Daniel Wydo, a teacher in North Carolina, sent this analysis of 2012 PISA:
Here’s what the mainstream media will NOT tell you about 2012 PISA. When comparing U.S. schools with less than 10% of students qualifying for free/reduced lunch, here’s how U.S. students (of which almost 25% are considered poor by OECD standards and of which nationally on average about 50% qualify for free/reduced lunch) rank compared to all other countries including one I chose to purposely compare – Finland (of which about 5% are considered poor by OECD standards):
*Shanghai is disqualified for obvious reasons.
Science literacy
U.S. schools with less than 10% free/reduced – score=556 [1st in the world]
Finland – ranked 4th in the world
Reading literacy
U.S. schools with less than 10% free/reduced – score=559 [1st in the world]
Finland – ranked 5th in the world
Mathematics literacy
U.S. schools with less than 10% free/reduced – score=540 [5th in the world]
FInland – ranked 11th in the world
The NCES also disaggregated the mathematics data further based on seven total proficiency levels (Below Level 1, Level 1, Level 2, Level 3, Level 4, Level 5, and Level 6). The outcomes, as expected, were perfectly aligned with what we would expect in terms of the levels of poverty our students endure. For example, on the mathematics literacy scale, U.S. schools with less than 10% free/reduced lunch had 94% of students score at a “Level 2” proficiency or above (a “Level 2” proficiency equates to being able to use basic mathematics in the workplace), whereas schools with more than 75% free/reduced lunch had 54% of students score at a “Level 2” proficiency or above, of which 46% of the 54%, scoring at a “Level 2” proficiency or higher, scored at a “Level 2” or “Level 3” proficiency with only 6% scoring at a “Level 4” proficiency, 2% scoring at a “Level 5” proficiency, and so few scoring at a “Level 6” proficiency, the reporting standards were not met. Virtually no students from schools with less than 10% free/reduced lunch ranked at the “Below Level 1” proficiency (reporting standards were not met), and a mere 5% were ranked at “Level 1” proficiency. On the flip side, a whopping 46% of students in schools with more than 75% of free/reduced lunch scored at a “Level 1” proficiency or at “Below Level 1” proficiency (28% and 18% respectively).
The dissagregated data for science and reading, based on the various proficiency levels, followed the example set in mathematics, although maybe not quite to the extent of variability when comparing schools with less than 10% free/reduced lunch to schools with more than 75% free/reduced lunch..
This is not a new phenomenon. For every administration of PISA and TIMSS, when controlling for poverty, U.S. public school students are not only competitive, they downright lead the world. Even at home nationally, when controlling for poverty, public school students compete with private school students in Lutheran, Catholic, and Christian schools when analyzing NAEP data. This is my own synopsis of the Braun (2006) study using large samples of NAEP data and using HLM to compare private school students to public school students:
In 4th grade reading (after adjusting for student characteristics – so an apples to apples comparison can be made based on SES and other student characteristics) it’s a wash – there is no difference in scores between the private schools and the public schools. In 4th grade mathematics, after adjustments, public schools outperformed private schools significantly. In 8th grade Reading, after adjustments, private schools outperformed public schools significantly, with the exception of Conservative Christian schools, which performed similarly to public schools, both of which were outperformed by Catholic and Lutheran students. In 8th grade mathematics, it’s another wash except for a very important caveat. While Catholic schools followed the trend with and without adjustments, Lutheran school and Conservative Christian schools didn’t. Lutheran schools were significantly higher, increasing the average among private schools, while Conservative Christian schools were significantly lower, decreasing the average among private schools.
http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/pubs/studies/2006461.asp
One has to wonder why our media continues to barely report the connection between child poverty and their performance at school. The school reformers want nothing to do with it other than to claim there are miracle schools and teachers out there, although upon further analysis these are the schools that usually game the system and do a ‘data dance’ – most namely, charter schools.
The reports continue to be all about our failing or “mediocre” schools and incompetent teachers. I like the simple observation made by researchers in the past – if the argument is to be made that U.S. public schools and teachers are failing, then we have huddled all of our incompetent teachers and principals in our urban and rural schools, for they are the ones that struggle or “fail” – this is evidenced in the PISA data I provided and appears at every turn when outcomes are disaggregated based upon child poverty. Or are our urban and rural schools and teachers “failing” or “struggling” any more than our urban or rural police forces? Response times are higher in urban and rural areas (for different reasons), and crime rates are higher in our urban areas, so does this mean that our urban and rural police officers are failures? Can you imagine police unions if we were to erase officer tenure, step ladder structure for pay increases, LIFO, and bust their unions – and then demonize them because they can’t seem to solve the crime problems of our urban areas? Can anyone say value-added modeling for police officers estimating their effects on crime rates during their beat? The difference between police officers and teachers, specifically in this analogy, is that we are push-overs, ah-hem, I mean caretakers.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This should be the headline: “PISA scores, like other standardized tests, track with student income.” Instead we get “the sky is falling, the sky is falling.” Duncan and the rest should be ashamed of themselves.
Great post. Thanks, Diane. The author should seek to present this at AERA and get it published in a peer reviewed journal.
Thank you, Daniel Wydo.
Yes, Concerned Citizen, Arne Duncan should be ashamed.
He truly is a national embarrassment.
So many keys stroked, so many words spoke, so many outrages stoked over something-the results of PISA-that is worthless, unfounded, baseless, false, inoperative, irrational,
null, unreasonable, unscientific, unsound, untrue, bad, void, wrong,fallacious, ill-founded,
illogical, mad, not binding, not working, nugatory, null and void, reasonless, sophistic, and
unreasoned.
Thanks to thesaurus.com!!
This is an extremely important post. Thank you, Dr. Ravtich, for making people aware of this ugly truth behind the scores, that the deform agenda is based on misinformation, shoddy argument, and magical thinking.
Nice facts.
Unfortunately we are well past the point where facts are going to win the day. Only POWER will do that now.
Who has the power?
SHARE THIS EVERYWHERE!!!
I’m confused. Are these new rankings comparing our schools, minus the schools with 10% or more of the students on free or reduced lunch, with the other nations’ entirety of students? Or are the schools with a high number of poor students eliminated for other nations as well in this comparison?
It wouldn’t be equitable to eliminate the high poverty schools for the US but not the other nations. (Not as inequitable as comparing all our students to elite kids in freakin’ Shanghai, but still…)
Go to the Wikipedia site:
Programme for International Student Assessment – Wikipedia, the …en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programme_for_International_Student_AssessmentCached
You will see the complete table that compares US scores with other countries using similar cohorts. Its well worth the look.
Unfortunately the media will sacrifice the truth at the altar of the sensational.
Jim, what this Teacher and many Educators are saying is that it is not the schools or Teachers that lower the scores, since our lower poverty schools score highest in the world, it is the poverty that is lowering our scores.
If you look at the break down of the % free lunch, you would see that even though they do not give the number of schools with poverty levels, we have over half of the schools with at least a 50% poverty level. This information is quite apparent in the report data but is not presented anywhere in the report! Attempting to rank average scores of Nations(and cities) makes as much sense as ranking average scores of a urban school in Alabama with a elite private school in Massachusetts!
We are the only country tracking ALL of our students in a college bound track. MOST other countries differentiate students into professional tracks as well as trades. We require that ALL children attend formal schooling. It is like saying all children are going to be NBA players. Not all children are going to be college bound material, but the US requires that all kids take that track. Therefore, it is difficult to compare our children with kids in formal schooling in other countries.
I would love to here Diane’s take on THIS article: http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/10/do-american-schools-need-to-change-depends-what-you-compare-them-to/280768/?utm_source=December+2013+Communicator
I can tell you my take on it. It is close to this.
http://www.southbronxschool.com/2010/07/deconstructing-wendy-kopp.html
Lets sum this up…
Income tracks with test scores.
Test scores track with intelligence.
intelligence tracks with Income.
Income tracks with test scores…
From the New York Times’s coverage of the release of the results: “Jack Buckley, the commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, noted that American students from families with incomes in the highest quartile did not perform as well as students with similar backgrounds in other countries.”
As Jim Morgan noted above, saying our top kids outperform other entire countries doesn’t tell the whole story, and it offers pretty thin comfort for those who aren’t fortunate enough to live in a well-to-do (and almost always brutally segregated) district.
I would like to know how Mr. Buckley disaggregated. I know of no other measure of poverty available in Finland, or other countries abroad, that could be used as a comparison – other than the OECD poverty measures by country. There is an economic index available, but it is based on terms that may lead to an even less straightforward comparison than was used above. I think the index even includes goods owned in the household and measures that would lead to noisy statistical comparisons. Obviously the federal definition dictating qualifications for free/reduced lunch is going to be different than OECD measures of child poverty, but it’s probably going to be the best comparison we have at our disposal. I’m am all ears for hearing Mr. Buckley’s approach.
In the very unlikely event the commissioner of the NCES isn’t following this thread, here’s his email: jack.buckley@ed.gov
I agree that the dis-aggregation is a very useful analysis. However, was there any dis-aggregation done for the foreign countries? Comparing dis-aggregated US data to foreign data that was not dis-aggregated is not a fair comparison, foreign countries also have issues with poverty and discrimination against minorities. Obviously the school lunch program is a very US specific program, I suspect there may not be comparable foreign data, I have no idea how you would go about finding data that is comparable between countries, then again I don’t claim to be an expert on education statistics.
I very much wish to encourage this type of analysis but there are issues that need to be addressed.
-An applied mathematician
Wkipedia had disagregated comparisons for US and foreign countries. US poverty based on free and reduced lunch; poverty in foreign countries is calculated using an undisclosed formula/method.
Provides a fairly reasonable comparison. Data is compliled in a table that I cannot copy and paste here.
NYS – are you talking about the table at the bottom of this site? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programme_for_International_Student_Assessment
yes
It’s useful data but a far from an ideal comparison. The use of school lunch stats vs OECD poverty stats is one problem. Even for different OECD countries there may be different methodologies for measuring poverty, although that’s a problem with almost any kind of international comparisons. The other problem is comparing averages from different strata in the US to an average for an entire country. So it’s still an apples versus oranges comparison.
Richard,
I have made this same point a large number of times.
The OECD uses a relative measure of poverty, so it is very possible that a non-poor household in one country would be classified as poor in another even if that household’s purchasing power had not changed.
I think of the comparison more as an apples vs fruit basket one.
Richard – “Even for different OECD countries there may be different methodologies”
These are OECD stats. They use the same universal approach among OECD countries. They are accessible at the OECD website.
Richard – “The other problem is comparing averages from different strata in the US to an average for an entire country. So it’s still an apples versus oranges comparison.”
There are some assumptions, that’s for sure, but I wouldn’t say there is evidence that these assumptions invalidate the comparison.
The reason why “different strata” (free/reduced lunch rates) are used to compare outcomes “for an entire country”, and it could be done rationally, is because the child poverty rate in Finland is completely engulfed in the first “strata” of free/reduced lunch for the U.S – specifically the less than 10% free/reduced lunch “stratum”. I don’t see this as an issue. In fact, I don’t even think there is much to assume regarding this point.
I think teachingeconomist has a better point directly below, in terms of requiring some assumptions, for which I will reply to more specifically.
teachingeconomist – “The OECD uses a relative measure of poverty, so it is very possible that a non-poor household in one country would be classified as poor in another even if that household’s purchasing power had not changed.”
I think you’ve got a point here. The OECD’s definition involving relative poverty is half of the median household income. With greater income inequality, would come greater variance in what is considered poor, middle class, or upper class across nations.
But I still don’t think this comparison is all bunk. If we could show the median income for households in the U.S. and Finland, we could at least compare those two countries if the results are fairly close.
I don’t think its has bad a comparison as you’re making it out to be. Free/reduced lunch rates are highly respected among educational researchers to give us an index of sorts for poverty. Of course, they aren’t always being used in this fashion either, so I’m not saying you don’t have a point. I just don’t think your gripe is big enough to negate this analysis – especially if the U.S. and Finland have comparable median household incomes and the half of that value being similar. This would also be an issue too because the lower the poor end goes, the more lower the value for half of the household income.
What needs to happen, at least to compare the U.S., which has around a 51K median household income, to Finland, which I’m uninformed about in terms of the median household income, is to get the numbers and see how close they are.
I don’t think I was arguing that these comparisons were worthless, just that they are not as obviously correct as most here assume. Even your figure of median household income is a problem if you want to compare it between countries. In the US we measure household income before taxes, Thehe OECD they measure.household income after taxes. To the degree that the tax system is progressive, the after tax measure of income will always show a more equitable income distribution than the pretax measure of income distribution. Sizes of households also differ systematically between ODCD countries. A poor household in Japan or Italy is likely to have fewer children in it than a poor household in the United States. The OECD attempts to adjust for that (as do all measures of poverty’, but there are different adjustments made depending on who is calculating the poverty rate)
Measuring poverty is difficult and often done badly. It is done particularly badly in the US. If you are interested in looking at some of the nuts and bolts of poverty measures, I recommend the World Bank Poverty Manual. It can be found here:http://siteresources.worldbank.org/PGLP/Resources/PovertyManual.pdf
teacheconomist…I think you miss ME’s point. This is OECD data. They should be calculating it the same.
Someone else already alluded to that…somewhere up top.
Jim,
OECD measures of poverty are relative measures, based on median household incomes. A household that is classified as “poor” in the United States would not be classified as “poor” in other OECD countries like Turkey or Mexico even if the two had the same after tax income.
“A household that is classified as “poor” in the United States would not be classified as “poor” in other OECD countries like Turkey or Mexico even if the two had the same after tax income.”
So. They are still poor. Yes, it stinks to be poor in Mexico – notice they score very low on PISA and they have an extremely high Gini coefficient. It also stinks to be poor in the U.S. and quite literally. The odor makes it to the front of my room from time to time.
The real question is Finland (because they are who I used to compare) – they have a lower Gini coefficient than the U.S., so their richer kids will be more in the middle than in the U.S. inevitably skewing the median household income and disposable income. However, even the most elite in Finland attend their public schools (they don’t have private schools in Finland or are very rare) and were included in the PISA sample. This is not true in the U.S. where the elite send their kids to very elite private schools, some costing 15K a year. Does this balance out the imbalance we observe in inequality? Not sure.
As you’ve noted, no comparison will ever be perfect. By U.S. standards, on average, 50% of our kids qualify for free/reduced lunch which is at least 130% of poverty. There are many variables, as you’ve also noted.
I think it is an important comparison. But what I think is even more important is the stark difference poverty makes within the U.S. itself as I provided that data too as spread throughout the seven proficiency levels. And that was the point – our ‘problem’ resides in the poverty stricken areas – mostly urban and some rural. I disagree that these students have teachers and administrators who are not doing there jobs, and, therefore, our schools and teachers are overall “mediocre” or worse which is what the headlines implied or in some cases claimed.
One important question is if absolute or relative income level is what is important for learning. Actually, let me refine this a little. It is clear that absolute levels of consumption are important for cognitive abilities. It is less obvious that relative income level has a causal relationship with cognitive ability. Being poor in Mexico is a higher level of physical deprivation than being poor in the United States.
I also think you undervalue public education. The Rye public school district in New York charges between $20,000 and $25,000 tuition for students whose families can not afford to live in the district. Does that make Rye public an elite school?
I am not sure if anyone has studied absolute vs. relative poverty and their differing effects on learning. I am not sure how valuable it would be because poverty should be defined relative to each country.
The U.S. is the richest country in the world, and the bar should be placed much higher than we’d expect in Mexico. Just because our poor have a much higher standard of living than in Mexico on the whole, doesn’t offset the effects of poverty in the U.S.. In terms of countries, this shows when analyzing TIMSS and PISA data too. Just like among students, your more developed countries will have higher outcomes – just look at Mexico vs. any other OECD country. Among each level in the middle and the top it gets murkier because they have similar metrics.
Just because being poor in Mexico is worse than being poor in the U.S. doesn’t mean much – it just means that our poor will on average have better academic outcomes than Mexico – which is really lowering the bar if we are going to find some kind of justification. This is why poverty should be compared among nations relatively – each country will have a different bar based on their resources.
A couple of points. First, the United States is not the richest country in the world. Depending on how you convert figures to a common currency and what counts as a country, the United States is somewhere betwee the tenth an twentieth richest country as measured by GDP per capita. There are, of course, other measures that could be used and you would get different results.
There is clearly a physiological link between the absolute poverty experienced by most if the world’s poorest children and cognitive development. Being relatively poor in Mexico involves a very different level of malnourishment, a very different household environment (wood burning stoves used for cooking create very hazardous pollution levels inside the home), and very different acess to public resources than a relatively poor person who lives in the United States has access to.
TE, I think you have a point, but among nations that we compare ourselves to regarding education, are the differences as great as you are saying? I don’t think they are — please correct me if I am wrong.
I used examples from Mexico because it is a member of the OECD and it seemed to me that comparison amoung OECD countries was the topic of discussion. The main point was to distinguish between the importance of absolute poverty verses relative poverty. I think the former has a much larger impact than the latter.
It is interesting that the poster viewed the United States as the richest country in the world. Luxembourg has a GDP per capita of $88,276 while the United States has a per capita GDP of $51,689.
I should add that the using the OECD method to calculate poverty rates, the United States rate of 17.13% and the Mexican rate of 18.42% are very close together, and much higher than poverty in the Czech Republic of 5.8%.
All figures are from the OECD Factbook 2010 for “mid 2000 poverty”. Here is link to the Poverty rates and gaps page: http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/factbook-2010-en/11/02/02/index.html?itemId=/content/chapter/factbook-2010-89-en
“I also think you undervalue public education. The Rye public school district in New York charges between $20,000 and $25,000 tuition for students whose families can not afford to live in the district. Does that make Rye public an elite school?”
Compared to what? It’s all relative – just like it is between countries.
It would be elite to attend Rye Country Day School where the tuition is almost $35,000k on top of the taxes they pay for Rye schools. Can you imagine this tax bill? These people must be millionaires.
Specifically Rye High School has a free/reduced lunch rate of 3.2% and is 87% white.
It would be a chuckle to see what the free/reduced lunch rate is at Rye Country Day and their race/ethnicity information.
“First, the United States is not the richest country in the world.”
I’m not sure how relevant GDP per capita is in this discussion – I said the U.S. was the richest country in the world, which doesn’t necessarily involve economic output. We have more cash and assets than any country in the world. GDP per capita is prone to many variables that makes its use illogical when measuring wealth.
“Being relatively poor in Mexico involves a very different level of malnourishment, a very different household environment (wood burning stoves used for cooking create very hazardous pollution levels inside the home), and very different acess to public resources than a relatively poor person who lives in the United States has access to.”
You obviously have no idea what it means to be poor in America. You wouldn’t believe the things we see in our classrooms. I agree, as I did before, being rich in Mexico is worse, but it is no picnic in the U.S..
If you do not want to look at per capita GDP, what metric would you like to use to determine “richest”? I assume you must have some figure in mind, and it look forward to your link.
By OECD measures, the US and Mexico have very close to the same poverty rates. Do you really think that this fact accurately portrays poverty issues in the US and Mexico as being the same?
Finally, my children attended a Title 1 elementary school and my youngest was given permission to transfer into a Title 1 junior high school from the wealthier junior high he was assigned to attend. My foster son lived the first formative years of his life the child of a servant in what was officially the worst country in the world for humans to live. I know a little about poverty and it’s impact on learning.
“…what metric would you like to use to determine “richest”? I assume you must have some figure in mind, and it look forward to your link.”
I have no link. I would assume we are talking hundreds of trillions if we include real estate, investment income, and sheer dollars and these tallies would include all U.S. citizens and their money home and abroad. After all, how many millionaires and billionaires does the U.S. house?
I would propose (guess) that no other country would probably come within 75% of that mark. Again, I have no link. And I have no time to garner one either.
“By OECD measures, the US and Mexico have very close to the same poverty rates. Do you really think that this fact accurately portrays poverty issues in the US and Mexico as being the same?”
Yes, relatively speaking and based on expectations. Realistically, I would not. Mexico is more like a 3rd world country anyways.
I would treat poverty/wealth data, not only by definition but based in reality, very similarly in Finland as I would the U.S., especially when we specifically compare students in public schools. I would make the argument though that Finland offers more wrap around services at school from sources I’ve read. This is why when we compare schools with less than 10% free/reduced lunch to Finland in its entirety, there is value in the analysis.
As a guess, thinking the United States is the wealthiest country if you include assets is probably not a bad one, but I would go with resource rich small population countries like Norway, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, etc.. Of course that depends on how you value fossil fuels.
International comparisons are difficult to make, especially about as complicated a notion as poverty. That is why the OECD went with a measure of relative poverty rather than the more important absolute poverty.
Diane writes as if poverty is the cause of student achievement. This is not validated in any way. Perhaps degree of parenting is the cause of student performance and poverty is an indicator of the ability of parents. In many cases the student from a poor family scores better than do students from less poor but drug user families.
Do you really think that student achievement isn’t related to poverty? Have you ever taught in a low SES school?
Surely you are not serious.
Duane
After 30+ years of teaching in high poverty schools I’m convinced that people who have no experience with this sub-culture simply can’t imagine how debilitating it is for kids in school. Its not just high poverty schools, its high poverty homes and neighborhoods. And its not just economic poverty; there’s emotional poverty, experiential poverty, and the poverty of no expectations.
Sorry Robert, don’t know how I mistook you for Senior Swacker.
Related? Probably.
However the careful reader will note that I said caused by, not related to.
jring281, when there is enough substantiated evidence that supports a correlation relationship, and the connection between the independent and dependent variable is logical and not off the wall, the correlation relationship between variables then should be redefined as causation.
Some questions related to the effects would pertain to the strength of the relationship (close to “1”), the consistency across populations, the specificity of the effects…is a risk factor being attributed to outcomes, temporality…does the cause precede the effects, plausibility…as I’ve already stated…does the relationship make sense, how well do the outcomes cohere to the independent variable, is there evidence in the field…not just theoretical or on paper, and are there analogous fields replicating the outcomes (either purposely or otherwise).
There are many of us that bash the NCLB Act, and rightly so. But here is one great thing that the NCLB Act provided – enough data, alongside a plethora of other standardized tests, to show each of these aforementioned to be FACT.
The FACT that poverty CAUSES low standardized test scores, and other compromised student outcomes, is not longer a question of correlation – it IS a matter of causation.
When you argue against this point…that poverty causes poor student outcomes…you are arguing against a host of evidence.
Do your research…look at the numbers. Start with the SAT…then go where ever you want. The data is there, and it is clear.
I don’t know how well you did in social studies but you should have earned an F in science class.
All those before us who have stressed the importance of the scientific method just rolled over in their graves.
No amount of agreement among any number of people that ‘the earth is flat’ does not make it flat, nor the center of the universe nor any other of the great number of fallacies that have been perpetrated by mass hysteria about phenomena we do not yet clearly understand.
Please do not inflict your dogma on kids.
—jring281, I have no idea hat you are talking about. What I offered was not from me, it was from a graduate level stats book.
Where did I say anything about popularity determining causality? I wholeheartedly agree with what you said, but I don’t see how it applies to how correlation can ultimately lead to causation if the prerequisites I listed from the stats book are met. Notice I am referring to EVIDENCE, not opinion.
Jim, I am fairly sure you claimed that several parties agreeing with a hypothesis enabled it to be considered true. if you did not then my apologies for not reading carefully. If you did, however, I call this affirmation by acclamation as contrasted to independent experimentation for fallibility.
Poverty alone does not necessarily limit student achievement; but it sure doesn’t help. The indisputable correlation between poverty and low test scores certainly suggests that it is a causal factor. Any one who has taught in a high poverty (60+% FRR) school knows this because poverty is a strong indicator of a host of problems that become very real barriers to learning. The list includes, but not limited to: learning disabilities, mental illness, physical disabilities, single parent families, poor pre-natal care, alcohol and drug abuse, crime ridden neighborhoods, poor nutrition, limited pre-school learning experiences, limited travel experiences, family dysfunction, child neglect, child abuse, general malaise and hopelessness, poor health, disenfranchisement, racial discrimination, language barriers, lead poisoning, alcohol fetal syndrome, the cycle of dependence, intellectual disabilities, limited working vocabularies, low parental expectations, unemployment, underemployment. because poverty is so often linked to such issues, it is almost a moot point to argue if it correlates to or causes low academic achievement.
Where do you get your information? I teach in a school district in a suburb of NYC with a rising percentage of students coming from poverty-stricken homes. Most if not all of the parents of these children want what every parent wants for their child: a good education and an opportunity for a better life. What gets in the way? Children not having access to proper medical care, and nutrition. Without these needs being met, young children’s brains do not develop to full potential. It’s difficult for them to concentrate on academics and they fall further behind. This is further compounded if their mothers did not have adequate nutrition and and access to healthcare during pregnancy. This has been studied, documented, and written about by many scholars besides Dr. Ravitch.
jring281 – “In many cases the student from a poor family scores better than do students from less poor but drug user families.”
That is a downright lie. I dare you to provide evidence.
I double dare you.
You’ve pinned yourself down to showing statistically “in many cases” – NO OUTLIERS ALLOWED.
Jim, I suggest you visit 10 alternative schools (where the expelled kids are sent) and reach your own conclusions.
OBTW, you now have an D in statistics. Many allows ‘outliers’ such as in None-Some-Many-Most-All
Cheers,
jring281
There is another aspect of high poverty schools that doesn’t get talked about nearly enough that severely limits student achievement. Teaching in impoverished school districts is pedagogically constraining in ways that outsiders could never imagine. Our teaching “tool kit” is very, very limited. There are creative and innovative activities and methodologies, and some plain, old school tedium, that are simply not at our disposal for use in the classroom. For example, I have taught countless classes of student where I could not ask them to silently read a five minute introductory passage to a simple assignment. If I can’t have a class do something this basic, try to imagine the wide variety of interesting and effective teaching techniques that I am unable to take out of my tool kit.
For those who can get beyond a simplistic, single factor equation like Poverty —
“NY Teacher” gives a pretty good list of several factors such as learning disabilities, mental illness, physical disabilities, single parent families, poor pre-natal care, alcohol and drug abuse, crime ridden neighborhoods, poor nutrition, limited pre-school learning experiences, limited travel experiences, family dysfunction, child neglect, child abuse, general malaise and hopelessness, poor health, disenfranchisement, racial discrimination, language barriers, lead poisoning, alcohol fetal syndrome, the cycle of dependence, intellectual disabilities, limited working vocabularies, low parental expectations, unemployment, underemployment.
An increasing percentage of kids from homes well above the poverty level are exhibiting many of these attributes, especially chemicals related.
If we are going to deal with the situation then we are well advised to see the set of factors and intervene in a more comprehensive way.
“If we are going to deal with the situation then we are well advised to see the set of factors and intervene in a more comprehensive way.”
You mean like Finland who has world-renowned wrap-around service for their students, socialized, single-payer health care, and free K – 16 education (and perhaps beyond???).
I like your plan if it is as I’ve described.
You neglected to mention ethnic and cultural diversity. Perhaps more important than income diversity.
Then there is the metric that measures how an education is subsequently applied. One view is Nobel awards at 3 per 100,000 for Finland and 9 for U.S.
“You neglected to mention ethnic and cultural diversity. Perhaps more important than income diversity.”
No. Income has shown over and over again to correlate much more than any other variable. In fact, even among subgroups, the more income/wealth, the better the outcomes.
A middle or upper class black/Hispanic student will beat a poor white student on average.
Me, Are you saying that the diversity of students in a U.S. classroom vs. Finland classroom is not relevant? How have you measured this?
I don’t argue about the poverty comparison, only that to claim it is the overwhelming cause has not been supported.
Wrap-around is a great service. Works great in the U.S. too. Helps a kid with lots of things not supplied at home, in extended family, in neighborhood. Perhaps far more important than degree of financial poverty.
Maybe. But that would be hard to measure. Do you have a study or studies to support this?
Me,
Gee, if “that would be hard to measure” then please tell us how you measured it for your claim “…world-renowned wrap-around service..” in Finland.
I wonder if we might find it hard to compare Finland and the U.S. by median family income. Since Finland provides a lot more government social services, I suspect that the amount of income that goes to taxes might be different. We are expected to provide much more on our own.
We do know that roughly 5% of Finnish children live in poverty compared to nearly 25% of American children. We also know that in schools where no more than 10% of our students come from economically deprived homes, our students can take tests better than most other countries using similar demographics. Given that economic status seems to be related to “test performance” across the nations that have provided such data, it seems reasonable to assume that the environmental deprivations that tend to be overwhelmingly associated with poverty adversely affect a child’s ability to learn.
Some day perhaps we will decide as a society that we all need to be responsible for the healthy growth of all our children. Right now we don’t. Children appear to be the sole responsibility of their parents whether they have the tools or the capacity to raise them without help or not. Children are basically at the mercy of circumstances beyond their control. Social services are a mish mash of private charitable organizations and waxing and waning government services, both of which are subject to economic and political forces and the ability of marginalized people to navigate them.
The 10% poverty line is — if you think about it — an excellent place. Shouldn’t the USA have fewer than 10% of its children in poverty? By using that standard, the results show us what is possible if we attack the real problems in our country–chronic, generational poverty, rather than continuing to beat up those on the front-line trying to deal with the results of that poverty.
Carl,
Whether the U.S. has fewer than 10% of ‘its’ children in poverty depends on several factors, more notably, a) the stipulation of poverty level, b) the rate of legal immigration, c) the rate of illegal immigration and d) the rate of illegitimate births.
Care to guess what % of musicians and artists live below the poverty level?
“a) the stipulation of poverty level, b) the rate of legal immigration, c) the rate of illegal immigration and d) the rate of illegitimate births.”
All of which are/aren’t part of the OECD’s standardized approach to calculating poverty rates?
How about UNICEF’s approach?
“Care to guess what % of musicians and artists live below the poverty level?”
I would be more interested in the kids of those musicians and artists that are subjected to that environment. Guess where they’d score on PISA or any other standardized test, including the SAT?
Thank you for highlighting our fundamental difference in intent.
I am more interested in how kids get enabled toward a life they love than in what test scores they achieve in the detention facilities we call public schools.
Are you claiming that test scores cause quality of life and that poverty causes test scores?
Are you open to considering whether the way people “teach” in public schools may be as much a cause of test scores as is the poverty context of the student?
I would say that the hypothesis that poverty causes low test scores requires much less faith than the hypothesis that poor teachers are for some reason concentrated in high poverty areas.
How about getting past faith to facts or at least to knowledge claims that can be subjected to Bayesian tests?
Perhaps there are 12 or so influences on test scores (not including the thicket of comparing scores among sets of humans) and the idea is to discover the partial influences of each on test scores but the real knowledge comes from understanding the influence of each of the 12 on the others — understanding the system that ’causes’ test scores to be what they are. Until we acknowledge the system and understand its structure and behavior we will always err in claiming that effect of any one factor.
jring281 – try the Coleman report and the more recent Goldhaber findings in 2002.
“This estimate is similar to what my colleagues and I found: that 8.5 percent of the variation in student achievement is due to teacher characteristics. We found that the vast majority (about 60 percent) of the differences in student test scores are explained by individual and family background characteristics. ”
http://educationnext.org/the-mystery-of-good-teaching/
I would suggest we try an experiment/long term study:
Independent variable: family income
Dependent variable: standardized test scores
Experimental group: All families currently below the poverty line ($23K per family of four) with last names A to M
Control group: All families currently below the poverty line ($23K per family of four) with last names N to Z
Provide all adults in the experimental group with jobs that pay a living wage of $50 K per year for full time work, including health benefits and housing and neighborhoods commensurate with their income. Cost of living raises included. Control group remains impoverished.
Give it two generations and . . .
Or we could try Ron’s brilliantly snarky hypothesis and replace every ineffective or developing teacher in NYC, Rochester, Syracuse, Buffalo, and Yonkers with effective and highly effective teachers from Long Island and Westchester and other affluent districts. No need to wait 20 years, it would only take a few months to see that Ron was right.
Economists would love to do a controlled experiment like this if we could only get a big enough grant. One suggestion though is that you use consumption spending or some other smoother measure of purchasing power rather than household annual income for a year.
“Are you open to considering whether the way people “teach” in public schools may be as much a cause of test scores as is the poverty context of the student?”
Teaching methodologies and program policies in high poverty schools are constrained by student behaviors in ways that teachers in affluent schools could not possibly imagine. Constraining student behaviors include: absenteeism, apathy, frustration, impulsivity, inattention, distraction, low self esteem, anger, irresponsibility, poor work habits, laziness, and more.
This post stirred up memories of how PISA results were treated by the mainstream media in Germany when I lived there. Here’s my post: http://msgordonteaching.blogspot.com/2013/12/poverty-and-pisa.html
Even in Finland school children from wealthier families with usually higher educated parents succed better than poorer children, both at school and in Pisa tests. US is overall wealthier than Finland. You should compare children from wealthy families in both countries or from poor families in both countries to get reasonable results.
Elina,
This is true.
But the gaps and inequity here are much larger.
Diane,
Then there must be a scalar that shows degree of poverty to degree of test results.
Do you have one?
Do the kids in Finland know that they are poorer than the kids in the U.S. or is poverty somewhat like water to fish?
jring – OECD calculates relative poverty, which is the percentage of children living in households with equivalent income lower than 50% of national median. The U.S. has a child poverty rate of 23.1, whereas Finland is at 5.3%.
As far as a “scalar”, PISA does use a index of social, cultural and economic status. But to me, that is straight less forward as they gauge many complex social issues that may/may not directly relate to poverty.
Elina Huu – unfortunately just because the U.S. is the most wealthy country, doesn’t change the fact that we have very high wage and wealth inequality, especially compared to Finland.
The top 10% of our wealthy individuals own 80% of all financial assets. Income inequality is terribly high also, of course – we have a high Gini coefficient.
As to free lunches, 100 % of children get a free lunch at school in Finland. The poor families in Finland can be without any money and and property and income and additionally have loans, but they live with social support paid finally by the taxpayers. Because of this their life is not not as tough in Finland as it would be in US. But really if they have loans, they can be even poorer than the poor in US!
Elina, I taught in a private school that costs about $30K a year – and everyone received free lunch, including the teachers. The reason why “free or reduced price lunch” is a gauge of poverty here in the US is that our government does not provide the kind of safety net that most European governments do, and only people who have real trouble affording basic necessities qualify for that program.
To get the safety net and equality for studies and as well for health care, I thinkAmerican people should accept more progressive taxing like in the Nordic countries, rich people paying income taxes in percent more than poor people,
In Finland even high school studies and university studies are as costfree as the compulsory comprehesive school. Anybody cannot go to universities, because state does not want to to educate unemployed academics. So after relatively uncompetitive school there is a big competition to get the right to study in the most popular fields!!
Elina, I don’t know a huge amount about the Finnish educational/political system, but I lived in Germany for 20 years and I believe that might be comparable. Universities are extremely low-cost in Germany as well, even though they are not entirely free anymore, and there is also extraordinary competition – a “numerus clausus” system – to get into popular programs like medicine and law. But the fact that the government, i.e., taxes, pays the overwhelming majority of the costs of higher education also leads to a development that I personally felt was too high a price to pay: German children are shunted into, or out of, a college preparatory program before their 11th birthday. If a German child does not have high enough marks by the end of the 4th grade, he or she will not be accepted into “gymnasium” and has very little chance of ever receiving higher education. Every American whom I have talked to about this has reacted with horror, because a big part of the “American Dream” is the ability to overcome your disadvantages and make a better future for yourself – but how can you ask a 9 or 10 year-old to do that? My guess is that the Finnish system is not that different, although I may be wrong. Although I realize that this early “filtering” of elementary school-age children is a necessary consequence of publicly-funded university education, I feel strongly that this perpetuates classism in Europe.
Bonnie, before education reform 1970 the Finnish education system was much like that in Germany. Then basic primary schools and lower secondary school were melted to make a 9 year comprehensive school for all children, starting at age 7. The model was originally adopted from Sweden . So first during 9th school year, at age 15-16 the kids are to choose if they go to vocational schools or aim at more academic education.
http://www.minedu.fi/OPM/koulutus/koulutusjarjestelmae/fi/?lang=en
Like in Germany there is Numerus Clausus, a limited number of study places in Universities and upper high schools. So students have to compete with each other, but lack of money should not stop higher studies.
The link should have been
http://www.minedu.fi/OPM/Koulutus/koulutusjarjestelmae/fi/?lang=en
Elina, thanks so much for that link. I’ve linked to it myself in another blog post: http://msgordonteaching.blogspot.com/2013/12/finlands-pisa-panic.html. It sounds like Finland has a much more humane system than Germany’s.