
Tort,
Today the law covers public pension plans, but laws may be changed through legislation. For instance, the law changed regarding the financial sector and that change led to the 2007-08 global financial disaster.
If—from what I’ve read—there are forces in the private sector that are putting pressure on Congress or state legislatures to change current laws regarding public pensions and those forces win, then the law will change.
After all, it wasn’t that long ago that taxes mean6t for public schools could only go to the public schools but since Obama became president that has changed drastically and taxes now flow into private sector charters that are often governed by a completely different set of rules, or lack of rules, than the public schools are.
Even the U.S. Constitution may be changed through the Amendment process. At one time women could not vote. Today they can vote. At one time, there were African slaves but today legal slavery is gone.
At one time, there was the Chinese Exclusion act and then a few decades later it was abolished through Congressional legislation.
I haven’t applied for SS. If I do, and I qualify for anything, it will be when I’m old enough to collect the highest benefit. And I’m not sure if that formula that factors in double dipping for public school teachers will leave anything.
Lloyd,
You said in an earlier post ” For starters, I took a 40 percent pay cut when I retired at sixty, left without any medical coverage and could not collect Social Security even though I had paid into SS for fifteen years before I started teaching at 30 and started…”
I pointed out in response that no one can collect Social Security retirement benefits before age 62, but your post here reveals an additional explanation for why “..you could not collect Social Security even though I had paid in….”. The problem is that you must actually ask to receive retirement benefits in order to receive them, something that you say you have never did and don’t plan to do for a while.
Lloyd, What would these billionaires accomplish by gutting your retirement benefits? What would they accomplish by changing the law to renege on promises made to those of us who’ve been working and paying in for decades? While I appreciate your civics lesson, I am trying to understand the rationale behind your concerns.
Where I work, we assume it is a given that everyone who has retired, or those who haven’t yet retired but have been vested for a long time, won’t get the shaft. We also believe that the only thing that would cause us to lose our retirement benefits is a Greece-like financial collapse. Please help me to understand why anyone would propose legislation or constitutional amendments that would harm individuals, and who would undoubtedly file lawsuits against the legislation.
This is my last inquiry, and thanks for being patient.
Because they CAN. They consider government workersxand pensions to be robbing tax payers.
“Please help me to understand why anyone would propose legislation or constitutional amendments that would harm individuals, and who would undoubtedly file lawsuits against the legislation.”
First example for an answer: 21st Amendment
Then there were these: The Worst Laws Ever Passed: http://www.examiner.com/article/the-worst-laws-ever-passed
Never think never. Bad legislation and even Amendments to the U.S. Constitution have been passed before and they will happen again.
In a previous comment, I left links to evidence that there are individuals and financial institutions that want to change the public retirement systems. Why have you not mentioned what those said and why do you keep returning to the same theme ignoring the obvious?
Lloyd. I read the links you posted and while I’m fluent in the language of how the government works and doesn’t work, I am a little sketchy with finance. To put it bluntly, I’ve been concerned about the future: 19 years of paying into SS is going to net me $408/month at age 62 (WEP). In addition to 19 years in the private sector, I’m in my 19th year as a public school teacher. If I make it another 6 years–hitting the all-important year 25– I wont be close to making what I’m making now. Some of the alerts here about possibly losing retirement income, is somewhat nerve racking.
I don’t want to hijack the thread here, so I will sign off with “thanks again” for answering my questions!
I understand why it would be nerve racking to think that some billionaire and/or the financial industry would want to go after teacher retirement funds, but I think if we take this threat seriously and don’t ignore it, we—I mean teachers and their families—can protect the retirement plans from the carpetbaggers and pirates.
In addition, to insure that the retirement plans survive, public education and the teacher unions must also survive the manufactured crises in public education.
I think it would help if teachers would propose better teacher training, support and a national early childhood education program.
Lloyd,
Thanks for sharing. I started my childhood in a diverse working class town in a school with wonderful teachers.
My parents wanted me to have an education but they didn’t know they had to be part of the process to make that happen.
Telling your child you want them to go to college isn’t enough.
Actions are more important than words. Doing nothing to make sure homework is being done and ignoring lots of D’s and some F’s on report cards and then not attending parent conferences for most of a child’s school years is not the kind of parent support the child and/or schools need. for the child to learn.
I hated school for most of K-12, but that hate had nothing to do with the teachers–it had to do with bullies and my being sick so much that by the time I turned 18, I stood 6’4″ and weighed 125 pounds. I actually liked many of my teachers who demonstrated through their actions and efforts that they cared more about my education then me or my parents.
I’m sure that if most of my teachers had fewer difficult and at-risk students and smaller class sizes, they would have spent more time attempting to motivate me to do the school work and study—-which I avoided as if it were Ebola by being passive-aggressive and seldom saying anything. But I did read a lot of escapes fiction (science fiction, fantasy and historical fiction) and spent more time in the high school library than I did anywhere else other than my 30 hour a week night and weekend job as a dishwasher in a coffee shop starting at age 15 to right before I left for MCRD in San Diego.
As a senior in high school, I cut most of my classes my last semester but did just enough work to barely pass them while I worked in the library as a student assistant. I never missed my hours in the library where I earned one of my rare A’s. The school had a seven foot block wall running along the street next to the library. Most days I’d park my car on one side of the wall, climb the wall, spend my time in the library as a student helper and then climb the wall and drive off.
I have no idea why HS administration never called me in to the office, because of all my classroom absences. I graduated from high school with a 0.94 GPA. When I graduated from college in 1973 with a BA in journalism, I had a 3.89 GPA in my major for my last two years in college and was on the dean’s honor roll. The first two years in college were hard because I had to force myself to learn what it meant to be a real student instead of just warming a seat.
re “Thomas says that our popular myths have a dark side. They allow us to blame the poor for being poor, for not working hard enough, for lacking “grit.””
This is not a popular myth, it is a conservative talking point.
Yes, there is a very close correlation between income and a person’s life chances, but that is not the same as “poverty is destiny.”
We know that the effects of poverty (poor nutrition, abuse, poor healthcare, lack of opportunities, etc.) greatly influence a child’s ability to get a decent education. This means we need to address these issues if we want to help him.
That said, there are many, many individuals who rise above their circumstances to get not only a good education but a spectacular one. I’ll bet each one of us knows a poor kid who went to Harvard or Berkeley. I certainly do. Also, anyone who reads can recite the names of very successful people who started life with little or nothing.
Just two years ago, a friend of mine had an enormous effect on the life chances of a poor Hispanic girl. The girl had moved to a mobile home park located in an affluent city. When she went to the local school, the administrators took one look at her low test scores and tried to send her to an alternative school in a low-income area. But my friend came to the girl’s rescue and told the parents to insist on the girl’s right to be at her local school. Once they realized the girl had an advocate, the administrators suddenly became her best friend and offered her a lot of help and support. The girl graduated, received a scholarship, and will be starting college in a few weeks. The advocate has promised help in terms of financial support. Voila, the girl’s “destiny” has been changed.
It is important for educators to use precise terms. Does poverty adversely affect a person’s chance to get a good education? Yes. Is it destiny? No. Let’s get rid of that insulting term, as it is being used against us.
“Does poverty adversely affect a person’s chance to get a good education? Yes. Is it destiny? No.”
And THIS is why its so important for students to read literature in school. Many pieces demonstrate the truth of this and other important ideas that can indeed help people succeed in life.
Education cannot equalize society. The US population now possesses the highest levels of educational achievement in our history but is also at an extreme of economic inequality. If Horace Mann was right in designating education as the great equalizer, we should have been equal by now, 175 years after he launched public schooling.
The schools and colleges we now have, for the most part, confirm and extend the inequalities every generation is born into, even as every generation learns more and becomes more sophisticated users of technology, but not more equal economically. The cementing of inequality is a predominant outcome of mass education but this sorry effect is not total, not a lock on all the kids of the 99% who enter school with lesser privileges than the kids from the 1%. Some kids from the bottom layers always succeed and climb up. People do move up the class ladder, moreso in Europe than in the US, but here too. (My dad was a high-school dropout metal worker; I got a phd and made it to the professional class.)
If schools are not engines of equality and social justice, what are? Mass upheavals, like the labor drives of the 30s, the feminist movement since the 60s, the civil rights movement since the 50s, the queer movement since the 80s, etc., which are not products of the school system but which work towards social justice and do feed back into the schools.
Scholars like Christopher Jencks in his study “Inequality” concluded that leveling class differences would be “glacial” if we counted on education to equalize society. Data prove him right. People in US have more educational credentials than even before, highest HS and coll attendance and grad rates; at same time, we now have historic levels of econ ineq, vast wealth accumulating at top, stagnation and decline for the rest; vast increase in education credentials of women but modest increase in their equalization with male wages, unable to convert educational gains into equivalent econ ones. The biggest strike wave in American history, 1946-47, installed “the family wage” as the hourly rate for middle-income life-styles for median families. This family wage was lost decade by decade as unions retreated from militance. Militant labor in Seattle forced min wage there to $15 this year.
In comparison, mass schooling and mass colleges cannot deliver the mass advancement or social justice won by mass movements in society. This is not what schooling can do; formal education is a learning process based in pedagogical discourse which develops our abilities to make sense of the world and to act socially from that knowledge. Diplomas and degrees do not produce more good-paying jobs in society for graduates; only a political contention in society over wages and econ development can do that. But, mass education can still contribute to social change if curricula invite students to practice and defend democracy, equality, ecology, and peace. This kind of schooling puts critical inquiry and social conditions at the center of study; questioning knowledge and the status quo as foundations of knowledge-making; vigorous discussion and debate fill school and college with contending presentations on what things mean and how to act on this meaning, to make this society more humane, just, ecologic, and equal.
I suggest that Mr. Thomas might want to modify his statements to reflect that some educational institutions do a superior job of developing their students. The Hamilton Project of the Brookings Institute showed that we have a problem in that all to often, our high achieving, low income students end up in a college that is ill-fitted to optimize their development, most particularly the for-profit schools that lower income students pick often.
http://web1.calbaptist.edu/dskubik/college.htm
If Mr. Thomas is open to consider proof that lower income individuals can be boosted into the upper middle class, I suggest that he review the track records of Rafe Equith’s Hobart Shakespeareans over the past quarter century and of Benjamin Carson, whose illiterate and unwed mother who worked as a domestic wanted her two sons to learn to read and write so as to have a better life than she had had.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/16/AR2007011600502.html
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4950531
I suggest that Mr. Thomas is confusing what our practices have been in the past in regard to our failures to inspire upward mobility with implementing best practices to insure that upward mobility does in fact occur to each and every person motivated to
move out of poverty.
The key problem that we have is that there is a massive number of individuals who benefit greatly by having a significant portion of our population never rising above functional illiteracy.
Those whose living is made from the criminal justice system and its massive prison infrastructure would have to learn other ways to support themselves if our system were rational. The US has more people incarcerated than Russia and China combined.
If my school was opening today, and the news of the unfolding tragedy in Ferguson was continuing to dominate the media, the opportunity to raise the consciousness of my students about income inequality and the myths of American Exceptionalism would be obvious and the lesson plan and discussion would flow without much effort on my part. The problem as I see it, and my thanks to Paul Thomas for his insightful article, is that the kind of discussion and questioning I envision in school is less and less possible, largely because the powerful 1% want it that way. They don’t want critical thinking. They want test takers who will grovel for low paid jobs after graduation. They want us to impart lessons valuing selfishness and conformity instead of community and respect for diversity. They want to sell weapons to the police and the military and use the volunteer army to enlist a perpetual underclass while downgrading the needs of society like environmentalism, health, and peace. And they want teachers who have no tenure and fear for their livelihood if they transgress and teach their students to think for themselves and question the world they are growing up in.
I am not yet sure what the lesson of Ferguson will be, but if I were part of the 1% I might pay attention to what is happening in our country and perhaps rethink corporate education reform and policies which have allowed conditions like those in Ferguson to fester and grow, before it is too late to save this great experiment in democracy.
Thoughtful comment GST.
Unfortunately, the events in Ferguson are all too common.
Recently a man accused of selling cigarettes illegally was choked to death by police in New York City.
Young people are regularly gunned down on the streets of Newark.
Militarization of the police force is a dangerous trend.
I am wagering a guess that it will not end well.
Education gives everyone a chance. When we leave out the poor, we take away their chances.
I had a single mom who was raised in poverty but who went to college on a band scholarship and student loans. She made a series of immature choices after graduating from college and ended up with two kids. She had to provide for our family of 3 by working very long hours–usually including the graveyard shift. My brother and I attended public schools in Memphis in the 70s and 80s. She pushed us to get educated, and she regularly used the public library’s programs as her childcare as we got older. I remember walking into the library when I was in 6th grade and looking around and realizing that I had read every book in the youth/young adult section. The librarian directed me to Russian authors and I developed a love affair with Tolstoy. I became an attorney and married an attorney, and my husband and my family live an upper middle class life. Poverty wasn’t my destiny. I am not sure what made the difference but I do know that I had a fourth grade teacher who cared about me and we spent hours talking about my crazy life. I spent regular hours in the library with wonderful librarians and I had a principal who checked in on me regularly. There was also a lot of hard work on my part. I had one good friend in high school who went on to attend Howard University and I know she has broken the poverty cycle in her family too. I don’t know what has happened to the others. Teachers didn’t break the poverty in my life because that didn’t happen until after college, but the one on one talks I had with certain teachers exposed me to richer vocabulary and more knowledge. There was one art teacher in particular who will always be my hero. He was the one who talked to me my Sophomore year (he was my homeroom teacher) about my Junior schedule. He saw all of my AP classes and asked me why I was taking Geography when it was so easy for me. He suggested I enroll in AP Art. I told him that he was crazy because I wasn’t an artist. He told me to challenge myself or his exact words were “don’t take the easy way out; choose to learn something new and different and stretch yourself because that is what education is about.” I trusted him so I changed my schedule and I enrolled in AP art. It was risky because I was set on being Valedictorian and art wasn’t my strength. Sure enough, I had to work my butt off and I spent hours channeling every ounce of creativity I could muster to complete my portfolio. I didn’t get a 4 or a 5 but a 3. When I graduated the following year I realized that I had been up to the challenge. I had discovered a side to myself that I never realized that I had in me. For years I would go back and visit him and thank him for the challenge. He made a HUGE difference in my life. I owe a great deal of the “stick-to-it-iveness” I possess to him. Thank you Lonnie Wilson!! That will never be measured by VAM or anything else.
Lesley: thank you so much for your comments.
And your last sentence is a gem: “That will never be measured by VAM or anything else.”
When you have a moment, please urge Dr. Raj Chetty et alia to read your comments.
They might just learn something…
😎
Excellent post. And one thing it demonstrates is that location can be destiny as much as anything else can be. Imagine if you grew up in a rural area where few courses were offered in school because the school was so small, the local library was two rooms and open 10 hours a week, there was no public transportation, etc., etc.
Although I know that there are limits on what education can accomplish, the assertion that ‘poverty is destiny” is not a viable premise for education.
I don’t think any teacher worthy of that name should act on that idea. It is certain to create a self-fulfilling prophesy.
The exceptions to that simplistic are too many and they are often extraordinary, inspiring–not conclusions based on astatistial imperative.
And the educational interventions that offer a contrary view of possibilities can be fairly large scale with ripple effects across generations. The post WW II GI Bill is one example, even if not perfect, It launched many families on a path that helped them to overcome the devastaing effects of the Great Depression. My family is part of that story, not rich, but we all were escapees from poverty of the kind that made canned green beans a real treat.
Laura, thank you for stating this. I did my student teaching at Central Park East Secondary School in 1991. It was an inspirational learning community. Most of the students were from low income backgrounds and the vast majority went on to college. None of Deb Meier, Paul Schwarz, Davis Smith, Pat Walter, and so many more believed that poverty was destiny. The recognized its challenge, but they worked hard, very hard, to overcome its challenge.
Nicholas Kristof maintains:
…Obviously, some people born into poverty manage to escape, and bravo to them. That tends to be easier when the constraint is just a low income, as opposed to other pathologies such as alcoholic, drug-addicted or indifferent parents or a neighborhood dominated by gangs
(I would argue that the better index of disadvantage for a child is not family income, but how often the child is read to).
SundayReview | OP-ED COLUMNIST 8/9/14
Is a Hard Life Inherited? by Nicholas Kristof,
Oh, I sooo agree!
Lloyd, both my husband’s father and my father went only to fifth grade and then had to drop out to help the family. My husband was always an avid reader and has a doctorate teaching on the university level until he retired. I am six credits shy of a second masters because I didn’t want to see that side of the desk for two more classes of my last course- I folded. I couldn’t continue to take care of my four children, teach, and attend classes after a day in the classroom-too much pressure.
Paul Thomas never met Ben Carson’s mother.
The wealthy are simply allowed to fail. There is no penalty for poor judgement, bad luck, or less ability. Call it economic afflenza. If you are poor, you get no chances. If you are middle class, you get maybe one shot.
Perhaps there was a time when education was an equalizer. Now, the 1% are so much more wealthy than the rest of us, that we can never catch up. I had a job in 1978 earning $135/week and rent was $250 per month. Now, even a crappy apartment costs $1250 and a decent one $2000 in my area. Kids are graduating college with massive debt, and can’t find jobs. The elite, tho, they have a network of who is who, and they help each other. Matter of fact, try being a no-one to a some-one, and see where it gets you – no where. Often, it IS who you know, not what you know. The divide between us and them has grown huge, and even when you have the credentials to compete, sometimes you just don’t get the chance to compete.
Lets look at TFA. Kids who went to college to get a degree in education and pursue teaching are overlooked for jobs because jobs are promised to and partnered with TFA. Who are the TFA kids? Elite. Wealthy. AND, they get their loans forgiven, while the schlub who went to State college to become a teacher and is $100,000 in debt can’t get a job…and that same kid gets beat up by Rhee, Duncan, Obama, Broad, Koch, AND KOPP. Kopp is such a damned snob I don’t think even she believes her own BS, but I do believe that she feels that she and her ilk are ENTITLED…so, the economy is bad, and she guarantees jobs to the elites’ kids, and all that goes along with it. Lovely.
To paraphrase a movie, its hard to change your stars. These days even when you succeed, someone is always there to knock you back down.
Although I do not have the direct research to support this claim, but my 40 years of teaching and research experience involving approximately a 60% educationally disadvantaged student populations at many academic levels, suggests that the percent of students who are continuously promoted by proficiency throughout the K-12 grades and post secondary levels have the most choices and options to achieve success, however measured, including financially. In our K-12 system, the percent of students who are promoted by proficiency is largely determined by parent’s income, education and expectation levels of the neighborhood school’s attended by their children. The result of not promoting all K-12 students in specific grades and disciplines by proficiency regardless of social-economic, gender, age, and ethnic situation is against three state laws in California and the federal NCLB law. If one examines proficiency data, whether NAEP, military entry ASVAT, SAT, ACT, etc, employment, college success and future income relates highly to proficiency or its equivalency of students being evaluated.
Unfortunately, the majority of the educationally disadvantaged students live in neighborhoods that have low expectation levels in their K-12 schools and only a small percent of students are promoted continuously in the grades K-12 by proficiency. However, in many middle and higher income neighborhoods the parents expect and demand that their schools promote students by proficiency. The obvious result is low academic expectation schools yields a low percent of students who graduate with proficiency with limited academic and future choices. On the other hand, students attending schools and achieving with high expectation yields a higher percent of students with the proficiency with many financial, educational and vocational options. By this argument, that is supported by much research, which seems to be ignored by educators, media and the public, is that the separation between the “have and have not” financially and other wise, relates highly, but not necessarily causally, to the expectations levels defined by K-12 proficiency level achieved throughout the K-12 grades, which seems to be determined by the type and expectation level of the neighborhood school attended.
Therefore, a strong argument could be made that if programs, models and expertise were defined, implemented, and evaluated by the required proficiency defined by many state and federal laws, more students including the educationally disadvantaged would have more opportunity and have better choices for quality and better pay employment, government and military service, and college opportunities. Logically then, the pay difference among groups, regardless of parent income, education location, and school neighborhoods should lessen and possibly disappear with time if students were promoted by proficiency as the students moved throughout the K-12 grades.
Support information on programs, models and expertise on how to empirically promote most all K-12 students by proficiency and economically is available from this researcher. Eric Kangas, a retired instructor and current independent educational researcher. ekangas @juno.com
Scientific studies conducted on behalf of the Brookings institute refute Mr. Thomas’ speculations. You are welcome to review the source documents, but the summary of the study is:
Characteristics of Economically Mobile Individuals
Personal decisions greatly affect one’s economic mobility. According to the Brookings Institution, individuals born into bottom fifth who (1) graduated from high school, (2) got a job, and (3) reached the age of 21 and married before having children, had a 2 percent chance of living in poverty and a better than 70 percent chance of upward mobility into the middle class—defined as $65,000 or more in household income.
Those who did not meet any of the three criteria had a 77 percent chance of living in poverty and a 4 percent chance of mobility into the middle class.
http://www.jec.senate.gov/republicans/public/?a=Files.Serve&File_id=447d626b-6461-4ce3-839a-cc845a8155bd
Consider three decisions that young people make: at what points to stop their education, begin work, and marry and have children.
Brookings Institution calculations of census data for 2009, a deep recession year, show that adults who graduated from at least high school, had a job, and were both at least age 21 and married before having children had about a 2 percent chance of living in poverty and a better than 70 percent chance of making the middle class — defined as $65,000 or more in household income. People who did not meet any of these factors had a 77 percent chance of living in poverty and a 4 percent chance of making the middle class (or higher).
Unless young Americans begin making better decisions, the nation’s problems with poverty and inequality will continue to grow. Consider also that children of parents whose income was in the bottom 20 percent have a 45 percent chance of remaining in the bottom themselves.
But if they get a college degree, they cut those odds by nearly two-thirds and quadruple their chances of earning more than $100,000.
http://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2012/03/29-middle-class-myth-haskins
IF they come to school fed and have slept. IF they have family support for education.
While I agree that “rich kids are more likely to get a better education, which translates into being richer and wealthier as adults. It is certainly the case that richer kids are more likely to get a college degree,” these folks aren’t richer and wealthier because of the degree per se, but because of their family connections. The degree is merely a formality. None of their education or success is necessarily predicated on a degree. They are often legacy students, kids whose families have donated entire buildings to universities, etc. There’s a place for them all set in the upper echelons of society. Yes, the myth of a meritocracy (a la the Founding Fathers, etc.) is, alas, a myth. But the automatic success given to the very wealthy applies to a very small segment of our society, I think.
Outside of that 1 or 2 percent of uber-elites, qualities such as grit, perseverance, focus, and—I have to say it —self-centeredness (in terms of keeping your eyes on the prize and not letting anyone stop you) MATTER. I know this not only because of my own life but because of the lives of my students. For non-elite kids (which is most everybody where I am and in most places in the US as well), only those will succeed who have grit and tenacity in abundance. Is this “fair”? Well, no. If you are not born with the proverbial silver spoon, you’re going to have to go it on your own, but you can’t lie down and die, which I’m afraid the author’s arguments could be used to justify. “It’s all so hopeless. I can’t do it. There’s no point in trying to do any better than my parents because I’ll never be as rich as those people with summer homes in the Hamptons.” Nonsense.
The author claims, “Success in the U.S. is not the result of ‘grit…’.” I suppose that depends on your definition of “success.” He also posits that “We need a new way to speak to our children. And we must begin here: ‘We have not yet created the country we want, and we must admit life continues to be too often unfair. But things can be better, and we are here to help because you can live in a world more fair than the one we have given you.’” But if “Success in the U.S. is not the result of ‘grit,’ not the consequence of some people being more determined (’better’) than others,” then what pray tell is it the result of?
I did not come away from this piece with a clear picture of what the author is proposing as a solution.
Hate to sound political, but if being wealthy is a guarantee of a better education, why isn’t George W Bush a genius, and how did Bill Clinton become a Rhodes Scholar despite being poor?
How do siblings vary? Heck, I have twin brothers and twin sisters. One brother got a PhD in Ecology. The other is a first class pipe-fitter. One sister is an OC accountant and the other is not interested in anything but getting by. I am a teacher. It is about personal choices as much as demographics.
Poverty doesn’t have to prevent success in life, and wealth can certainly beget wealth. But wealth doesn’t create guaranteed intelligence.
Yes, W. is a perfect example, and i’m sure we’ve both known others.
W became wealthy when Rusty Rose and Richard Rainwater took him under their exceptionally capable wings and put him on the road to success. Rainwater is the catalyst who transformed $50 million of Bass Brothers fortune into $ 5 billion of wealth, before leaving to set up his own buyout firm.
It is noteworthy that while Richard Rainwater headed perhaps the very most effective buyout shop in the nation, he organized his life so that he was able to coach the soccer teams for each of his kids. His wife, Darla Moore, is one of the most effective individuals on the face of the earth. RR has unfortunately suffered a neuro challenge lately that has deprived him of much of life’s enjoyment.
Rusty Rose and his wife, Deedie are responsible for most of the very best in arts and culture that has happened in Texas for the past three decades. He keeps a very, very low profile, but few are better in organizational effectiveness.
Rusty Rose and Richard Rainwater could make Mortimer Snerd wealthy if they had so chose,
Incidentally, W did an outstanding job when he was governor of Texas in my opinion.
There is the Peter Principle, which took effect, however.
Reagan’s philosophy of largess and philanthropy v. public funding in higher learning institutions has gotten us nowhere. Now college is even more out of reach for the lower and middle classes. Where the public funding for state universities has decreased, it has only brought in corporate influence and even their monies have not floated the [life] boat adequately. So sad to see our public institutions in such a compromised position, and millions of students, with no place to go but up, bearing the brunt of that selfish, selfish world view. And sorry, a life of being shackled school loans won’t make it feel better.
Pedagogy,
College costs differ greatly across institutions, and many colleges offer substantial discounts based on family income. My institution charges about $10,000 a year for in state tuition and freely accepts transfer credits from local community colleges that charge much less. A little over half of our students graduate without any student debt.
I will add the name of Paul Thomas to that category in which I have placed Karl Rove:
One who should not be granted one single iota of authority.