Great post by Valerie Strauss. A succinct explanation of the most important problem facing American children today.
If we halved the child poverty rate, test scores would soar because children would arrive in school well fed, healthy, and ready to learn.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Ms. Strauss’s piece was yet another reminder of the dangers and seriousness of poverty. Yet, there was one point which, given her article’s thrust, she omitted, and perhaps understandably given the lens she chose.
One is hard pressed to discuss the genesis of poverty in the United States, and how our system has evolved since the late 1980’s and what it has evolved into since then.
What has become of us and what exactly has happened?
For starters:
1. Coddling imbalances with off shore tax havens for rich individuals and corporations.
2. Forcing Medicare to use only American pharmaceutical products rather than sourcing them more inexpensively abroad.
3. Sustaining a tax code that no longer equitably taxes its wealthy the way it used to.
4. Paying for the industrial military complex to sustain wars of “democratization” in other countries.
5. Deliberately not subsidizing college costs so that now college, unlike when I attended in the late 80’s and early 90’s, keeps young adults shackled in debt.
6. Using precious tax dollars to rescue depraved perpetrators who design and sell unfettered sub-prime mortgages that crashed our bacnking system.
7. Refusing to implement a single payer health care system, one that is strictly guarded for costs, rather than leaving medical treatment to private, for-profit insurance companies.
8. Starving public education of funding and semi-privatizing it.
9. Running perniciously false propaganda caompaigns against collective bargaining to convince Americans that unions are the root of all evil, when it’s the polar opposite. It was the unions that created and sustained a healthy, robust middle class.
10. Outsourcing jobs rather than protecting them here, even if it means that people would pay more for goods, but the goods would be of a better quality and households would have a coveted collection of goods rather tahn a plethora of cheap, shoddy goods manuafactured abroad.
11. Outsourcing and insourcing technology jobs, using the Southeast Pacific as a source to replace American jobs.
12. Cutting the supply of affordable housing and replacing it with a glut of luxury housing development.
The bottom line is this when it comes to poverty:
There will always be poverty in any society, but the question, as Ms. Strauss so intelligently and validly points out, is the magnitude.
Therefore, to what extent are the American people, (Harlan Underhill and Teaching Economist not particularly included) and American elected officials willing to part with the evils of selfish, extreme and outdated individualism and start to infuse more collectivist thinking into our attitudes, belief system and ultimately policies.
We humans are still social animals and are stronger as a group than alone.
It is not pure collectivism that will solve any problems, but it is its augmented presence and balance that could easily correct so many ills now prevalent in American culture. For example, why not tax incomes above the famous threshold of $113,500 for Social Security? We used to have so much more of this balance bewteen 1955 and around 1985. Since then, the scale has tipped year by year, and now we find ourselves in this perverse, extremist paradigm that will accelerate our metamorphosis into Mexico and many South American societies.
And what is happening to public education is but a reflection (not to minimize the changes) of the whole oligarchic gestalt.
Until we muster the political will to systemically address poverty using other than the arbitrary and capricious means of philanthropy, we will only dig ourselves deeper into the abyss of a non-democracy.
-Robert Rendo
http://thetruthoneducationreform.blogspot.com/?view=snapshot
Robert,
Why are you in favor of importing pharmaceuticals but against importing anything else?
What weight do you put on the welfare of non-US citizens?
Why do you make such black-and-white assumptions TE?
Robert’s point 2 specifically argues that it is a mistake to require Medicare to purchase only American produced pharmaceuticals, while his point 10 says it is a mistake not to require the purchase of American produced goods. I am trying to understand the reasoning behind the different policy positions for different goods.
Regarding:
“Forcing Medicare to use only American pharmaceutical products rather than sourcing them more inexpensively abroad.” and “Why are you in favor of importing pharmaceuticals but against importing anything else?”
Question..
Are what we are calling “American pharmaceuticals” made/produced in the USA or is it just about the company ownership?
Thank you
I’d like to see some evidence for #8. Public education expenditures have grown at a rate far faster than inflation in the past 30+ years.
The ire that TE generates here is really something to behold. I cannot recall a single instance in which TE was hostile or rude to anyone. My takeaway is that people really, really dislike questions that require them to express the underlying assumptions for their opinions, unless they’re certain beforehand that the person asking the question is a fellow traveler.
(Now, Harlan, I get why he’s reviled here. Personally, I enjoy his posts, though. They remind me of the old Taki Theodoracopulos columns in the New York Press — flaming, crazy, and fun.)
I love TE’s quesitons! I detest his (her?) mindset.
Harlan is not my best friend either, but he means what he says, he’s articulate, and he is sincere, albeit grossly uninformed, poor chap. Not to mention, he does make me laugh, and that always feels good.
He still never answered my question: is the well known and celebrated and talented Mr. Underhill receiving social security, and if not, will he file for it?
If I say I have accepted SS transfer of wealth payments from the younger generation, what would that “prove” to the estimable Mr. Rendo? That I’m a hypocrite? Or a fool who didn’t save enough of his money to subsist in the comfort to which he became accustomed when times were good? He sounds like a liberal IRS agent wanting to find out what I am reading on my application for tax exempt status. He will, perhaps excuse me for not answering, now that I have become aware that no liberal has any scruples whatsoever when it comes to political discussions but rather is interested only in discrediting his opponent in any way possible, liberals in general being too stupid or too ignorant to let their minds be moved to any new conviction by anything like an argument. Do you still beat your wife Mr. Rendo, or have you stopped since you went off alcohol and pain killers? I do presume that you pay your taxes to support all those pitiful old people who actually worked all their lives in the real world and don’t have state defined benefit pensions earned by only 9 months a year of work, with the summers off, tenure, and no real responsibilities except to show up and drone on about how wonderful socialism is under our leader, Elder Brother, who advocates sleeping while Benghazi burns, who sics the IRS on fat farmers because they are patriots who are more dangerous to the country than terrorists, and who can’t even fight terrorists effectively, or even detect leaks from his own administration even after secretly subpoenaing two months worth of phone records for 20 lines to the Associated Press. What Mr. Underhill would like to ask you is whether you have ever known anyone with communist sympathies, whether you have ever read the Communist Manifesto, and whether you have ever contributed any money to any left wing front groups such as the AFT, the NEA, the NAACP, or the Democrat Party? We are all waiting to hear, Mr. Rendo, whether your grandmother receives only Social Security or whether she has investments in stocks and bonds. And as for your children, how big are their college loans? Did you take advantage of the stimulus to refinance your house at the taxpayer’s expense. Is your pension defined benefit, like those that sank government motors, or defined contribution, like those in the private sector who pay your salary? What is your salary? What is your BA in? From what college? Since Mr. Underhill is so ignorant, enlighten him.
I am curious about your conception of my “mindset” and why it might be detestable. Could you elaborate?
It’s all Greek to me. Egw eimeh krisw citherothremos.
Now Harlan, THAT was funny!
Pure theater, pure fun, as only HU can provide to the movie going, popcorn scarfing audience.
What is your secret? How did you become so adept at writing science fiction?
I learned science fiction by living with a communist educator on animal farm in 1984. Right dad?
Harlan, did you live with a communist?
TE, importing drugs saves people here money, yet still makes for productivity to other not-for-profit or not as much as “for-profit” systems to sell to us. It would render medications more affordable here and improve the quality of life for both sides. Buying drugs from Israel or Canada, for example, is not the same thing at all as buying a stainless steel pot from China that was made in a sweat shop under questionable conditions.
And keeping technology jobs here would also insure a more stable workforce, one that could stimulate the saver’s or the spender’s economy without losing one’s livelihood – and an increasingly educated livelihood at that – to foreign workers.
In either scenario, there is involved to some extent good old fashioned market restrictions, but so what. They make for an equitable society. There will always be “winners and losers”, but with such balances in place, the pool of losers shrinks while that of the winners increases.
Under our current system, it is the opposite, or have you not noticed?
But you don’t care about making the pot more affordable? Or that the pot maker in China has parents and children to support? Perhaps you can tell me what the pot maker in China would do if there are no pots to make.
And as for losing a livelihood to a foreign worker,well what is the ratio of moral worth between people living in the United States and the ” others”? I believe that three fifths has been traditional in the US, but there could certainly be other possible ratios.
TE, it is not about citizen vs. non-citizen. .. it’s about bringing people here deliberately by big business for cheaper labor. . . as opposed those who come here through their own initiative and have attempted to stay. There is a huge difference in intention.
And yet, I would pay more for a pot if I know people right here were paid better, and I don’t care as much about the Chinese person in China needing to support a family. It is NOT the United State’s reponsilbity to promote economic equitability in other countries as much as it has a responsibility to the people here who have bothered to come here of their own volition as opposed to being solicited by head hunters to bring them back here. As far as the Chinese laborer, it is up to him/her to participate in politics in China to better the situation.
As it stands, TE, the United States outsources tons of different kind of jobs, all on the blue/white collar spectrum and far too many in countries where the labor laws and conditions are reprehensible. It is simply a way for the ruling elite here to skirt around labor laws and fair pay and benefits. Importing cheaper labor here also stands to weaken unions, if not bust them.
Europe has always had a restricted market system, and despite their problems, there are not millions of Europeans coming here any more , just dying to enter our system and make a go of it. There is a reason why they stay and live over there. . . . America is the place to be if you want to work for yourself. . . Europe is the place to be if you want to work for someone, relatively speaking.
Your questions are fascinating and enjoyable, and your mindset is seemingly repulsive . . .
Globalization can only be taken so far, and beyond a certain point, it produces a poorer quality of life here for the vast majority of people who live, work and vote here and for those who exist in shades of those components as well.
I have no xenophobia. . . I speak two additional languages, and travel abroad almost every summer. . . I also teach a low income population I am very proud of and honored to be a community member.
America can help stimulate other countries’ economies and aid in improving the quality of life and justice there as well, but never, ever at the expense or compromise of people already over here. There is no isolationist tone I propose nor is there any real nationalism, but there is my desire to strike some balances, and the United States, in its scandalous rate of poverty, has become the poster child for imbalance and wrongful transfer of wealth.
Sorry for typos. . . it’s been a long day.
And one more quick point, and there may be many who disagree with me, but putting immigration as an issue aside and not factoring in the status of any immigrant, the USA would still have acute imbalances in wealth and income disparities. . . immigration is not the cause of such imbalances. If we did not have a single immigrant living here, our problems of inequity are anything but over.
That’s my perception . . .
Addressing poverty makes economic sense. It would have so effect so many different areas of our lives.
There is no way to gloss over the transfer of wealth in this country. I get nauseous reading posts by people who try to defend it. It’s greed…pure and simple. And it’s been going on for a long time.
Sir Ken Robinson addresses the need, among other things, in this short Ted Talks. I so wish it would go viral:
“Millions of Children Left Behind”
🙂
I like that. Very interesting and full of plain and simple truths that some have forgotten.
V.P.s, principals, admin, superintendents etc…the whole machine is supposed to be set up to support the teacher – not the other way around. I have been saying this for years. Most, if not all districts have lost their way. They forget that they were created to support us, the the teacher. Next time you are working your butt off ask yourself why? Are you being supported or are you supporting others? Tests are supposed to be evaluative and to guide teaching, not to punish teachers.
The whole system has become perverted and now, not only is the tail wagging the dog, but the dog has been wagged for so long it actually thinks it is supposed to be that way.
Fantastic video!
This is too simplistic in my opinion. My daughter’s elementary school had a free breakfast program for those who qualified for free or reduced lunches. Lots of children used it. No one had to go to the classroom hungry. Snacks were provided at least once a day, as well. And yet, there was still a huge disparity between test scores of those children from higher income brackets and those from lower income brackets.
Why? Because the curriculum used in many (most?) elementary schools today is of the Whole Language and Everyday Math variety which focuses on doing work together and cute “tricks” and not mastering the skill AT school. Mastery is to be completed at home. Those children with parents with the means to help at home have children who succeed better under this teaching method. Those children with parents who don’t have the means to help at home do not succeed as well.
Cindy:
There is so much more to poverty than an empty stomach. Free breakfast does not constitute the basis to be alert, motivated and available to learn in the classroom. 80% of educational “availability” depends on factors that occur outside of the classroom and that can include a multitude of variables including: availability of parental figures, regularity of routine, emotionally upsetting incidents, family crises, violence, irregular routines,child caring responsibilities that exceed the child’s emotional and developmental capacity, etc.
“Skill and drill” became the norm for children from these types of underprivileged backgrounds and it was thought that providing a regular “routine” by performing the same types of skill training in the same way everyday would provide “structure” to the individuals forced to live in these unfortunate circumstances. Nothing could be further from the truth in practice. As a teacher who was “coerced” into teaching this way in an underserved school (I didn’t last long) I would have been extremely grateful for being able to implement the “Whole Language” methods. It would have been an improvement. They at least gave children the opportunity to write and have some self-expression. Neither method is adequate at best. They are not “cute tricks” however and mastery does not come from rote learning and standardized repetition. Anger, frustration and resentment are borne of rote learning,
It is true that having reinforcement for a skill through parental or tutor support outside of the classroom is a powerful component of learning and this reinforces essential concepts and self-confidence so integral to the learning process. But students who are provided with this type of reinforcement at school can still gain academic prowess and confidence without strong parental support if the structure at school allows for children to have the time and staff encouragement/support for this concept. Unfortunately, this is the element that has been eradicated from the skill preparation and test drilling environments that schools, especially underserved, schools have become.
All I can say is that I disagree, and from experience.
Whole Language is failing, and miserably, because it requires those same parents who cannot provide for their children economically or emotionally to step up academically. It’s just not going to happen. It also does not challenge anyone else to do their best.
I was one of those kids who came from a dysfunctional home and I was schooled in the 70’s in elementary school. School was a refuge, not because I was allowed a lot of fuzzy duck self expression through “kid writing”, but because it was peaceful, structured, and there were academic expectations and people who thought it was important that I be provided with an education that could hopefully get me out of that situation one day. They succeeded.
I helped 2nd graders at my daughter’s school struggling to read in a “good” school district who were looking at pictures to try and help them “guess” words like “when” or “that” because that is what Whole Language teaches. The educational system is doing a disservice to kids; especially those who MUST get out of the trenches.
this is a tired tired story, it does not wash, Cindy is correct. the whole new agey anti-education psychosocial, change the brain, kids need to learn how to think, blah blah social and emotional learning is an epic fail. Outcome based education, fail. it is phony balony. sorry you bought into it. It appears to be politically motiviated. the poverty numbers are skewed because of welfare and food stamp fraud and illegal immigration, and destruction of our industries providing jobs, opressive federal regulations, politically created, read some Hegel. you would benefit as many outside of education degrees have read up on education, to read up on other subjects and get facts from scholarly journals rather than piers morgan Liz Coleman. statistics and cute charts and graphics can say whatever you want them to say. but they do not match reality here.
expecting children to all follow directions equally and be responsible for themselves is indeed what works.
group work is epic fail am living it with my kids and talked to many teachers.
2 final points. rich kids can have horrible home lives too and middle
class kids as well. poor kids can thrive without being further
disadvantaged by well meaning do-gooders and low expectations.
magical thinking, piaget it is insanity. okay
Piaget is “insanity” while we should all go read Hegel. Yikes.
Unfortunately many people do not know what “whole language” is. They think it means teaching whole words, as opposed to phonics. Of course, it does not. It refers to a holistic way of teaching reading and it is based on how many high achieving children learn to read. Here is an example as it is applied to one child:
When James was four years old he loved to listen to stories and rhymes. His favorite book was “Green Eggs and Ham,” which he listened to over and over again. Soon he had the whole book memorized and could recognize isolated words. He understood concepts of print (left to right, front to back, spaces between words, etc.)
At five James was learning about letters in kindergarten. Both his parents and his teachers used his knowledge of language to help him learn sound/symbol relationships. “Look James, “S” has the sound we hear at the beginning of Sam /SSSSS/. If we take the “h” away from ham and substitute “S,” we get Sam.
At this point all James needs is a few good phonics lessons and he “is reading everything by Christmas.” This is generally how affluent children learn to read before first grade and “whole language” was an attempt to bring this successful method to all children. Unfortunately, the name and misconceptions about this method prevented its use in schools, especially in schools for the poor. Of course, it is still predominant in the homes of the educated and the affluent.
Linda,
There may have been studies that showed that “affluent” children came in with an advantage, but those same children were also getting a good phonics program in school. That is not happening now. They learn just enough in kindergarten so they can do kid writing/invented spelling.
Children get confused and will write an “n” to represent the sound of short “e” and “n” together. All those children’s writings with all the misspellings are posted on the wall and the kids learn to recognize all those spellings as “right”.
I know exactly what Whole Language is. It was shoved upon my daughter in kindergarten and it took me a year and a half to identify it, not by name, but by a description of what I observed. THAT is how I was able to place a name with the teaching method.
Again, this method only works well when parents pick up the slack.
Cindy,
Don’t take my word for it. Go into the home of educated parents and watch what they do. Then follow those children to school. You will see why the vast majority of these children are excellent readers.
The English language is phonetic so every reader must master the sound/symbol relationship but it takes much, much more than that to be a competent reader.
Spelling isn’t something I’d worry about in second grade. Kids learn to recognize what is right by reading a lot, and second graders simply don’t have enough reading under their belts. The more important focus should be on getting them to love reading and writing. If you focus too much on spelling and grammar, writing becomes a chore. But if you allow for free expression, kids will write joyfully as their ideas come tumbling out. It isn’t really until third or fourth grade that kids start getting the idea of presenting their work as a final product and they start understanding the concept of (and the reason for) revising their work. By that point they start to recognize that something doesn’t look “right” and they’ll try to fix it. Furthermore, spelling rules are only minimally helpful in English since we borrow from so many other languages that all have different rules that there are an awful lot of exceptions to any one rule.
I’ve see the process work at my daughter’s school. If you look at the papers outside the first and second grade classes, it takes a bit of work to read them as there is an awful lot of invented spelling. By third grade you’ll start to see things crossed out and re-written, and by fourth grade the papers are very easy to read and pretty much free of spelling and grammatical errors (of course it varies by child). In all of the classes, however, the kids actually ask to have writing time and they’re disappointed when that time is up.
Linda,
This is where we come to a roadblock. I agree with you that children who have parents that spend time with them reading before they enter school arrive knowing more words (these aren’t necessarily rich kids, either). But I have seen these same kids lose momentum once they are challenged with words that go beyond their “sight word” repertoire. Not all of them. But enough to make it a real problem.
Children have to be grossly deficient to qualify for professional assistance in the schools. So, the rest of them get tutored by parent volunteers.
Further, almost every last child, even the best readers, are awful spellers. This equates with their not being able to grasp syllables and how to sound out unfamiliar words. It stunts their vocabulary. They don’t learn prefixes, suffixes or root word definitions or concepts. They have just memorized words (funny, that in this one instance memorization is lauded) and lots of them.
Because they no longer read out loud, many teachers do not realize that kids are inventing pronunciations of words they don’t recognize or are just skipping over them. But, I’m probably not going to change your mind. There is a lot of time, money and effort invested in continuing in this approach.
I have managed through a year of homeschooling to teach my daughter strategies to sound out words that she does not recognize and to have a pretty good idea of what a word means by studying word roots, prefixes and suffixes. She also knows how to break a word into syllables so she can spell the words correctly. She always read well, but now she can read even more challenging books. This increases her vocabulary and helps her to become a better writer.
Dienne,
That is what I was told, too. By educators. However, because I had my daughter late in life, I had the benefit of my friends who have had children already go through this process. They were told the same thing. They ended up being dismayed at how two educated parents could have children who couldn’t spell, who didn’t learn to love to read (even though they were good readers in elementary school) and who never learned to write well at the high school level. That doesn’t even touch problems with math.
Cindy,
Again, you are assuming that “whole language” means a dependence on sight vocabulary. It does not. Read a book by any expert in reading methodology (Marie Clay) and you will see a section on “cracking the code” or mastering the sound symbol/relationship of the English language. Show me someone who doesn’t know the sound of /sh/ or cannot decode the nonsense word “shlurk” and I’ll show you someone who can’t read. I devoted my entire career to the study of reading achievement and reading methodology, with an emphasis on the characteristics of good readers, so I am confident in telling you that this is the normal progression for learning to read in a literate environment:
1. Starting at birth, the child hears the sounds of the English language through talk, singing, reciting, responding;
2. The infant and toddler listens to many rhymes and books and might have favorites by six or seven months;
3. The preschooler listens to many rhymes and stories and insists on listening to his favorites over and over again. He starts to notice print and asks “What is this word” or “Look, this starts with M like my name.” His parents will encourage and answer questions. At this time, many children memorize entire books and start to read words (McDonald’s, Michael etc.). Many children learn the alphabet and sounds at Mother’s knee;
4. The kindergarten child is now very ready to learn how to read and very eager to do so. He quickly learns the alphabet and the sounds each letter represents. He might start reading on his own.
5. By first grade many of these children are already reading. If not, most with the background I’ve described, learn to decode quickly with appropriate phonics lessons and “are reading everything by Christmas.” Of course, there are variations in children, no matter what the background (hearing and vision problems, chronic illness, learning disabilities etc.) so some children will not become fluent until third grade. My own son, now a Ph.D. in engineering from Stanford, had Open Court in first grade but did not achieve fluency until third. My other son also had Open Court but already knew how to read in first grade.
Is the bulk of the teaching done by the parents? Yes. And it always will be. “Richer than I you can never be – I had a Mother who read to me.” (Strickland Gillilan)
The greatest indicator of high reading achievement in a child: The amount of reading he CHOOSES to do at home. Keep the joy of reading alive. It’s the key to being an excellent and avid reader.
4. The kindergartner
Linda you said
” Go into the home of educated parents and watch what they do. Then follow those children to school. You will see why the vast majority of these children are excellent readers.”
it seems to always come back to victim status. What is with the fantasies about rich people and what they do? its weird. its some sort of propaganda nonsense. many rich parents ignore their kids too, or leave them alone or are never home. Is this related to the standardized tests my child took recently ( I was not allowed to view one) data mining to find out how advantaged we were? some of the test questions were; how many books do you have at home? do your parents have alot of books? to name only 2. I will tell you advantaged or not whole language reading is a fail and phonics is the dreaded learning ( like memorizing timestables and poems) that gives anyone using it advantage, regardless of race or pocketbook size.
Natasha,
My post was about children who are successful readers, and many of these students are from educated homes. I said “educated” and not rich, because we know that these parents tend to have children who read well. Of course, that is not always the case and yes, many educated and/or rich people are poor parents.
A great deal of research has been done on learning to read and one of the factors that comes up again and again are the number of books in the home. I’m not sure if the books themselves relate to high reading achievement or the implications of the books in the home (parents love to read; are well-educated, can afford them etc.). My guess is all of the factors related to books in the home are important. Teachers are well aware of this relationship and that’s why almost all teachers have many books at home for their own children and encourage parents to do the same.
One of the problems with reading instruction is that many people do not know what “reading” is. Reading is what we are doing on this blog. “Sounding out” words is a skill that enables one to start reading. Yes, it is very important but it only allows a child to say the words. In order to be a competent reader, the child must become fluent (recognizes words instantly as we do) and must understand what he is reading. The only way to do this is to read a lot. The more a child reads, the better he will become. The more he loves to read, the more he will want to read. As with all things that are worthwhile, there are no shortcuts. Reading takes practice, lots of it, but if the child loves to do it, that part will come naturally.
As a reading teacher, if I could wish just one thing for each child, I would wish a love for reading. With that, will come mastery of the word; and the world will be wide open for him or her.
Linda,
Do you mind my asking what grade you teach?
You keep assuming that your definition of Whole Language is being employed everywhere. Phonics is taught at the very lowest level in our district and neighboring districts. This song
which has the audacity to use the word phonics in its title, Zoophonics, was pretty much the extent of phonics taught in kindergarten.
I am trying to explain to you that I saw kids, even kids from typical, concerned families, start struggling after they could no longer shove any more sight words in their head. Yes, they learn “sh”, but they don’t learn how to sound words out. They look at the beginning and the end of the word and then GUESS! And that is what they are TAUGHT to do (after they look to the pictures to help them decipher the words).
They are reading Junie B and Henry and Mudge even into 3rd grade (perhaps beyond) because harder books (without pictures) do not allow them to employ the reading strategies taught by the Whole Language approach. I read the entire Nancy Drew series when I was in second grade. All the Beezus and Ramona and Runaway Ralph books were read in first grade. I had completed the entire Little House series, A Wrinkle in Time, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Chronicles of Narnia, etc.,by the time I left elementary school. If I didn’t know a word, I was taught to look it up in the dictionary (so I knew how to use a dictionary and how to decipher the pronunciation from the key), but not these kids.
You are not the first one to try and tell me I should read this or that book to convince me. My daughter’s principal, who is a lovely woman, sent me home with a stack of books 24″ high and labeled with post-it notes. But I was seeing my daughter score 100% on spelling tests and then in her writing using absolutely NO VOWELS! Even into 2nd grade, she reverted to kid writing (and she was NOT the only one). It took me several years to figure out what was happening and it was all because the lazy-man’s phonics was taught. Why do you need vowels when the letter N stands for the sound “en”, the letter F stand for the sound “ef”, the letter R stand for the sound “er” or “ar”? And no one corrects you because it might “damage your creativity”. The books didn’t talk about that, and my gut and my head knew that something was amiss.
I was helping both 2nd graders and 3rd graders who could not read at grade level (they just weren’t poor enough readers to get the help of one of two reading specialists on staff) and I was appalled to see that these two groups were at EXACTLY the same level. In other words, the 3rd graders who were struggling were struggling at the same level they were in 2nd grade. This is not at an inner-city school district. It is not in a deeply, economically depressed area. It is considered one of the better school districts in my area of SW Michigan. But I have friends in Chicago, South Carolina, and Florida who have experienced the same problems.
I saw 27 kids shoved in a room where they were trying to move from “station” to “station” because that is a “good” way to teach (and is a trend in Whole Language type teaching) . Kids were doing math on their back under desks. Seriously?! It is like schools are trying to be a fun summer camp. All the “unfun” stuff is left for the tired parents back at home.
Where is your “proof” (i.e., long term positive results that carry through to high school) that this method is working? Besides books and studies. If it is so great, we should be getting students at the higher levels better prepared for college, not less so. Right? Some children will learn no matter how you teach them; that’s a fact. They will succeed and exceed no matter. But the best way to judge a good educational program is how it teaches everyone. Whole Language and Everyday Math fails there, in my opinion.
Too early and I’m running to work…
I meant: “It would effect so many different areas of our lives”.
This comment shows how today’s Post is a far cry from the newspaper I grew up reading as a pre-teen in the ’70s. Still, I’m glad the story even made it to the ‘blog, and the comment itself seems almost mechanically inserted as an obligatory genuflection to the god of neo-classical economics. (BTW, by far the most jealous god who makes even YHWH look like a kitten.)
Nevertheless, the comment illustrates the genius of the reformers for sophistry and intellectual dishonesty, as it’s almost as good as the old loaded question: “have you stopped beating your spouse?”, any direct answer to which is damning. A proper answer requires an explanation, which only puts the responding party deeper into the quicksand given the mood of outrage and suspicion the question introduces by answering indirectly through a digression. The dilemma rests on the unspoken assumption that the respondent is a spouse beater; the assumption being introduced by the strong emotion-driven imagery introduced into the respondent’s and audience’s minds upon asking the question.
The problem, of course, is that the very formulation of the question is designed to terminate rational discussion by conjuring powerful emotions that block rational thought; it’s the equivalent of throwing sand into someone’s eyes during a fight. The key, as I see it, then is to buy a little time to allow the audience (and yourself) to regain their sight without appearing to avoid the answering question directly.
In this case, it’s important to understand that the crux of the matter is the use of the word “can’t”. The question is ambiguous on whether the “can’t” used in the intrinsic sense of a lack of someone lacking the necessary physical or intellectual capacity to reach a goal, or in the extrinsic sense of someone who has the necessary capacity but is otherwise prevented by circumstances out of their control. By asking the question in an accusative manner, the questioner implies the first sense. How do we turn the tables and bring the audience over the second sense?
I would start by trying to buy a little time to give everyone a chance to regain their poise. But we have to do this without appearing to avoid the question. The best way to achieve that end, I suggest, is to ask the questioner: “What do you mean by ‘can’t’?”, perhaps with a little irritation as if to imply that it’s the questioner who is impugning those poor children. (Which is the case.)
Now, the questioner is on the hook. If they refer to the intrinsic use of “can’t”, then we can stretch that out a bit by making the recite in detail the intellectual deficiencies they’re referring to; and then we can deny that use and introduce our preferred sense by responding with something like: “These children have the inherent capacity to learn; it’s their poverty that prevents them from using that capacity.”
Thus, we’ve slowed the emotional rush by forcing the questioner to explain their question; and we’ve made a direct denial of the first sense of the question and given the answer we want to give by rephrasing the question using the second sense.
Moosesnsquirrels,
What are you saying? Do you agree that if we cut the poverty rate in half that test scores will soar? Or are you saying something else entirely? Look, you can’t make an argument by obfuscating; at least not convincingly.
I looked back through the comments and did not see the use of the word “can’t” and even if I missed it, I surely didn’t see the word “can’t” as a focus.
After reading your comment, I was left with the impression that perhaps you mistakenly responded to this post when you meant to respond to another (if not for your first paragraph).
But if your comment was in response to mine (the only one not part of the hallelujah chorus), I can assure you I did not mean to throw sand in the eyes of anyone.
Based on what I’ve actually seen in the schools (local, as in MINE), poverty and under-educated parents are significant factors in student achievement. I once drank the Kool-Aid that kids were failing because they came to school hungry, but not anymore. While hunger can affect individual achievement on any particular day, it is just not the main problem that I saw. In fact, many well-off kids came to school without breakfast (or one less nutritious than those provided at school) and performed fine or excelled.
Satisfying physical hunger at my daughter’s school did not narrow the achievement gap. That is a fact. My daughter’s school was put on a focus list because there was too wide of a gap between the bottom and top performing students.
The problem as I see it (and as many other parents working through the system see it) is that the curriculum (teaching philosophy) used in the schools requires way too much parent involvement for kids to succeed. So, kids who have parents with the means to tutor them themselves or to pay for tutors have an advantage over those kids who are poorer.
Can anyone address that issue? I’ve been following these posts for a week or so now and I am not convinced that anyone really wants to help actual children; just the imaginary children they’ve conjured up.
But I would also like to ask this question: If test scores could be caused to soar by abandoning some of the current teaching methods/curriculum, then wouldn’t the issue of teacher effectiveness and pay become a moot point?
There’s a lot more to poverty than “physical hunger”. Providing free meals does not eliminate poverty.
I agree. But the blog post seemed to suggest that if we sent kids to school with full bellies, test scores would soar. It is a very short post. Therefore, that supposition stands out.
Eliminating actual poverty would not eliminate measured poverty, at least as measured by the poverty head count used in the US.
TE,
I think I agree with you about the actual poverty/measured poverty issue. It was what made the Finnish study not useful to me without having information regarding what 50% of the poverty line in Finland was compared to the US.
But, as we aren’t going to eliminate poverty in THIS country any time soon because half the country thinks the poor are lazy “takers”, we have to try and teach to the students we have.
I think we can do it; just not the way it is being done at the moment. I think teachers need to play to their strengths and have autonomy (within reason) to use whatever materials they think will work and the freedom to switch (even if it is midstream) if something isn’t working. I also think that parents should have some input.
International comparisons of poverty are extremely difficult and costly to do well.
Even here in the US the change in how the government approaches anti-poverty spending probably has a lot to do with the lack of movement in the poverty rate. In the US we define a poverty line based on family size and before tax income. Over the last 40 years, however, the federal government has increasingly used the earned income tax credit as a major federal anti-poverty program. Because the earned income tax credit is after tax, all payments from this program are ignored while calculating the poverty rate.
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that the EITC lifts about six million families above the poverty line, all of whom are still counted as living below poverty in the official statistics.
So, what do you see as the “biggest problem facing children today”?
Cindy,
I was addressing an argument that quoted from the Strauss piece linked in Diane’s original post at the top of my post; apparently the quotes didn’t appear.
The argument frequently made by the reformers, like my state’s Tea Party governor, is that poverty is not a factor in student performance. The argument is phrased in a very inflammatory way that I find intellectually dishonest. I wrote about why I find the argument dishonest and how I would respond.
As for your points, I can only say that hunger and poverty are major issues in the district for which I am a school board member according to many teachers and parents I’ve talked to. I think your comparison between the poor and rich kids who both skip breakfast is a bit simplistic. The rich kids will get food when they want, and they will have heat, clothing, comfortable living space, and parental attention. The poor kids often have none of these. (Yes, some kids live in cars.)
You can dumb-down the curriculum for families whose parents don’t have time to help their kids, usually because the parents are working two or three jobs a day, but then you’ll just have a permanent underclass of the malnourished and ignorant.
Maybe that’s ok for you. I won’t stand for it.
No, I agree with you. I don’t want the curriculum dumbed down, and I apologize for having misunderstood what you were addressing.
I was also trying to point out that hunger and poor performance was too simplistic. It is the being poor that is the problem, not necessarily hungry.
Where I was not able to make headway with the school personnel is that it was their curriculum that underserved the poor (and the rich, but mainly the poor). It was us parents who were helping the poor kids. We saw where the problems were. I just got tired of beating my head against the wall.
“The problem as I see it (and as many other parents working through the system see it) is that the curriculum (teaching philosophy) used in the schools requires way too much parent involvement for kids to succeed. So, kids who have parents with the means to tutor them themselves or to pay for tutors have an advantage over those kids who are poorer.”
I couldn’t possibly agree with you more on this.
After 10 years of working with children who have severe emotional difficulties, being mentored by colleagues with more experience, and attending staff development workshops; some peers and I had developed a very effective reading, writing, and math curriculum. My principal liked it and the model was being followed by many of the classes with lower functioning kids at our sites. It focused on the basics and gradually moved into the higher order functions, using a very precise scaffolding system. Used both purchased textbooks and teacher made materials. The kids were comfortable with it and it also left time, at the beginning of the day, for class meetings, which were integral to teaching anger management. Not “touchy/feely” stuff. Techniques that worked because we knew what we were doing with the kids we were working with.
Then we were told to shelve these “unproven methods”, and, instead, invest in what turned out to be programs for high functioning, motivated students. Math and Language Arts. Time to “raise the bar”. These were very time intensive programs. I asked when we’d be able to include the basic concepts and class meetings and was told to, “…fit them in somewhere”. There was nowhere to fit them in.
We protested the change. As an answer, I was told by my AP that, if she saw me using the texts and materials from our staff developed system, she would burn them. Burn them.
These new programs stated, in their introductions, that strong parental involvement was key to their success. All of my kids came from very poor families. There was very, very little parental involvement. We’re not talking just hunger. We’re talking abusive physical and psychological relationships. Latchkey kids. Very little parental involvement. Unwashed clothes and bodies. Everything you’ve read about. It’s real.
In fact, these programs were also placed into the general ed schools, as well. My daughter would routinely bring home her friends to do the math homework with me because the parents knew I was teaching it at school. It was a new math method and they didn’t know how it worked. They were glad that I did. Free tutoring services.
In my experience, these new programs served my daughter and her friends well. I think other programs would have, too. They did not, however, do the trick for the kids I teach. Their behavior worsened, motivation suffered, and learning was negatively impacted.
moose – you’ve certainly nailed 1 of The Problems with messaging.
Before I tell you what irritates / has me fed up about the response of those institutions under attack by corp-0-rat liars, a bit about my background.
I was 9 or 10 buck an hour cook in Boston in ’88 when Dukakis ran. Some of his braintrust stratergery was founded upon ‘don’t scare the middle or we’ll lose’. How many times did I see that Harvard educated political dunce, and his minions, use right wing framing? Oh yeah – in 2003 when I was beginning teacher training, after being surplused from the dot.bomb meltdown as a micro-serf in Redmond, I remember Howard Dean and Lakoff’s “Don’t Think Like An Elephant” was a great “TA DA!”.
So, here I am, 8 years into this high school math teaching thing, (home ailing today), a few weeks back from my 2nd annual meeting of the Washington Education Association (WEA), and I’m having a hard time thinking or believing that there is much worth saving in the current cast of “leaders”. The incessant head long races to accept the latest Gate$-Ill-Vain-IA right wing defined lie as ‘the middle’ is staggeringly incompetent. (pst! Dukakis, Kerry, Gore…) Oh yeah, and about those … boo hoo snivel snivel … excuses about the rich boys being mean meanies who are mean – there are over 50 people in WEA making over 100k a year. WHAT are they doing? Going to trainings to write power points to each other on how to conduct meetings where we’ll discuss being active?
They are doing NOTHING to effectively turn the lies back on the liars – which means those who are being duped and who are being used by the liars haven’t a clue about how they’re just dupes.
back to the Tylenol … 😉
rmm.
Tylenol? That stuff will kill you! Stick with weed. 😉
Call me silly, but I have always thought that more school gardens (even if rooftop or in pots) and home economics type skills in school could help with this (you can teach a lot of science this way—and applied math). Teach kids how to put up cans, how to sew a little—and initiate creative reuse (so as not to waste resources). It all ties in. It does.
why was that abandoned? It was so much fun, everybody learned something useful. maybe thats why they ditched it. sewing, though? what would old navy do if everybody started to sew? domestic work was vilified, everybody has to go to COLLEGE! you are a shlub if you don’t, and now its not FAIR if you don’t. its a human right. total propaganda bs. home ec was fun, so was shop. It took Martha Stewart to bring it back, now its 24 hour cupcakeville.
Poverty is less of a problem than poor parenting. That’s why every argument in the success of a child always boils down to the lowest common denominator, which is parenting. Every argument. I challenge anyone to prove me wrong here.
Poverty is ONE of the issues. Don’t get me wrong. But it’s not the biggest issue.
Well, first, that’s not really true. You’ll generally find children of the rich outperforming children of the poor no matter how neglectful the rich parents are or how attentive the poor parents are because there are a lot of other factors involved in poverty than just parenting.
And second, it’s awfully hard to separate the two out as how one is able to parent is directly tied to one’s socio-economic status. It’s hard to be a good parent when you’re working three jobs to put food on the table and even harder to do so when you’re behind bars. And it’s hard to help your children educationally when your own education was sub-par. And let’s not even talk about what happens when you run away from home at age 14 because your stepfather is raping you and you fall in with a pimp just to stay alive and he gets you hooked on drugs which you then get your supply of by turning tricks, which in turn causes you to become a parent by the time you’re 16 and….
Dienne,
You have nailed it.
And it is my belief that children deserve an education that does not require that that 16-year-old parent to be the one who determines the success of public education.
One inspirational, caring teacher; one wonderful grandparent; one empathetic neighbor; one loving aunt or uncle can make up for two bad parents. You have to have positive role models. Having bad parents does not doom you.
so parenting is the lowest common denominator? while I agree there are bad parents out there this pedagogy of victimhood is neck n neck.
Akid with bad parents with an inspiring teacher and classic literature, music poetry etc, that is the key if the parents are deficient. poverty is a wall that politicians hide behind and profit from. see Dr. Benjamin Carson.
” Beauty will save the world ” who said it, do not say Dorothy Day, she just repeated it.
F Wood,
I agree. I think bad parenting should never determine how well a child does in school. I also do not believe good parenting should have such a significant effect on how well a child does in school. The fact that it does indicates how poorly we are teaching kids right now.
Let’s do the math. Let’s say a child has to be to school at 8:15 am. At the very latest (if the parent drives their child to school), their parents will have aroused them from their sleep at around 7:00 am. Let’s say the child gets a minimum of 9 hours of sleep, then they went to bed at 10:00 pm (most parents put their kids to bed earlier). If the parent picks their child up from school (they do not ride the bus) then they see them again at 3:30 pm. It is 4:00 by the time you get home. You spend the next hour making dinner. It is 6:00 by the time you are finished. Assuming you don’t allow any extra curricular activities, you have exactly four hours to spend with your child which must now include getting them proficient in the basic disciplines of reading, writing and arithmetic as well as baths and family time not related to schoolwork.
And keep in mind that those four hours did not consider any extra curricular activity nor do they factor in riding the bus. If your child rides the bus and/or you add a dance class or a gymnastics class or a violin class, then you have even less time. Teachers have students twice as many hours a day as their parents do; therefore, if you are a teacher your responsibility to that family is HUGE.
” I think bad parenting should never determine how well a child does in school. I also do not believe good parenting should have such a significant effect on how well a child does in school. The fact that it does indicates how poorly we are teaching kids right now.”
I’ll have to respectfully disagree with you on this one. IME, bad parenting is definitely up there in creating bad outcomes in education. Though not exclusive, it often goes hand and hand with violent neighborhoods. Which go hand in hand with poverty.
While it’s definitely true that there’s bad parenting at all socio-economic levels, it’s also true that the level of cognition and values can vary greatly from one level to the next.
A child from a well off family might not be getting the family time that he or she needs, but the social/educational models and expectations are still there and very apparent, from the start, from family to peers, in his/her sphere.
A child from a home in a violent neighborhood is at a disadvantage in many ways:
> Parents who aren’t home after school or at night; so the kid goes on the street, where the role models aren’t geared towards our societal norms.
> Parents who ARE home, but the kid is left alone to play with the PlayStation for hours on end, until the wee hours of the morning. And the parent either can’t or doesn’t want to help with the homework.
I’ve met with parents who tell me they don’t want to take the games away because the child gets too mad. Or they tell me outright that they just don’t have the strength to discipline the child. Or that the child idolizes his father or brother who’s serving jail time.
> Kids who learn that might is right. Both from home and the street. I spoke with one student who’d just beaten up another because he’d spit on him, accidentally, during a conversation in the school cafeteria. When I told him he could have told him, “Hey, man…did you know you just spit on me?”, or that he could’ve walked away until he’d calmed down, he was incredulous. His mama hadn’t raised him that way and no way was he going look like a wuss in front of all those people.
> Gang activity both within and out of the school. I’ve taught in middle schools where we were told to lock the doors while some students from the general education wing ran through our halls, throwing glass bottles, ripping down bulletin boards, and spray painting the walls. Parents have told me about lying on the floor of their apartment at night, lights off, for fear of gunshots. Never letting the kid go out to play after school for fear of gang activity.
Those are few ways in which parents, neighborhood, and poverty can play a very significant role in a child’s education. It’s difficult to make a difference in the life of a student who spends half the day sleeping and doesn’t relate to the material and mores that we, as teachers, represent. Not impossible…but difficult. And to say that we’re making excuses just doesn’t fly once you’ve been there. It used to insult me, but I’ve gotten used to it. You can’t imagine how hard we work to motivate our students. The ways in which state (and soon to be, national) standards subvert what we know works. Even in the days when we were allowed to develop our own curriculum, the student’s behavior would be subject to change. A witnessed death in the family from an overdose or gunshot wound. Watching a mother being beaten by a boyfriend or husband. The kid coming in with cigarette burns on his ams.
There’s a lot more involved than a comparison of hours spent at home vs those in school.
gitapik,
Yes, we are speaking from two different starting points.
In my daughter’s school, we did not have the severe problems you mention. Bad parenting, as would be categorized by the teachers in my daughter’s school, is where the parents do not make sure the child does their homework, does not look at the child’s class work, does not read to the child, does not have the child read to them, does not work on math facts with the child, and does not make every effort to come to parent/teacher conferences.
Many of these children have bright, inquisitive minds and suffer academically strictly because the curriculum places so much importance on parents working with the children at home. I did not learn this way. My parents were not required to do anything in elementary school with me relative to my school work. So, I know from experience that a dysfunctional home life can be overcome with a curriculum that does not look to that dysfunctional home to be a partner in the learning process.
As for your situation, I imagine you have students who are doomed no matter what you do strictly because they are struggling to survive (literally) on a daily basis. However, I have to believe that even among that group, there are some extremely driven children who are determined to overcome their situation and would be best served by a curriculum that kept the learning entirely within the walls of the school.
I knew we were in common agreement on the central point: the requirement of intense parental involvement. I quoted you in a previous post.I know that Dewey would disagree, but Dewey did not live in our world today, with two working parents and a more polarized element in, at least, the cities.
My parents would, on occasion, work with me on homework “snags”…but it was rare. The school was expected to supply me with the work and find the means of making it stick. If there were problems that came out, over time, the parents were notified and we either were given time at lunch, after school, summer school, or through private tutoring (my folks did this for me in my Junior year for math). Severe cases had to be held back a grade.
What I see here (and please correct me if I’m wrong) is the business model applied to education:find a model that works in a high performing capacity and apply it to all the other factories/offices/etc. Add modifications if necessary (e.g. translate the text). Then put the kid’s/families’ noses to the grindstone.
This often works fine with adults who are determined to keep their jobs and move up the ladder. Adults with strong meta-cognition and already instilled educational backgrounds who want to raise a family or just make more money. But there are no kids in these environments. And, as you said: not everybody has the money to spend on tutoring. Or the most up to date technology hardware or software. Or a friend who teaches the course and holds homework sessions 5 days a week, an hour each session, for 5 kids (and that was just for math).
I brought up the kids that I work with because I’m not sure that people really “get” what Diane and many others are talking about when we cite poverty as a strong issue. The problems are SO severe and widespread. And, yet, we include these kids in our averages when comparing ourselves, academically, to the other nations in the world. There are so MANY of them. Then our politicians and billionaire, “I want a big piece of this pie”, reformers declare that we need to scrap everything we’ve done at all schools, regardless of past or relative success, and start anew with programs that have been shown to work wonders in Singapore.
When I first started teaching my kids in special ed, 20 years ago, I was told to be happy if I reach one or two people in each year’s class of twelve. I was told this by my college master’s professors, principals, assistant principals, and peer mentors. They all said that it was the nature of the beast and to get down on myself for not reaching the rest would burn me out within five years at the most. Now it’s the polar opposite: if you don’t reach every one of your students and see a certain percentage of improvement within a certain time frame, using a commonly applied curriculum (as determined by test after test after test); you will be given a “U” rating. If the “U” ratings persist, you can be fired. If there are enough “U” ratings in the the school, the school will be closed and replaced by a charter school.
I still hear from some of the kids I’ve taught who saw success. And their parents. I also hear from some who are still having problems. We talk. I also read about them being busted for this or that and being sent to prison. One of my favorite kids who lost it after his dad died in his arms was shot while he was attempting to hold up a small corner store. This is not unusual in the inner cities of our nation.
Good points, Dienne. And I would agree that parents who have to work multiple jobs have a harder time being a good parent, then say, the stay-at-home mom who’s husband is a doctor. An argument can be made that single-parents have a harder tome being a good parent, as well. With that said, there are always ancedotal evidence to prove either argument. My divorced mother worked two jobs and took night classes for 8 years. I was 12 and was in charge of my 10 year old brother. We lived well below the poverty line. My mother instilled values in us, and lead by example that hard work pays off. On the other hand, a friend of mine grew up with both parents who were chiropractors and had everything handed to him. He ended up dropping out of college.
Parental involvement is the number one indicator in a child’s academic success.