He quotes a billionaire in Australia who suggests that anyone could be a millionaire if they tried hard enough.
Does he try hard enough? Did his father? Do teachers?
Paul has written in a less than respectful way about reformers who say “poverty is not destiny” as they create “no-excuses” schools to show that they can remold these children and raise them out of poverty.
Paul answers the question: Poverty IS destiny unless we change the facts of poverty.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“Paul has written in a less than respectful way about reformers who say “poverty is not destiny” as they create “no-excuses” schools to show that they can remold these children and raise them out of poverty.”
I am not sure if your “written in a less than respectful way about reformers” is satirical, ironic or snarky. If by “less than respectful” you mean that he doesn’t back down, calling the reformers’ bluffs and otherwise being a pain in the ass to them then perhaps yes, he is less than respectful in the deformers minds but certainly not in mine.
The billionaire who claims that all can be millionaires if one just works harder is flat out wrong. If that were the case then I would have been a silver spooned baby. My father worked seven days a week leaving at six a.m. and getting home around six p.m every day of the year except Christmas and New Years Day. He owned an industrial shoe and sewing machinery repair/rebuilding business, always had a six month waiting list to get work done and could never find the qualified help that he wanted (so much for the vaunted schools back then-ha ha). Finally when I was a sophomore in college we were sitting in the front yard one evening and he stated that he could cut back pretty soon as I would be done with college and start doing some of the things he put off to put us through catholic schools and then through university degrees. Three months later he was dead of pancreatic cancer. I was there to confirm for my mom that he was indeed dead before we called our neighbor who was a nurse to verify it.
Yep, work longer, harder than everyone else and you too can become a millionaire. Horse manure.
Go get em, Paul!!!
Poverty is not destiny, but IQ, education, choice of fields and determination ARE destiny. Our choices and behavior determine destiny.
A family who loves you and encourages you to become all you can is destiny.
Having children out of wedlock is destiny to almost immediate poverty if you must rely on the government largesse to survive. Follow the straight and narrow, study, try hard and you will create your own destiny. To a large extent, we and the choices we make create our destiny. P.S. I came from a “poor” family. I have lived a comfortable middle class life and NOT through marriage, but by my own efforts.
“Poverty is not destiny, but IQ, education, choice of fields and determination ARE destiny.”
Please define IQ and how that relates to wealth and/or poverty.
If choice of fields and education are destiny why are so many with advanced degrees in supposedly needed fields destined to slave away in jobs that are not remotely related to their education and fields?
“Follow the straight and narrow, study, try hard and you will create your own destiny.”
Does that include someone with a 53 IQ with multiple physical handicaps? (fair question since you think that IQ is a determinant of destiny)
Please define “straight and narrow”. No single person “creates (their) own destiny.
What is destiny?
Dear Duane,
I am with the Obama reelection campaign and your response shows that you are one of the great liberal thinkers. One of our people will be contacting you to work in our campaign and spread your ideas.
It would be much more interesting if you would give your reaction to the article rather than just attacking mine.
I would be quite interested in hearing your reaction to the article and not me.
Sincerely,
Susan Fagocki
There is no doubt that there is a serious lack of respect for education in certain parts of this country. I agree that certain behaviors will make life much harder. That is why I think the reform movement is filled with rip-off artists.
Equal outcomes are not guaranteed. Free market capitalism is the best way to have prosperity, not spreading all incomes around. This is socialism and always fails….USSR, East Germany, etc.
Spreading all the income around = socialism? Really. Please give an example of where the income was truly spread around as the USSR, E. Germany certainly did not “spread all the incomes around”
What is your definition of socialism versus let’s say a dictionary/encyclopedic definition?
Susan Fagocki,
In your reply to Duane, you say that you are with the Obama reelection campaign?
This website says that you ran for office in Louisiana as a Republican.
http://staticresults.sos.la.gov/03092004/03092004_26.html
And this one says you favor the Louisiana Tea Party.
http://www.facebook.com/susan.fagocki
Let’s be honest here.
I can’t believe you didn’t know I was joking when I said I was with the Obama campaign. (:(:(: It was tongue in cheek!!!
I am a Libertarian politically when possible. It was a JOKE!!! I just can hardly believe that my comments have stirred such controversy. It is extremely unexpected and amusing. You are correct about running for a minor office as a Republican and I am a supporter of most of the Tea Party stuff.
I was also a dedicated teacher for 22 years, still tutoring, and fighting against what is going on in Education now in Louisiana. It’s a real circus!!!
Susan, given your background as a teacher, what is your view of the Jindal reforms?
Diane
Diane,
First, thank you for all of your knowledge and sharing it as you do. I actually wrote about 500 words in response to your question and then somehow deleted the email. I will try again tomorrow. My goodness, I had no intention of creating such a firestorm! I’ll answer again tomorrow.
Susan Fagocki
Thank you DNAmartin for your due diligence, I wish I had thought to google Susan’s name. I feel like I have been hoodwinked by her. How could I possibly know that Susan was joking about being an Obama supporter. I don’t know her and took her at her word.
Dear Diane,
I think it is a sham and a travesty and many people here are totally against this “reform” which Jindal railroaded through. After I write just a few lines, the format will not allow me to write anymore. This is my first time commenting in your blog. Please give an email address so I can send you some information.
Sincerely,
Susan Fagocki
Yes, especially when you set-up cronies to create for-profit education systems.
The free market capitalists are certainly fans of communist (as in COMMUNIST) China. So many good-paying American jobs have been shipped to communist China and so many communist Chinese products have been shipped to the US, a veritable tsunami of communist Chinese goods. The free market capitalists, such as the Waltons, have no problem with all those communist Chinese products in their Walmart stores. Ironic, no? Not to worry…..”This is socialism and always fails….USSR, East Germany, etc. [communist China?]”
Joe,
It would be interesting to hear your point of view. I don’t dislike rich people…..most made it themselves. It is well known that teaching is not the way to a fortune, and yet some of us chose it for other reasons. I really think it is a calling, something like the ministry or priesthood. If someone is interested in making money, they need to chose something to do that makes money. It is not guaranteed that people will end up with lots of money. How would you remedy this? I think it is wonderful to be in the US and have freedom of choice as to what we want to do with our lives. But, I surely don’t think it is responsibility of the government or anyone else to insure equal outcomes as far as money. I would be curious as to your solution of all of this?
Susan
OK, Susan, let’s have a truly free-market economy – no government interference at all. Be aware, however, that means no copyrights and no patents. That would also mean no laws (as some states have on the books) prohibiting workers from joining together to collectively bargain.
It would also mean, of course, no Clean Air Act and no food safety laws.
I would also favor removing government intervention that favors some forms of income such as capital gains and carried interest.
No one here has suggested “spreading all income around.” Right now, our system most definitely does not “spread all income around,” and all one needs to do to figure out our system’s current extreme bias is look at income distribution in the U.S over the past 30 or 40 years.
In those three or four decades, it has become increasingly more difficult for those born poverty to escape its effects.
The problem with a free market is that it values only one thing – money. I want to live in a country that has higher values. I DO expect my government to make budgetary decisions based on those higher values. Because someone chooses to pursue public service, rather than the single-minded pursuit of wealth, should not mean that person is condemned struggle financially. Too many of my teaching colleagues have to work second jobs to meet their relatively modest needs.For people pursuing as complex a job as there is on the planet, that’s just not right.
KenS- I assume your answer was tongue in cheek. No one believes that a free market economy could function without government rule of law and enforcement of property rights and contracts, or for that matter government regulation to correct for market failures.
Also I suggest that there have been significant improvements in all peoples welfare in the last 40 years. Life expectancy at birth has increased by nearly 7 years since 1970. There has been an expansion of many government programs to reduce the impact of poverty like Medicare, Medicaid, the Earned Income Tax Credit among others since 1970. Because of the way we measure poverty, those programs have no impact on the published numbers, but they have had an impact on actual poverty.
For a short introduction to poverty measures and more accurate alternatives you can look at this census research paper (http://www.census.gov/hhes/povmeas/methodology/supplemental/research/Short_ResearchSPM2010.pdf).
Susan, you make some excellent points and congratulations to you for having a successful career. But the US has the highest child poverty rate amongst the industrialized democracies, it’s at about 24%. That is a scandal for the richest economy on earth. I do not think that we can just stand by and wait for the wonders of free market capitalism to kick in. LBJ created and enacted Medicare because so many seniors and older people were falling by the wayside and dying because they could not afford medical care, much less health insurance. Many people call that socialism or redistribution of wealth. I call Medicare a blessing and a sane humane program. Can we just stand by with so many kids living in poverty? We can’t put it all on the schools and the teachers to solve the problem of poverty at some distant time in the future. These poor children need help and assistance now. What are the solutions? That’s a whole other discussion but bringing jobs back to the US might help, restoring the union movement to level the playing field and yes, we need a stronger safety net to help the poor kids at this juncture in time.
Dear Ken S,
So what do you propose to solve these problems?
I am very interested in your response.
I’ve got to chuckle as I had no idea my intentionally innocent first comment would cause such a firestorm!
Susan
The real problem lies in our tolerance of poverty and the impact it has on children. We would rather explain it away and blame the schools. It will take a real effort to structure our society so as to provide real opportunity for all. It is far more expedient for those in power to maintain the myth that anyone can be a millionaire. To be just we must look beyond our own personal concerns, the question is will we be willing to do that?
I am not sure that we do tolerate poverty to the extent that the published statistics suggest.
Many government programs aimed at lowering the impact of poverty like the food stamp program, earned income tax credits, medicaid, and even free meal programs in schools do not reduce the amount of measured poverty, but do reduce actual poverty.
Many of these programs have been cut drastically, and will be further curtailed in the next few years. The affluent don’t seem to mind.
I am not sure that these programs have been cut. Medicaid expenditure is forecast to grow at 6% a year for the next decade, admittedly lower than the 8% average for the last two decades, but still significant growth. The number of food stamp recipients has grown from about 17 million in 2000 to around 46 million today.
Which programs have been cut? By how much?
So, I don’t think you personally can brings jobs back to the US. Some unions are very very strong. And, how would you provide the safety net?
We could adopt policies that would do this. No, I don’t mean more largesse for the already wealthy. I would favor something more along the lines of Teddy Roosevelt. If you make things cheaply abroad and exploit the labor there, a tariff will apply here. This cheap junk coming in would be hard to sell in China. Circumstances could be created that would bring reasonable paying manufacturing jobs back here. Other countries do these things, their governments weren’t bought by the wealthy. What we lack is the will to do this. Labor would have to be stronger to provide a counter balance to management. They would then have to learn to work together to make everyone prosperous, but labor and management have done so in isolated cases. We just can’t compete with slave labor abroad, our government could enact policies so that we would not have to.
I don’t think that the solution to poverty in the US is to increase poverty and deprivation in other countries. Tariffs on imported goods would do just that.
Paul answers the question: Poverty IS destiny unless we change the facts of poverty.
Don’t we change the “facts of poverty” when we give a child of poverty the support and direction to finish school through college? While in no way is it easy, teachers, schools, and other organizations are making this a reality.
The stressors of poverty can be minimized in an environment of structure, love and support. It’s happening.
No its not “happening”, Shaun. I have millions of data points from every administration of NAEP, PISA, TIMSS, ACT, and SAT for many years in history. Kids in poverty ALWAYS score lower on average.
Poverty IS destiny, at least when it comes to results of standardized testing. If a school high in poverty does well on a standardized test, you can bet the teachers and/or administrators cheated. The results are that obvious when looking at the results of standardized tests.
Poverty dictates student achievement more than any factor, and schools and teachers cannot overcome its effects. Nor should we have to.
Politicians and economists MUST fix poverty. But they are too busy ruining the teaching profession to care.
And more now than ever, from study after study, financial mobility is becoming more and more difficult for the poor and even the middle class.
So, just where is this “happening”, and please no miracles allowed? If you want to rely on miracles, for every one miracle student or school (that didn’t cheat) you want to show me, I can show you exponentially more that never make the miraculous feat.
While I disagree on whether it is “happening” it isn’t an either/or proposition.
I agree that poverty is the culprit and it needs to be addressed — now. Demonizing teachers is not right, or productive. They make all the difference and many are. I don’t disagree with your citing of the devastating effects of decreasing financial mobility. Absolutely true.
I also agree that there are not enough “miracles” compared to the majority of schools who do not make it. That truly saddens me, because that means our children are not making it and many will fall victim to the cycle.
But that doesn’t mean that specific actions of schools and teachers aren’t having a quantifiable positive impact on low-income children. This is because there are great teachers and school leaders working together to do what they can to reduce the risks of poverty (not necessarily eliminate them.)
I believe an excellent education can make a difference to children living in poverty, but it is insufficient. As one writer said in response to a previous posting on this blog, to say that good teachers can “solve” poverty trivializes the hardships that poor children endure. It’s like saying something like this to a child living in poverty: You have an excellent teacher so it doesn’t matter that you are hungry. It doesn’t matter that you live in a shelter or a run-down apartment. The fact that there are gangs in your neighborhood doesn’t matter either. Ignore the fact that you sometimes hear shots fired or witness violence. If you get sick, don’t worry about not seeing a doctor. You’ll probably feel better eventually. It also doesn’t matter that your teeth hurt, and you have never visited a dentist. I know you are tired from caring for your younger siblings, and you can’t ask mom for help with your homework till she gets home from the late shift. None of that matters. You have an excellent teacher at school! Isn’t that enough?
Well said Middle school teacher!
May I add that our children in poverty are also victims of violence, PTSD, and many other types of stresses and crises that steal their attention away from learning. But what my students ache for the most . . . is dignity and respect from the rest of society. Being repeatedly labeled a failure, and having their school labeled as such, is also a form of abuse that children in poverty must suffer. I, too, feel their ache.