Poverty.
Lots of talk about the middle class. Tax cuts for the middle class. Saving the middle class. Doing more for the middle class.
Not one word about poverty.
No mention that nearly 25% of the children in the world’s richest nation live in poverty.
Not one word.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
He did mention “poor kids”.
Which “he”?
Romney did. And then he corrected himself to say “low-income” instead of “poor.”
That does not constitute a discussion of an urgent problem–a mention of “poor kids.”
The word “poverty” never was uttered.
Mitt did say foodstamps. But, I’m thinking we’re part if the 47%.
I noticed that also, and complained about it throughout the debate. Poverty must be the elephant in the room….the moderator steered clear of this issue also, not just Obama and Romney.
DemocracyNow! carried the debate using a time-delay to allow Green Party candidate Jill Stein and Justice Party candidate Rocky Anderson to answer Jim Lehrer’s questions right after Rombama-Obamney: http://www.democracynow.org/
Those candidates did mention poverty.
Romney mentioned it when he said he would give schools grades. Their poverty level is basically going to be their grade. (unless they are private or a charter then they get a pass)
Reblogged this on Kmareka.com and commented:
The elephant in the room in American politics: poverty.
Can Mitt Romney take credit for strong public schools in
Massachusetts? He was Gov. from 2003-2007. My understanding is that at this time he advocates for privatization,
high-stakes testing, etc. In the debate he revealed he would
endorse a “voucher” given directly to parents of students needing
IDEA services. What do teachers in Mass., who I understand
have strong unions, have to say about Romney’s contentions?
For my money, this is the best commentary on the debate:
“The Debate: A Masterful Liar Defeats a Man Without Conviction”
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=8915
Diane,
I watchedand was inspired too by your talk Sunday afternoon at Eastside High, Austin,Tx, and have relocated a year ago from Pensacola, FL, where in the nineties I was a parent leader in my kids’ middle and high schools, and saw what was coming with the GOP led reform from the top approach….enclosed is a video I did a year ago as a citizen volunteer at a Escambia School District, Pensacola, Fl middle school, which is now designated as a middle school IB program…
I agree wholeheartedly. In my opinion the real problem in education today has its roots in poverty and the tide of poverty is growing. We can fiddle with curriculum, assessment and class sizes all we like, but until we face and tackle the problems of poverty in our society we will be in a small canoe without a paddle and swamped by this tide.
continued…Parents who have had success with what their public schools did for their kids in the years before reform, such as the immigrant first time in school parents whose kids succeeded in US public schools…..can offer a lot of advice on what was good about schools, about teachers’ performance, and …what is wrong about the current approach pushed by the Bush family and their corporate friends, as well as so many well intentioned but wrong approaches, like NCLB, and now its offspring, RTTT, along with their focus on demonizing the teaching profession…Granted there are problems, but the new approaches from the top down smack of a factory, top down model, which will also not work! Thanks!
The focus on the middle class is appropriate.
The most realistic way to address poverty in the US is to revise national policies to direct more income/assets to the middle class. The middle class spends almost all of their income; the rich spend only a small portion of their income. Since the 1970s, we have gradually modified our national policies to direct an ever-increasing percentage of national income/assets from the middle class to the rich. The middle class maintained its spending by sending the wives to work and by borrowing (credit cards, home equity); when these were tapped out by 2006, consumer spending collapsed and has remained flat. When consumer spending (demand) falls and is likely to remain flat in the future, rational businesses have no incentive to expand inventories, expand production facilities, or start new businesses — they know that there will be no demand for the increased production. If businesses do not expand, employment remains flat and unemployment remains high. The same thing happened in the 1920s and 1930s — national policies diverted too much of the national income/assets to the rich (1920s); consumer spending/demand eventually collapsed (1929-1930); and demand stayed flat until govt spending for WWII increased demand, prompting business expansion. From the 1940s through the 1970s, national policies directed most of the national income to the spending middle class, rather than to the non-spending rich; the economy grew and everyone — even the rich — enjoyed increasing prosperity. Robert Reich, Clinton’s Labor Secrety, outlines this analysis in depth in his persuasive book “Aftershock”.
If we revise our national policies to direct more income/assest to the middle class (returning to the tax, labor, finance, and corporate governance policies of say the 1960s), $ will flow from the non-spending rich to the spending middle class; increased consumer spending (as well as the prospect of increased consumer spending in the future) will cause businesses to expand inventories, expand production facilities, and start new businesses; more employees will be hired and unemployment will fall.
Increasing employment/reducing unemployment will obviously help the poor directly. It will also help the poor indirectly by increasing tax revenues and decreasing public assistance costs, thereby enabling govt (particularly state and local govt) to spend more on public assistance for the unemployable and children. And, it will give govt at all levels more flexibility to invest in infrastructure (education, transportation, power grids, basic research) that will spur longterm productivity growth.
The Republicans are responsible for the national policies that have channelled income/assets to the non-spending rich; Romney’s proposals would continue these policies and would continue to emasculate consumer spending.
When Obama and the Democrats talk about helping the middle class, they may be simply pandering to the undecided middle-class voters. Or, they may actually understand and be advocating for the above analysis. In either event, to the extent that the Democrats’ programs redistribute income/assets from the non-spending rich to the spending middle class, the programs will help the poor and will help the poor in a way that is self-sustaining in the long run. (Theoretically, you might get largely the same increase in consumer spending/demand if you redistributed income/assets directly from the non-spending rich to the spending poor, but this would be a non-starter politically and it’s possible/likely that increasing consumer spending by the poor — but not the middle class — might target that increased consumer spending too narrowly to generate general economic recovery — i.e., raising rents for inner-city apartments but not increasing demand for vacuum cleaners, cars, or restaurants.)
If we don’t address poverty directly (remember the “War on Poverty”?), we are not likely to see any real reduction in the number who are poor.
Diane —
How would you have the govt address poverty “directly”? Increasing transfer payments directly to the poor/near poor is a political non-starter — even Clinton did little/nothing for the poor and today the Dems are running from the idea of transfer payments to the poor.
Transfer payments to the poor have a much better chance politically if/when the entire economy is doing well with middle-class income/wealth increasing steadily (as in the 1960s, when most of the successful War on Poverty battles were fought). Probably the most we can realistically expect elected officials to support in the current economic climate is a broad-based reform such as Obamacare that provides direct assistance to the near-poor (via Medicaid expansion) as part of a much larger program that helps the middle class, and is therefore politically popular.
Much more politically feasible are reforms that will rechannel income/assets from the non-spending rich to the spending middle class (and poor) so that the increased consumer spending will cause economic expansion, reducing unemployment and putting upward pressure on wages at all wage levels. And, if/when these reforms result in an improved economy (with increased tax revenue flowing from the increased earnings and increased property assessments), elected officials at all levels will find it politically easier to increase direct assistance to the poor.
That’s trickle down. We need supports for families and children. We need health clinics for poor kids. Wraparound services. Small classes. The fact that no one cares about having a quarter of our kids in poverty –doing something about them is politically a non-starter– shows what deep trouble our society is in. It may not be politically popular to advocate for government action, but isn’t that why we elected Obama in 2008?
Diane
Obama empowered Romney allowing him to be charming and full of ‘piss and vinegar’… O also seemed tired, resigned, and too reflective/ruminative… “Logical” is not what is needed, only… Where is the fire in the belly…
And praising RTTT three times!— terrible and a display of desperation… O is very weak on this…
I felt bad for O… He needs help.
Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T
The overriding influence of poverty on educational achievement has been noted in, e.g. (alphabetical order by author):
1. “Our Impoverished View of Educational Reform” [Berliner (2005)], online as an 872 kB pdf at http://bit.ly/ff8BVj;
2. “Poverty and Potential: Out-of-School Factors and School Success”[Berliner (2009)], online as a 729 kB pdf at http://bit.ly/fqiCUA;
3. “Whither Opportunity? Rising Inequality, Schools, and Children’s Life Chances”
[Duncan & Murnane (2011)] at http://bit.ly/nCkmKv;
4. “To Improve Schools, Fight Poverty, Education Expert Says” [Gosier (2011)], online at – the expert is Stephen Krashen http://bit.ly/Ui9xm1
5. “Re: Economic Inequality: The Real Cause of Urban School Problems #2” [Hake (2011a)] at http://bit.ly/ozuZEn;
6. “Is the ‘Teacher Effect’ the Dominant Factor in Students’ Academic Gain?” [Hake (2011b,c)], online at and ;
7. “Class Matters. Why Won’t We Admit It?” [Ladd & Fiske (2011)] at http://nyti.ms/vx3nub;
8. “Failure of U.S. Public Secondary Schools in Mathematics: Poverty is a More Important Cause than Teacher Quality” [Marder (2011a)] at http://bit.ly/fjUquC;
9. “Education and Poverty: Visualizations of World, US, and State-level Educational Data” [Marder (2011b)] at http://bit.ly/nYC6eF;
10. “The hard bigotry of low expectations and low priorities” [Ravani (2011b)] at
http://bit.ly/sUZ17T;
11. “Unaddressed Link Between Poverty & Education” [Schaffer (2011)] at http://bit.ly/tbckql.
Wow! Thanks for the links!
In my previous reply a forgot to remove the angle brackets surrounding URLs at #6. Here’s a repeat that corrects that error:
The overriding influence of poverty on educational achievement has been noted in, e.g. (alphabetical order by author):
1. “Our Impoverished View of Educational Reform” [Berliner (2005)], online as an 872 kB pdf at http://bit.ly/ff8BVj;
2. “Poverty and Potential: Out-of-School Factors and School Success”[Berliner (2009)], online as a 729 kB pdf at http://bit.ly/fqiCUA;
3. “Whither Opportunity? Rising Inequality, Schools, and Children’s Life Chances”
[Duncan & Murnane (2011)] at http://bit.ly/nCkmKv;
4. “To Improve Schools, Fight Poverty, Education Expert Says” [Gosier (2011)], online at – the expert is Stephen Krashen http://bit.ly/Ui9xm1
5. “Re: Economic Inequality: The Real Cause of Urban School Problems #2″ [Hake (2011a)] at http://bit.ly/ozuZEn;
6. “Is the ‘Teacher Effect’ the Dominant Factor in Students’ Academic Gain?” [Hake (2011b,c)], online at http://bit.ly/g6UWUZ and http://bit.ly/jy61UB;
7. “Class Matters. Why Won’t We Admit It?” [Ladd & Fiske (2011)] at http://nyti.ms/vx3nub;
8. “Failure of U.S. Public Secondary Schools in Mathematics: Poverty is a More Important Cause than Teacher Quality” [Marder (2011a)] at http://bit.ly/fjUquC;
9. “Education and Poverty: Visualizations of World, US, and State-level Educational Data” [Marder (2011b)] at http://bit.ly/nYC6eF;
10. “The hard bigotry of low expectations and low priorities” [Ravani (2011b)] at
http://bit.ly/sUZ17T;
11. “Unaddressed Link Between Poverty & Education” [Schaffer (2011)] at http://bit.ly/tbckql.
Reply
Thank you rrhake for pulling these together. I’ll add them to my biblio
For a slightly improved version of the poverty references with definitive academic references please see:
Hake, R.R. 2012. “Re: The Word Not Mentioned in the Debate: Poverty,” online on the OPEN AERA-L archives at http://bit.ly/QJWvds. Post of 4 Oct 2012 12:56:14-0700 to AERA-L and Net-Gold. The abstract and link to the complete post are being transmitted to several discussion lists and are also on my blog “Hake’sEdStuff” at http://bit.ly/QJYYVh with a provision for comments.
Spot on, Diane. Until we address poverty in some meaningful way, nothing else will make much difference.
I have some sympathy for both of them not using the words “poor” or “poverty” much. No matter how poor most Americans are, they consider themselves middle class, or as Steinbeck put it so well:
“Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.”
Every Republican voter who isn’t already a billionaire thinks they are one lottery ticket away from joining the country club even if they clean its toilets now.
Having come from poverty myself, I was aware of that poverty and its consequences were ignored. There are solutions. Solutions cannot happen unless they are addressed. The behavior of both candidates tells us all, loud and clear, that millions of children will be condemned to the cycle of poverty and ignorance in America.
It outrages me and breaks my heart.
I’m getting too cynical. If you mention poverty, then you’re admitting that it’s a problem, if you admit it’s a problem, you have to address it. If you address it, then you have to solve it. If it isn’t mentioned, then it isn’t a problem.
Spot-on, Urbanlad! Just as people were complaining about/demanding that the drought and global warming (in particular,the wretched U.S. summer) be acknowledged by the candidates with respect to the burden on consumers. Have they addressed it in any of their stump speeches? No.
It is not exactly in the interest of what used to be called “the ruling class” to foster education for the rest of us. I started teaching mathematics in a community college nearly 50 years ago and the dismantlement has been steady, By now, it is nearly perfect inasmuch as, to quote the Daily Mirror upon the re-election of Bush, “How can 59,054,087 people be so DUMB?” And this was before the Tea party.
But then of course, in the first place, community colleges were created by business to transfer the cost of the training of employees from the customers to the tax payers. For instance, at CC of Philadelphia, the so-called electronics department was created to train people to maintain copiers. When copiers became throwaway items, the electronic department folded.
Sadly, this observation from Doug Henwood rang loud and true for both me and my husband: “Why Obama lost the debate.”
Excerpt:
“… I think there’s a lot of the narcissist about Obama. There’s something chilly and empty about him. Unlike Bill Clinton, he doesn’t revel in human company. It makes him uncomfortable. He wants the rich and powerful to love him, but doesn’t care about the masses (unless they’re a remote but adoring crowd). Many people seem to bore him. It shows.
“And the charms of the narcissist wear badly over time. All the marvelous things his fans projected on him in 2008 have faded. He’s no longer the man of their fantasies. And that shows too.
“Which is not unrelated to a more political problem. Unlike Franklin Roosevelt, who famously said that he welcomed the hatred of the rich, Obama wants to flatter them…
“Join an empty philosophy to an empty personality and you get a very flat and meandering performance in debate.
“Romney believes in money. Obama believes in nothing…”