How many times have we heard “reformers” like Duncan, Rhee, Klein, Gates, etc. say that the way to “fix poverty” is to fix schools. By that, they mean that “no excuses” schools and Teach for America will solve the poverty problem. That’s a lot less costly than using government programs to change the tax code or create good jobs or do anything that directly reduces poverty. Better to open charter schools, give vouchers, fire teachers who can’t raise test scores, take away tenure, destroy unions.
Yet here is a guest blogger for Rick Hess with a powerful message for reformers: poverty matters.
It matters a lot.
The US has too much poverty.
Jonathan Plucker writes:
“Why don’t we get more worked up about childhood poverty in the U.S.? When I talk with people about poverty, I ask them, when they leave the building, to look for poverty. Really LOOK for it. It’s everywhere, in every community, but we generally don’t see it. We don’t talk about poverty more in education reform – when perhaps it should be the foundational issue – because we’ve chosen not to see it.
“It’s everywhere, it’s solvable, and education reform can’t truly succeed until we start reducing it.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Wow. This is refreshing to read. kudos to Plucker for writing it and to Hess for posting it.
We need to begin reducing poverty by helping out the teachers teaching in poverty. K-12 is in bad enough shape, but when you get to Higher Ed, 75% of contingent faculty are working in precarious conditions, and many of us are not making living wages. The average nationally is $2700/course, no healthcare; that is NOT a living wage, when you multiply that by a full time course load. Please sign my petition for Adjunct Justice, and share it with everyone: http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/better-pay-for-adjuncts.fb1?source=c.fb&r_by=426534
Probably because the edufrackers, hedgucators, and other financializers like the way things work in 3rd world counties and are determined to keep pushing the U.S. into that pocket.
… 3rd world countries …
I live in Arkansas, we have both…
Exactly. If we had an honest discussion about poverty we would need to question and confront our capitalist economic system. That’s the last topic the oligarchs wish to discuss.
High poverty & high unemployment means employers have a great deal of control over their employees. Workers desperate for any income will avoid taking actions against abusive conditions, intolerant bosses, low wages, wage theft, long hours, or inhumane rotating shifts. They’re less likely to quit for other job opportunities because there aren’t any other job opportunities.
Pro-publica did an excellent investigative series called Temp Land about the new economy of exploding temporary employment. The rise in temp jobs has risen faster relative to the loss of white collar jobs between 1993- 2012. The most heartbreaking story in the series is “The Expendables: How the Temps Who Power Corporate Giants Are Getting Crushed” http://www.propublica.org/
Giants like Walmart avoid any accountability for temp workers injuries, unsafe conditions, verifying citizenry status. Temp workers are the 21st century’s indentured servants. Teacher’s & public service workers are on their radar.
Let’s talk a little bit about our capitalist system then. Are the low wages you cite a direct effect of the capitalist system? Are there any other possibilities? And with what system would you replace capitalism so that wages would be higher?
HU,
Unfettered capitalism is the problem. In practice laisse faire capitalism leads to monopolies and cartels and environmental catastrophes. Therefore some brakes and controls must be utilized to constrain those avaricious ones who prefer to take all for themselves. The last thirty years of loosening those controls, i.e., trickle down economics, has shown that uncontrolled capitalsm is great for a few and very harmful for many. Laws made through a democratic process (not with the bought off politicians as now) to constrain the greedy are badly needed.
Unfettered anything is not a good thing including politicians and unions agreeing to under-funded pensions.
Correct, Duane!
We’ve seen something similar in Florida on a conservative/reformer site. It seems to me that it’s part of a new plan.
“We’ve seen something similar in Florida on a conservative/reformer site.”
It’s a good sign, politically. It’s a recognition that the reform mantra is no longer being repeated mindlessly by politicians and media.
Rhee’s phony attempt at cooperation is a good sign too. When an intensely and completely political actor like Rhee starts issuing phony pleas for “cooperation” it means she’s losing.
Reformers loved politics when they were dominating at the state and federal level and driving all of ed policy. Now that there’s some push-back from the public, they’ll adopt the tried and true political tactic of claiming they aren’t political.
It’s easy for people whose lives are comfortable to think that making low-performing schools better is simply a matter of getting tougher with teachers and students.
But we have a LOT of kids in the United States who are going to school hungry, worried about whether the adult at home is going to be able to pay the rent or or the electric bill or the car payment before the thing is repossessed; worried about whether they are going to get beaten or shot going home from school; thinking about the kids they know who were beaten or shot or raped.
What do we say to that kid? Something like this, I suppose: “Nobody cares, Bettina, that the lights were just shut off in your apartment for nonpayment of the electric bill and that there won’t be any way to cook this evening and that the food in the fridge bought with your Mom’s remaining food stamps is now going to go bad. You have more important things to worry about like question 3 here, in this test prep booklet: In what cases do we use the serial comma? Really, you have to get your priorities straight. You have important tests to take, and surely you care about those more than any of that silly stuff that’s going on in your life.”
Frightening that this guy teaches at a college. He begins:
“A truism among ed reformers is that poverty is a problem, but we can’t do much about it, therefore we can’t let poverty be an excuse for poor learning results.”
First, there are many people trying to reform/improve schools who agree that poverty is a problem and that there are things we can/should be doing about it.
Second, many people trying to improve schools see this as an important strategy to helping reduce poverty – but it is not the only strategy.
Frightening? Really Joe…. That’s what frightens you?
Frightening that a person who makes generalizations like this is a college professor.
Read the entire article carefully rather than focusing on the few sentences which offend you and all your hard work.
I did read the whole article before my initial post and found several generalizations that are troubling, not just the first one.
The charter huckster with rose colored glasses peddles the promise of education as a ride to the middle class. No matter that 48% of all of us college grads are under-employed today, working in low paying jobs, many of which don’t even require a college degree, and only 47% of Americans have full time jobs right now. Employers, including my own, discovered that hiring part timers saves them a lot of $$$$$.
“For millions of college graduates, degrees aren’t paying off”
http://www.vivacolorado.com/reportajes/ci_22524953/millions-college-graduates-degrees-arent-paying-off
Sad but true. The huge concentration of wealth is a huge problem. I wish that Obama administration had established something like a CCC or WPA when it came into office. There are millions of college education young people who are seeking jobs or are under-employed. And many others who are not recent college grads are seeking jobs or are underemployed.
Only 47% of Americans are working Full-time
http://www.examiner.com/article/only-47-of-americans-are-working-full-time
Obama squandered his best chances of establishing New Deal type programs like a Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) and a Works Progress Administration (WPA) when Congress was dominated by Democrats. Now, I am very leary whenever I hear him talk about “public-private partnerships,” because that means either privation or “The Government as a Low-Wage Employer,” because, as reported here:
“Recent studies have shown how hundreds of billions of dollars in federal contracts, grants, loans, concessions and property leases currently flow to companies that pay low wages and provide few if any benefits, even as executive pay among federal contractors has risen. In effect, tax dollars are being used to fuel the low-wage economy and, in the process, worsen inequality.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/13/opinion/the-government-as-a-low-wage-employer.html
What on earth is ‘frightening’ about that statement?
It has become axiomatic among the reformy crowd that poverty is an excuse for bad teaching when confronted with the realities of poverty’s effects on child development . Everyone of us could make a list of the talking points developed in some advertising or marketing meeting.
If anything is an over generalization it’s that teachers & principals think poor kids can’t learn and use poverty as the excuse.
Apparently we have different experiences, JC. I see a lot more differences among people trying to improve public schools…sometimes referred to here as the “reformy or deformer” crowd.
Today I spent time with terrific district & charter educators who are helping each other. In 2.5 years of working together, I’ve not heard them refer to each other as “the reformy” crowd, or deformers, or as “the establishment” or “shill” or “apologist” – or other terms used by some people here.
Your experiences always trump ours. Since you are in edutopia we must all be making it up for attention. Joe’s situation is reality; ours is contrived.
Didn’t say my experiences trump yours. I’m learning from your and other people’s experiences.
It’s always sunshine and lollipops for “reformers,” schools and educators on the planet where Joe lives. Not so much in reality, where the rest of us reside:
“More than 2,400 students apply for vouchers”
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2013/08/15/629989wischoolvouchers_ap.html
Two-thirds of those who applied for vouchers are already attending private schools.
Not sure what the story about vouchers has do with what I wrote…and I can assure you it’s not always “sunshine and lollipops.” But today some union and charter folks will meet to discuss ways we might work together to help improve recruitment of inner city kids to be teachers, and to improve teacher prep. Looking forward to the conversation & possible next steps.
Joe:
Do you remember Oddball (Donald Sutherland) in Kelly’s Heroes?
Oddball: Why don’t you knock it off with them negative waves? Why don’t you dig how beautiful it is out here? Why don’t you say something righteous and hopeful for a change?
Great quote, Bernie. I had not seen it before.
Are you a parent? A teacher?
Joe:
I am not a teacher though I did substitute teach (Math) in the UK when I was in Graduate School. My wife was a HS foreign language teacher in a local PS and now teaches English to foreign students at a local university. We have 3 kids – two were very normal students and one was/is a handful. I am a numbers guy: I spent my career designing and analyzing surveys and assessment processes for big organizations.
By the way I found this on your very user friendly web-site: http://centerforschoolchange.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/enrollmentdata.pdf
Those are some very, very interesting numbers.
Thanks. Nice to meet you. Have a great day.
I included that article because it’s just the type of news that you, Joe, would see as positive, while people who support public education would see it as ghastly that, “Two-thirds of those who applied for vouchers are already attending private schools,” as Diane noted.
It demonstrates that there is no huge line of public school families waiting to send their kids to private schools and, as the article illustrates, that represents money siphoned from public schools to pay for kids who are already gone from them, many of whom attend religious schools –bad news for those of us who believe in the separation of church and state, too.
Cosmic Tinker:
The reality is a little more nuanced :
There were 2,069 applicants for the 25 schools that will be admitted into the program. Each school will be guaranteed 10 vouchers each.
The remaining 250 students will be picked at random by DPI next week. Because of the random lottery, schools with more applicants have better odds of getting more vouchers assigned to them.
St. Francis Xavier Catholic School System in Appleton had the most students apply with 193. The Green Bay and De Pere area had four schools or school systems admitted to the program. Kenosha, Manitowoc, Oshkosh, Sheboygan and Wisconsin Rapids all had two each. There were 11 other communities with one school or system each.
Only 503 of the applicants attended a public school, while 1,393 went to private school last year. The rest were either not in school (101), home schooled (69) or coming from out of state (three).
The law as written does not give public school students priority in the lottery over those who are already in private school. Walker and Republican leaders in the Legislature said their intent was to give public school students priority, and said they’ll look at changing the law this fall. But that will be too late for the coming school year.
…
All applicants, regardless of attending public or private schools, must meet income requirements. Those are $43,752 for a family of four, which is 185 percent of the federal poverty level. Married couples with two or more children can earn up to $50,752 and still qualify.
http://www.wiscnews.com/portagedailyregister/news/article_52ec97cc-c072-5d8b-9197-74dc7214d0a9.html
Wisconsin vouchers are about $6500 per student (2013?). Per pupil expenditures in Wisconsin are $11,774 (2011) There are 500 vouchers so their total cost is roughly $3.2 million. Since roughly 170 students will come from Public Schools the net effect on PS budgets will be about $1,2 million out of a total budget that is above $10,286 million!!
Facts are stubborn things.
You forgot to mention that this is just the beginning of voucher expansion efforts, in a state that had the first voucher schools, yet lacks evidence that students at voucher schools have done better then those at public schools. Efforts to expand vouchers have ramped up across the country and are most likely to succeed under conservative legislators and governors, such as in LA under Jindal, and in WI, where governor Walker rapidly succeeded in stripping most public service workers of collective bargaining rights in that state.
The argument that charters and vouchers represent just a small percentage of the population is tenuous, at best, when in the past five years, big spending “reform” groups have been pouring money into privatization efforts. They aim to fulfill Milton Friedman’s neo-liberal plan to have privatized schools be a minimum of 40%, similar to Chile, despite evidence that such schools do little more than increase segregation and stratification –contrary to Friedman’s predictions– as evidenced by the repeated protests of thousands of Chilean students calling for free education over the past few years.
Public Schools: Make Them Private by Milton Friedman: http://www.cato.org/pubs/briefs/bp-023.html
Cosmic Thinker:
Perhaps. Likening the US to Chile is disingenuous.
Did you look at the data for Minnesota on Joe Nathan’s site? http://centerforschoolchange.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/enrollmentdata.pdf
It does not look to me as though the Minnesota program is cherry picking students.
The fact remains that Wisconsin’s voucher program has a lot of growing to do before it impacts PS spending in Wisconsin. To repeat it is $1.2 million out of $10,286 million that is 0.012% of the WS PS budget. Or put differently Wisconsin would have to hand out 40,000 vouchers to get to 1% of the current PS Budget.
Ignoring how the efforts to privatize public education in America is based on Milton Friedman’s plan –the very plan that was first implemented in Chile– is “disingenuous.”
Try reading all the messages posted about Chile on this blog this week, such as here: https://dianeravitch.net/?s=chile
I have read the articles. The Chilean education system is indeed in pitiable shape.
Now, how about Minnesota and Wisconsin. The beauty of the US is that we have 50 States to see what works and what does not.
It’s so much fun experimenting on other people’s children.
There is simply a natural variation in the implementation of curriculum and in education policies and practices. What is the problem? Are you arguing for stasis?.
There are some times when it’s a waste of breath to respond to hard core standardistas (Susan Ohanian’s term, over a decade old now), but others when it’s irresistible. I taught for 28 years, virtually all in the “inner city” of Chicago. During those years, I taught several novels and plays more than a half dozen times: The Outsiders; To Kill a Mockingbird; Native Son; Anna Karenina… to name a few.
Never the same way two years in a row, and some years never the same from one class to the next. The reason why we are professionals is that we know this from praxis. I began every year with a survey of my students, developed from an old “Reading Interest Inventory” we got at Collins HS in the 1970s. By the late 1980s, I had modified it hugely. Around 1987 or 1988 I added the question: “Have you ever seen another person die?”
The kids had the right to refuse to answer any question.
But that question always drew queries.
I explained to them that in “English” we were going to read books that had fictional death. In fact, just about every novel has it.
But everyone who has actually lived with a death (or more) knows that death itself is ineffable. So those who had experienced it had a wisdom which they may choose — or not — to share with the others in the class. But the stage deaths of Romeo and Juliet or West Side story would ring a little false to those who knew the reality of a human death.
Part of this whole debate stems from the arrogance of people who have never been part of our worlds, who know nothing about teaching and learning, and who insist on treating our children as if they were as simplistic as the simple-minded formulas for “portfolio management” that make them millionaires. Or worse.
As the man observed in “Citizen Kane” it’s not hard to make a lot of money if you’re too stupid to do anything but make a lot of money. Or something like that.
Human children are too complex for people who are so dumb that they only know how to expand the universe of greed.
Bravo George! I am expending all of my energy on the kids and getting ready.
I will no longer waste words on those who must be worshipped. They don’t get it and they never will.
Good points!
George:
It sounds like you run an interesting English class. I can only imagine how tough it is to teach for 20+ years in the inner city. However, your arguments outside of the design and delivery of classroom material are puzzling.
You say:
There are some times when it’s a waste of breath to respond to hard core standardistas (Susan Ohanian’s term, over a decade old now), but others when it’s irresistible.
Who are these hard-core standardistas?
You say:
Part of this whole debate stems from the arrogance of people who have never been part of our worlds, who know nothing about teaching and learning, and who insist on treating our children as if they were as simplistic as the simple-minded formulas for “portfolio management” that make them millionaires. Or worse.
Again, who are these people?
You say:
Human children are too complex for people who are so dumb that they only know how to expand the universe of greed.
Again, who are these people who only know how to expand the Universe of greed?
For starters, anyone who embraces the philosophy of Ayn Rand … would be greedy.
deb:
George seemed to have particular people in mind. His charges suggest specific motives and specific gaps in their understanding. Referencing an author like Ayn Rand is like referencing Karl Marx. It serves only to end discussions.
Some here have used her name. She embodies greed. Corporations and libertarians and Rand Paul and Paul Ryan and other free market people make references to her. I was not trying to stop a discussion but to avoid a thread of off-topic yacking about that instead of privatization of education.
A chart comparing enrollments in charters with state data does not say anything about “cherry picking.” The comparisons must be between charters and the neighborhood schools in the same district, to see if they are serving the same populations.
Many of us here have grown tired of explaining all this to newbies, especially those with preconceived notions who attack public education and defend privatization. Please do the leg work yourself.
Cosmic Tinker:
Given the numbers in Joe Nathan’s chart your requirement to do the comparisons district by district will show no difference. That is a statistical/arithmetical reality. Your requirements may make sense in other States were the numbers Charter students is smaller and the differences on the key indicators are smaller. “Do your own legwork” is not a convincing counter argument.
Maybe we don’t feel the need to convince you.
No, it must be school by school comparisons within the same districts.
And I am not going to do the legwork for you. BYE!
Leg work is available in the same place, showing a complex situation. Charters in Mpls enroll a higher percentage of low income students, students of color and students who speak a second language, than district public schools. Charters in Mpls are concentrated in the lowest income sections of the city. In the southwest – most affluent section of the city, there are many fewer charters.
Charter opponents in Mpls acknowledge that charters enroll the demographic described. So among other things, they criticize charters for having too high a % of students of color. Of course, no one requires anyone to send their youngsters to charters (or district public schools)
On a related note – the criticism of people creating new public schools is more than 40 years old. When a group of inner city public school parents created a new k-12 option in 1971 in the St. Paul Public Schools, defenders of “traditional public schools” also complained that this new option was taking money away from neighborhood public schools. As Al Shanker noted at one point, people in public education who tried to create new options have been treated “like traitors and outlaws for daring to move outside the lockstep.”
As a teacher who worked for some years (beginning in 1971) in that district school, I’ve watched generations of public school teachers driven out by people who said the problem is poverty, messed up kids and troubled families
Poverty IS a problem. But schools can be an important part (not the only part, but an important part of helping youngsters who come from troubled families and poverty.
Joe:
Nicely said. You are affirming what was apparent in the data you linked to on your site.
I am, of course, open to looking at data from any reliable source on Charters in other States. .
CT – I’ve mentioned a times, I do not support vouchers. Ember Reichgotte Junge, the Democratic state legislator who was the chief author of Minnesota’s charter legislation, made it clear often that she does not support vouchers. President Bill Clinton, a strong supporter of the charter (and district) public school choice idea, also opposes vouchers.
That must be difficult to do, if you are funded by the Waltons, who strongly support vouchers.
Obama and Duncan SAY they don’t support vouchers, too, but I have yet to hear anyone in the Democratic leadership take a strong stance AGAINST them.
What they say and do are rarely related. Remember when Obama was going to put on comfortable shoes and walk with labor. He didn’t show up in Wisconsin and Chicago. Words are meaningless in reformy land.
Joe, Professor Plucker is calling out frequent generalizations by entities like the Walton Family Foundation, which fund your enterprise. Maybe they don’t apply to all “reformers”, and maybe they don’t apply to you. If they don’t, though, why not just say so, instead of attacking the writer?
I searched your column archive for examples of your being “frightened” by the generalization he’s opposing, namely that teachers use poverty as an excuse for poor learning results. Here’s the closest I could come:
“Some politicians, parents, journalists and others criticize teachers in ways that seem unfair.”
http://centerforschoolchange.org/2011/12/respect-for-teachers-yes-and-no/
But you don’t bite any of the hands that feed you by specifically calling out the unfair criticisms and specious generalizations that support your own funding stream. Pretty gutsy, do you think?
Instead, your umbrage is taken against a reformer who actually does speak a little truth to your own side.
Chemtchr – I think there are more than 2 “sides” in the effort to improve public schools. And, for example, I’ve criticized vouchers (which Walton supports) many times.
This week’s newspaper column (which appears in weekly papers reaching hundreds of thousands of people) praising Minnesota’s state teacher union, Education Minnesota. A newly elected president has urged a statewide conversation on how to improve the recruitment and preparation of teachers. I think that’s a good idea and said so.
Which side are they on? The side that says some people are well prepared, and that we need to do better.
http://centerforschoolchange.org/2013/08/encouraging-news-for-minnesotas-schools/
As to the issue of poverty, I’ve been a board member and contributed to “Neighborhood House”, which has been working for more than 100 years to help low income families. And I’ve written and advocated strongly in favor high quality early childhood education, which many reader here would agree is a vital part of efforts to help young people do better in school.
But, where’s your umbrage?
“Frightening that this guy teaches at a college.”
I linked this conversation to my comment on Plucker’s original post, at Rick Hess Straight Up. Let’s take it over there.
http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/rick_hess_straight_up/2013/08/the_angry_moderate_reformer_part_iv.html
Very interesting…please do. I would love to read and learn more. It must be hard to walk between the donors and the real teachers.
Good suggestion, Thanks. Just posted. Here’s part of what I said:
“All over the country people have been and are working on improving public schools who do NOT agree that “we can’t do much about poverty.”
I found this quote in another story about Dr. Plucker – and strongly agree with it. Too bad he didn’t say this in his Ed Week column:
“We need to acknowledge that we also have amazing education success stories in this country, and we need to provide our most successful schools, teachers, and students with support to allow them to continue achieving at world-class levels.”
http://today.uconn.edu/blog/2012/09/for-education-policy-expert-plucker-uconn-move-is-homecoming/
I also agree with his statement that “we need to tackle problems of poverty aggressively.”
Backpedaling
Or finding areas of agreement – which is at least in some places how we make progress. Off to work now. Enjoy the day.
Sure…that’s sounds better. 🙂
I’d say that it’s extremely important for a college professor to speak the truth. Congratulations to Jonathan Plucker for having the courage to do so. We’ll see real progress in education when we start with what we know.
The reformers believe in magic. They think that difficult questions have easy answers. Oh, this is simple. Let’s give more tests.
How well I remember George Bush, Jr., saying in an interview, “I solved the education problem in the United States on my first day in office.”
He was referring to the fact that he signed NCLB.
No Child Left unBroken
They don’t really believe in magic, but they think we’re dumb enough to trade our last milk cow for their Magic Beans™
Maybe it will our work out to a happy ending, but some evil giants will have to be brought down before it does.
… all work out …
New York City: “Stop and Frisk”
I call what they are doing in the schools “Stop and Flunk”
and it is just as abhorrent!
My niece in Albany will start school in 2 weeks (she is at summer camp)
and I expect many will FAIL; so I intend to be very vocal with parent.
I agree about the tests and the schools, but “Stop, Question, and Frisk” is not “just as abhorrent.” It is a legitimate and constitutional policing technique which has not been abused. It’s objective is proactive policing. If someone is out on the streets with a gun, often enough stolen, something is wrong. I am puzzled at how you can possibly identify the two policies.
A court ruling on New York’s Stop and Frisk policy this week indicated that it’s racial profiling, as demonstrated by the targeting of blacks and Hispanics, and “widespread disregard for the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable searches and seizures by the government, as well as the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/13/nyregion/stop-and-frisk-practice-violated-rights-judge-rules.html
You can’t just make up the constitution, Harlan.
Yes, for many years we’ve known why the achievement gaps exists, but we have not had the will to apply this knowledge towards solutions that might prove effective. As with all great advancements, we’ll see a more equitable education system when we accept the vast body of educational research that we’ve had for the last fifty years. It can be easily summed up as follows: Children from educated, high income homes usually achieve at much higher levels than children from low income, poorly educated homes. The questions we need to ask are these:
What do these privileged children have that results in high academic achievement?
How can society provide some of these benefits to all children?
I have no doubt that we’ll one day close the achievement gap between rich and poor, but how much longer will we have to wait? Now that we’re in the information age, no society can afford to fail to educate a large number of its children.
Since 1985, when the National Governors Association urged much greater support for high quality early childhood education, we’ve known that this would be a very helpful strategy. But such programs still are not fully funded.
We had an illustrative debate here in Minnesota this year. A broad coalition of groups, left to right, multi-racial, etc. urged much greater funding for high quality early childhood programs for 3 and 4 year old youngsters from low income families. Major education groups pushed for full funding of all day, every day kg.
This is in a state where both the House and Senate, as well as the Governor are Democrats. In the end, the all-day every day kg program received twice as much as the programs for 3-4 year olds.
All day kg is not a bad idea but many researchers noted that a higher priority should be early childhood education for low income students and their families.
Click to access State%20of%20Early%20Learning%20final%20(2).pdf
At least in my state of Utah, when more preschool is discussed, the caveat is that there will be a bunch of standardized tests for those babies to have to take. I’d rather not, thanks.
I wondered how the hedge fund managers and banksters were going to profit off preschool education, because that industry is already mostly privatized. Well, they figured out how to do that with PreK programs in public schools:
Pre-K Program Attracts Investors Out for Returns
http://edweek.org/ew/articles/2013/08/07/37preschool_ep.h32.html
I figured this sudden concern for “universal pre-k” among politicians and the moneyed was more about profit than education or children. Thanks for connecting the dots.
I live in a lower middle class and middle class rural area, and ed reform has directly harmed our low income public school kids.
1. Ed reformers lobbied my statehouse to direct public funds to charter schools and private schools, and public schools lost some public funding. I’m not talking about kids going to charters and thus defunding public schools. I’m talking about less state funding going to existing public schools.
2. Ed reformers lobbied to have all public schools adopt the same approaches as “no excuses” charter chains. We spend money that could have gone to helping poor kids on testing poor kids.
3. Ed reformers lobbied for expensive state and federal schemes to assess teachers. That’s money that comes right out of the classrooms of poor kids, here.
After more than a decade of watching “reform” in one public school district, I can say that our low income kids are worse off as a result of ed reform lobbyists. I can add to the stripped-down ed reform curriculum for my 5th grader, because I can afford to pay for what he’s no longer getting at his public school. The vast majority of parents here cannot.
Their kids simply won’t go the museum or the zoo and they won’t learn music or art, because their parents can’t afford it. Mine will, because I can afford it.
If the ed reformers intended on increasing “equity” they have failed miserably in this county.
I agree with you in essence, but lots of those poor kids don’t have daddies with enough money to expand their experience. You are clearly a responsible daddy who looks after your kids. Where are the state schools going to get the money to step into the shoes of the daddies of these children? Even social workers or surrogate daddies don’t work for free.
All over the world racial and ethnic groups differ substantially in educational and economic performance. In general the relative ranking of such groups is similar in different regions and stable over long periods of time. Thus Ashkenazi Jews and Han Chinese do well virtually anywhere in the world where they live while Sub-Saharan Africans are near the bottom of almost every society in which they are found. This is true even if the better performing group is small and has no political power such as the Han Chinese in Jamaica or Burma. Such differences show little change over time. For example the one standard deviation black\white difference in IQ in the US was first measured about a hundred years ago. More than fifty years of anti-Chinese discrimination in education and government jobs between Malays and Chinese in Malayasia has had no apparent effect on the relative performance of the two groups. Thus all the emprical evidence suggests that such differences will persist for long into the future.
Of course in any society the rich and successful achieve more than the poor. This is a tautology. The children of the rich inherit genes from their successful parents which increase their own chances of being successful. This is what evolution and natural selection are all about.
“The children of the rich inherit genes from their successful parents which increase their own chances of being successful. This is what evolution and natural selection are all about.”
Right, it’s all about the genes. Not about the money, the enrichment, the connections or any of that nonsense. Nope guess them blacks just really are inferior, right?
Good god it’s hard to believe that people like you still exist. But, of course, you’re not racist or anything.
To Jim, what an ignorant comment. Shame on you.
Wow- there’s a ‘success’ gene? There must be some serious incest happening in Downtown Manhattan in the board rooms of Goldman.
“The children of the rich inherit genes from their successful parents which increase their own chances of being successful. This is what evolution and natural selection are all about.”
The minute you see a statement like this, (some sexist or racist notion can justified by biological facts) you can be pretty sure that speaker knows precious little about biology.
Jim: Please read The Mismeasure of Man, by S. J Gould and take a genetics course. Your nonsense is NOT what evolution and natural selection are about.
Instead of Gould’s The Mismeasure of Man, I would recommend Eva Jablonka’s superb on epigenetics, Evolution in Four Dimensions, which is more recent. The twin studies on which heritability estimates for IQ were based are not credible because they did not and could not control for epigenetic factors. They were junk science. This will become quite clear on reading Jablonka’s superb book.
Being smart, decent, a good student, an honors student, with multiple degrees and honors won’t even get you a job these days … unless you know someone! Believe me, I know.
Depends on your expertise and knowledge. There are some jobs in education that are “going begging” in some communities,but not in others. an example is people certified in some special ed fields – huge shortage in some places, not in others. Another example – being bii or tri-lingual. Very much in demand in some places, not in others.
Growing up in Elizabeth and Linden New Jersey, I really didn’t have the ability to know the “rich.” Were we really going to believe they wanted to own a shoe store on Wood Ave. in Linden and wake up every morning breathing that air from the Standard Oil Bayway refinery? And we were really usually too busy, as were our parents, to tend much to thinking about the class struggle that was being waged against us all those years. When I graduated from high school in 1964, I got lucky. Instead of having to go in “the service,” like most of my high schools buddies, and wind up on The Wall (like my best friend in high school) or in a POW camp for seven years (like a guy I earned Eagle Scout with during high school), I got help with a college scholarship. And therefore had the time to learn about all these things, little by little as we all do.
First Vietnam. Then racism and class…
The men and women who inhabited those lofty perches on the Upper East Side of Manhattan might as well have lived on the moon. We could understand guys like our mayor (or the fictional Tony Soprano, whose opening scene has him existing the Turnpike at our home town exit), but women and men who actually believed that “nature” had endowed them to rule over the rest of us because of “superior genes”?
We all knew that was BS, but only a few of us had the privilege to get the time to learn enough of the facts. The rest of us were cut in half outside Danang (like my friend Maurice, with whom I chased girls when we weren’t working during high school) or spent years in the Hanoi Hilton (like another “George” from my home town).
Thanks to Stephen Jay Gould and many many others, many of us “got it.” Slowly and amid great pain and grief.
But anybody who talks that “superior DNA” nonsense in 2013 is right there in the tradition of those who published the “Dearborn Independent” back in the 1920s, or the “Beobachter” in another country in the 1930s and early 1940s. The eugenicists have to be defeated and their lies exposed in each generation, because since the days of the pharaohs it’s been this way. Whether “Divine Right” or “superior” — somethingorother — these crooks and creeps won’t stop on their own.
They have to be defeated, each new generation. With ideas, but also with much more than ideas. Sadly, as we are witnessing in Chicago today, they will do anything we can’t stop them from doing. (Schmidt’s first rule).
Schmidt’s First rule is compelling.
Eagerly awaiting the rest.
As a footnote, the Superior Dynasties of the past often inbred themselves into disability, sterility, and, finally, early death–like those Pharaohs and like the Hapsburgs. But before their demise, they caused a lot of devastation in their drive to dominate.
Jim:
You have certainly touched the equivalent of the third rail. Can you point to research that is able to separate out the effects of genetics, family environment and discretionary effort? Without such evidence I would be more circumspect in attributing these differences to primarily genetics.
Jim:
I recognize that the research indicates that there are group differences. There may well be a “smarts” gene, just as there is a red hair gene. However, I am skeptical of simply assigning differences in scores on IQ tests to genetics because environmental and discretionary behavioral differences are also potent plus there are likely to be interactive effects. It is noteworthy that we have yet to identify a height gene so I suspect that it will be some time before we can pinpoint an IQ gene.
Poverty, in so far as it impacts discretionary effort and family dynamics, clearly has an impact on school performance. However, I am less optimistic than some that addressing poverty will eliminate shortfalls in or variance in school performance.
Do you have a degree in genetics?
I do not understand your point. But since you asked, no I do not have a degree in genetics. Did I say something that is incorrect?
You are right about performance, but possibly not about the causes of those performance differences. To just say some groups are genetically more intelligent than others, and that genetics determines how wealthy its members become, perhaps, oversimplifies the problem. One wonders whether there are cultural or attitudinal differences among the groups which are more powerful influences that genetic intelligence, if such a thing exists at all, the so-called “g factor” of general intelligence.
Until we isolate a non-neutral gene that directly controls intelligence in the 0.1% of the genome that controls variations, your observations suffer from causation fallicies. Rich parents may have successful rich children because they make the rules not because they inherit a success gene. Populations have strong cultural influences that can help with success or failure. In fact, we still have a difficult time defining success let alone intelligence.
The big contradiction of ed reform was it was supposed to be about “innovation!” and “new ideas!”
You know what it is here? Every public school is looking more and more like a charter chain. My district was much more “individualized” and “innovative” before Gates and Co started imposing the boilerplate national methods used at charter chains on our kids.
You get no choice at all. You get KIPP whether you like it or not. I’d like to “take back” our public schools from ed reformers, actually. I didn’t sign up for a test prep academy.
Marketing. Willing buyers. Parents looking for that “miracle” for their child who is a “genius” in their eyes. There are many things that go in this country to set the stage for this ALEC backed movement to swoop in. Well, having gone to various public meetings where the “haves” don’t want to share with the “others” it is obvious that people “know” that they want “their money” spent on the kids in “their district” and that “the others” need to find a way out of their problem …without jobs, credit, education, and support, let alone food, comfort and a means of travel. Is it any wonder that communities who proudly display in their high school campus stores “Image is Everything” would be all about keeping their all important “image” flawless and turn a blind eye to the rest. This is a problem in SW Ohio, particulary in the areas just northeast of Cincinnati, where money flows freely and they don’t have to work with the problems of the poor.
It’s Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs: You can’t think about long term, abstract goals like education when food, shelter, safety, and the steady employment of your parents are in constant danger or short supply.
And the corporate reformers either have no clue about what it is to have those needs, don’t care that people do have those needs, or want to keep them “in their place”.
http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/dont-let-rhee-cheat-the.fb27?source=c.fb&r_by=6414286
In case this seems relevant and worth sharing . . . . .
http://www.starnewsonline.com/article/20130410/ARTICLES/130419976
Kenneth Teitelbaum, PhD
Dean, Donald R. Watson College of Education
University of North Carolina Wilmington
601 S. College Road
Wilmington, NC 28403-5991
Phone: 910-962-3354
Fax: 910-962-4081
teitelbaumk@uncw.edu
Kenneth:
That really is a nicely written piece.
As those who know me say – OK, where is the “but”.
First, poverty certainly is associated with and can induce poor educational performance which frequently feeds in to a vicious cycle. We agree.
Second, international comparisons suggest that even after factoring out the poor, our educational performance leaves plenty of room for improvement. Simply looking at the variance within demographically homogenous school districts shows this. Therefore, there is plenty of room for improvement in the most privileged school systems.
One and two combined suggest that improvements of our schools is not sufficient to improve the lot of children but it is necessary.
I would like to see the recent NYS ELA and math results, which have generated so much press in the last few days, reported by poverty rate. The State Ed department publishes pages and pages of PowerPoint slides breaking out gender, race, etc., Poverty is reported vaguely . . . district results based on broad categories (low need, high need, etc.). But there is a data file available, which reports the overall result for every tested grade level in every building in NYS. Wouldn’t be too hard to add a column for the most recent free/reduced lunch enrollment figures in that spreadsheet . . . then I would love to see someone do some statistical work on it. I can do basic descriptive statistics . . . but a deeper analysis of alignment/correlation of results to/with poverty rates would be very informative. Something I’ve done with my own district’s data is take historically underperforming populations (black, hispanic) and disaggregate those populations by poverty level . . . . not surprisingly middle class black/hispanic do just as well, if not better, than their middle class white peers, and poor whites perform poorly, along with poor black/hispanic students (“poor” = enrollment in free/reduced lunch). Where are the outliers???? High performing but high poverty buildings???? That’s what we need to identify, so we can look at their practices and replicate them. Not publishing data on poverty, and not openly and frankly discussing the relationship between poverty and these test results/common core implementation, is a crucial silence in the dialogue right now.
Not only “look for poverty” — but take a walk through it. And maybe get a dose of the smell of it while we’re at it.
I met Norm Scott (EdNotes) more than a decade ago when I had been invited to speak “from the trenches” as a teacher at a computer conference held in Chicago. Comdex? Something like that. (At one point I was the “inner city teacher” on a panel with a bunch of guys like the ones who had produced Sim City, which I had been using with my classes…).
Anyway, at one session, I decided I couldn’t do the routine of talking about bridging the “technology gap” before challenging my audience (there were a few hundred people there for that panel, so it was worth the shot) to “walk the walk” through Chicago’s poverty.
We were at Chicago’s McCormick Place, which then was at the northern edge of the Great Chicago Black Ghetto. Less than a mile to the south of that lakefront convention center began the “State Street Corridor” of high-rise (and a few mid-rise) low income housing projects.
So instead of talking about how to use computers in teaching the children of poverty and segregation (which I was doing at the time at Bowen High School in Chicago) I suggested that first “we” (all the computer people in the room, and me) take a tour of the poverty-segregation part of Chicago. I told people to meet me and we’d begin walking south and we’d start at Ickes Homes, go through “Dearborn Homes,” then Stateway Gardens and finally the famous “Robert Taylor Homes.” I pointed out to people that they could begin that walk a few blocks from the convention, safely located (and surrounded by security for their well heeled selves) on Lake Michigan and once they passed Ickes they wouldn’t see a white person for another ten or eleven miles.
Instead of joining me, some of the conference organizers were angry that I had gone “off topic”. (I was supposed to talk about how using Macintosh computers and programs like Sim City “worked” with poor black and Latino children; Apple had already featured me and my kids in a lengthy promotional booklet they had published…).
I was never asked to be their token inner city teacher again.
And none of them showed up for my walking tour of one of America’s most shocking examples of the combination of the viciousness of segregation and American poverty.
But at least I got to know Norm Scott as a result of that afternoon.
I assume you are implicitly arguing that the ten to eleven miles of black faces are all “victims” of segregation, few to no opportunities, and the usual suspects. Have they been “done to” and if so, by whom?
A little technology will go a long way toward maintaining all kinds of gaps. George Schmidt made the cardinal error of “civilized” academic society when he suggested that the “remote”–and I mean remote in its cyber-significance of far, far away–solutions of Technology in the Classroom were not really addressing the true problems of our peculiar moment of space/time. The doubtless liberal and self-satisfied members of the audience were quite content with seeing the black faces on the computer screen. That’s close enough–what more did George Schmidt want?
There was an amazing cultural event in the 1980s (?), when a young Danish hippy, Jacob Holdt, arrived in the US to hitch hike and enjoy the vast expanses of America only to be shocked by the racism, desperate poverty, and segregation that existed everywhere. He not only hitchhiked all over, photographing his journey, but he walked those alleys and ghetto streets, made friends, and shared life stories. He put this together at first as a slide show for college campuses and other tolerant venues, then as a book, got people doing workshops, anti-racism training, etc. But the problem has not only persisted–it may be worsening. The irony of a foreigner trying to point out the vicious inequities of American society never seemed to bubble up to the service (except, of course, down those mean streets).
Holdt may actually still do his version of “teaching tolerance”, but it’s clear that large sectors of American society are not willing to listen. I recently met someone who works in the TFA-CT H.Q.. She’s originally from Greenwich, CT, went to an “elite” university in California, did her TFA “teaching” in Louisiana, only to be surprised that TFA was opening shop in her wealthy home state–she never knew there was such poverty in Connecticut!
You can learn about Holdt here: http://www.american-pictures.com/
Is there is any similarity in the thinking of these reformers to the thinking of the rehabilitation of urban neighborhoods? When homes are fixed up and cleaned up and young urban professionals move in, where do they put the displaced people? Are they fixing up the places for them or just pushing them out of the way?
These privately owned charter schools may be doing the same thing, shoving “them” out of the way. The same mindset may be governing their thoughts as those of the urban “improvement” developers.
Is there really room for everyone to be where they want/need/should be? Money talks.
Of course there is room, but only if one has one’s own money. How do kids get out of the projects? Who are the men in these buildings?
As the current “reforms” get more and more harsh and it gets harder and harder for me to do what I love… I get so sad for the students I teach who truly are economically disadvantaged. Why do these “reformers” think that anyone would find it interesting and enjoyable to learn how to take a test all the time? Because they are poor, these “reformers” backed by national policy, are basically in a role of servitude… referred to as future human capital for the good of the “nation”. Really? Or is it for the good of an ever-increasing few who are becoming VERY RICH off of the “Ed Reform Education Complex”???? I would so much rather spend all my time thinking about and planning the most interesting lessons I can to peak my students’ engagement.
Revisions to my poorly written comment above.. apologies! Starting with line “because these students…”
Because these students are poor, these “reformers” backed by national policy are basically putting poor students into a role of servitude via “testing”.. and a “data-obsessed” pseudo education. How can we refer to humans as “human capital” and educate children for the sole purpose of THE WELL BEING OF THE ECONOMY. Whose economy? Not the childrens!
Interesting post. I like how he wants people to go out and really look for poverty. I think that part of the problem today is that we are too isolated from each other becasue of our dependence on technology. Too many people don’t pay attention to their surroundings and the people in it…they are too busy talking on thier cell phone, texting, or using whatever hand held device that they have to notice the poor.
I recently wrote a blog post with a similar bent.
http://www.keithrispin.com/soapbox/education-reformers-dont-know-what-they-are-talking-about/
Which essentially said the same thing but I expanded the idea beyond poverty and added a laundry list of academic disrupters that reformers conveniently ignore.
Inner city public high school students who have been “giving back”, making a difference for 30 years: http://www.twincities.com/education/ci_23871955/central-highs-class-63-gives-scholarships-and-pep
Nice story.
Agreed Bernie – great example of what folks are doing to make a difference.
Poverty is, more than living on welfare, it is a way of life. I spent my evenings doing Home Instruction for various students for over five years. I went to their homes. They had no car, they were lucky to have a TV with some Basic Cable (and they weren’t watching the educational channels). Most of the time their cell phones were shut off due to lack of payment. I was worried sick when a pregnant girl, due any day, had no access to a phone to call her grandma so she could get a ride to the hospital. Luckily the doctor sent her the next day – she took the bus.
Their world is the immediate neighborhood. The store is the local corner mart. There are no trips. There are no books. There is no enrichment. They are street smart, but aren’t familiar with the basic fiber of society and its history. The teachers can try to teach, but it’s like putting wall paper up without the glue – there is nothing to bind the information to their brain.
They need language development, field trips, exposure to cultural events, enrichment. They need opportunities to be successful in music, art, gym, literature. How sad when gifted athletes can’t be part of a varsity team because they are failing math. What about talent shows and fun assemblies with magicians or school plays?
There is no room for these kids to learn what is truly important because we have the wrong focus. Is common core going to help them be well rounded individuals or are we setting them up for failure? There is more to life than getting a 3 or 4 on a state assessment or even passing a Regent’s exam.
If we want to change this country, we need to do something about these children who have three strikes against them and it does not include a single test.
Well stated.
Do you hsve any video of that? I’d want to find out more details.