Helen Ladd, Professor of Public Policy at Duke University, and her husband, Edward Fiske, former education editor of the New York Times, reviewed the recently released letter grades for schools and here explain what they mean.
They write:
In a nutshell, we need to figure out how to break the link between poverty and achievement in our schools. A crucial first step is to support policies and programs that directly address the particular challenges that poor students bring with them to school.
The most striking pattern that emerged from the letter grades from the NC Department of Public Instruction was the near-perfect correlation between letter grades and economic disadvantage. The News & Observer reported that 80 percent of schools where at least four-fifths of children qualify for the federal free or reduced lunch received a D or F grade, whereas 90 percent of schools with fewer than one in five students on the subsidized lunch program received As or Bs.
The fact that, on average, students from disadvantaged households perform less well in school than peers from more advantaged backgrounds has been documented at all levels of education.
What can we do? Ladd and Fiske say there are three possible strategies:
1. Reduce poverty directly. That will be politically difficult and take time, even though it is the best response.
2. Ignore the problem. This is the approach of No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top.
They write about this approach of denial:
Policymakers often rationalize their denial of the relationship between poverty on achievement because they sincerely believe that schools should offset the effects of low socio-economic status. Others fear that setting lower expectations for some groups of students – what President George W. Bush called the “soft bigotry of low expectations” – will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. But in both cases, simply wanting something to be true does not make it true.
Still other policymakers cite examples of schools serving low-income students, such as some of the Knowledge as Power Program (KIPP) charter schools that have managed to “beat the odds” with disadvantaged students. Consistent with such exceptions, according to The News & Observer, about 5 percent of North Carolina schools where at least three-fifths of students qualify for subsidized lunches, received As or Bs as letter grades, some of them charters. But such successes are often largely attributable to these schools’ success in attracting students from the high end of the ability or motivational spectrum, or to substantial supplemental funding from foundations, or to extremely hard work of their teachers. Absolutely no evidence exists that the few success stories can be scaled up to address the needs of large proportions of disadvantaged students.
3. A third – and far more preferable – approach is to acknowledge that while we are not going to be able to eliminate poverty any time soon, we can find ways of targeting the specific ways in which poverty hampers learning. Put another way, we can address the particular challenges that disadvantaged children face as they pursue their education.
Fortunately, we already know a lot about these challenges. A wide body of research has demonstrated how poor health care – both physical and mental – and the lack of quality early childhood education translates into low cognitive performance. Research by one of the authors, Helen Ladd, and two colleagues has shown that quality early education programs reduce the need for spending on special education later on.
Other research has documented how poor children often have limited access to the language and problem solving skills that serve as springboards to future learning. We know how family poverty also translates into limited access to books and computers at home or to the enrichment that comes from vacation travel….
The challenge for policymakers is to look for ways to minimize the impact of the particular challenges that many disadvantaged children face. We should, in short, look for ways to provide children from low-income families with the same sort of education-enriching experiences and resources that middle-income children take for granted.
They give examples of valuable interventions such as school-based health clinics, early childhood programs, after-school and summer programs, and other “wraparound” services.
The message of the letter grades, say Ladd and Fiske, is that the relationship between poverty and low school achievement can no longer be denied.
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education and commented:
This applies to all states. It is all about money.
Change should not be in how we teach the masses. it should be in how we teach the future CEOs and management. If they truly want to reduce poverty, then the top should be taught to be honest in their dealings with their labor. The age of paying one less than they are worth should long be past and the age of true equality within the workplace should have already started.
My point is this. And I stick by it. A CEO is only worth what he or she thinks his laborers are worth. No company should be stacked with the most money going to the top 1% of the workforce. All should share equally in the profits of the company. I say this because the labor does 99% of the work and the CEO and his top staff barely crack the 1% work level. I know they have their paperwork and planning, but that is not a good enough job description. A good CEO and management staff share the main workload with their labor. in this way, they KNOW what needs to be done. They see where the weaknesses of their businesses are. they also see how best to serve, and I stress the word ‘serve’, their labor force.
If all CEOs and top management saw themselves as being servants (serving needs, not the traditional use of the term) of their work force and realized that they do not need $4.5 million to survive, but could spread that out evenly over their workforce to serve their needs, then poverty would begin to subside and all could share in the successes of every business.
I know. what I am talking about is radical and possible considered heretical in the business world, but it is the best form of ethics to have. And the most needed lesson that is needed to be taught to those going into the business world.
“I know. what I am talking about is radical and possible considered heretical in the business world. . . ”
YEP! Pure communism or socialism!!
Been saying the same thing about pay for decades and everyone has called me one of those two misnomers.
New term for socialism, “economic democracy”.
I’ve always argued that rather than simply raising the minimum wage, there should be some sort of formula tying maximum executive compensation to the compensation of the lowest paid workers. If you’re an executive and you think you’re worth $4.5 million, you have to find a way to make sure your lowest paid workers are getting at least $45,000 (not that 100 to 1 has to be the specific formula, but something like that anyway).
Yes, target poverty but also change the system and philosophy of education to take kids from where they are. We can not simply throw up our hands and scream poverty. We must act now.
when kids have obstacles outside their control that cause learning to happen slower, we wait for them, not push them out of school. When we have kids that are moving faster through the system, we move them forward, not wait for others to catch up..
“Raising the bar” is the number one reason kids are pushed out of school. why? Because it demands all kids are the same.
The system and philosophy of school was never designed to serve all kids. It has failed for over 200 years. The time is now to fix it. http://www.wholechildreform.com
“The message of the letter grades, say Ladd and Fiske, is that the relationship between poverty and low school achievement can no longer be denied.”
A little behind the times, eh? That relationship couldn’t be denied decades ago.
Simple solution (IMO): Apply some Marxian methods to our selfish-capitalism.
1) Cap CEO, management salaries and regulate all other ways which most profits are diverted to the “haves” 2) require saved monies to go to the salaries of the “95%”, the workforce 3) workforce feels more appreciated, valued and honored 4) workforce is able to achieve “middle class” status 5) because of #4 fewer people are depressed, less alcoholism, less drug use, less divorce 6) students in these increasing numbers of #4 families have better home lives and do better in school 7) test scores go up, “experts” are now happy with results and the obsession with testing dies.
Anything less than #1 is unviable, and no solution will result…..simple!!!!
I am a Canadian. Although our problems follow a similar patter to Americans we do have a much stringer belief that the way to help the poor is to mitigate poverty. See us perhaps as half way between USA and Finland in attitudes towards poverty. Although our minimum wage rates and level of unemployment are similar, the fact of univeral single payer government controlled mmedicare takes a huge burden off ghe poor.
We funx our schools in reverse order of poverty. Poorest schools get the most money richest schools get the least. Although catholic schools are supported in Ontario 44% of Canada, they are so cross class in nature, very few non catholics attend and their results are almost identical to public schools.
The province of Alberta has limited charters but no other province has charters or vouchers. A few provinces offer 50% tuition for private religious schools.
It is something we argue about but also something we can live with. Public schools continue to enrole 94% of students at all income levels.
Pardon the typos above. Using small cell phone with big thumbs.
How about the Hart/Risley research regarding the importance of high-quantity/high-quality adult-child verbal interactions from birth through kindergarten?
This research strongly suggests — the research is too limited to say “conclusively demonstrates” — that the adult-child verbal interactions in the average low-SES family are substantially different than the adult-child verbal interactions in the average high-SES family. In the low-SES family (compared to the high-SES family), the child hears fewer words and fewer different words; the child has a higher ratio of negative-to-positive verbal interactions; the adult is less likely to initiate a verbal interaction with the child; and, when the child attempts to initiate a verbal interaction, the adult is less likely to respond. The research shows that the quantity/quality of adult-child interactions fall on a consistent continuum across economic classes with welfare families below working-class families who below white-collar middle-class families who are below white-collar professional families.
The Hart/Risley research does not address why these differences in quantity/quality of adult-child verbal interaction exist — that is, whether poverty somehow restricts low-SES parents’ verbal interactions with their children as opposed to whether cultural factors (including their own childhood experiences) cause low-SES parents to engage in fewer/lower-quality verbal interactions with their children. (The Hart/Risley research involved families where all the families were providing a loving home and were caring for the child’s physical needs adequately — that is, the low-SES parents were not drug addicts or prostitutes.)
The Hart/Risley thesis, based on this research, is that — due to the differences in the quantity/quality of adult-child verbal interaction — the low-SES child starts kindergarten with a much smaller vocabulary, much weaker cognitive skills, and less-developed neural pathways than the high-SES child. These differences regarding vocabulary, cognitive skills, and neural pathways predispose the low-SES child to academic difficulty and failure; conversely, these differences predispose the high-SES child to academic ease and success. This thesis would explain the extremely high correlation between a school’s student test scores and a school’s SES. It would also explain why minor but endemic misbehavior occurs in many/most low-SES/inner-city schools but rarely occurs in high-SES/suburban schools (and why the minor but endemic misbehavior in the low-SES/inner-city schools increases as the students age through the school years — that is, if the cause of the misbehavior were parental attitudes towards authority/school rather than frustration with academic work, one would expect the worst misbehavior to be in the early grades with the misbehavior lessening as the students age through the school years and school/social influences replace parental influences as determinants of behavior).
If the Hart/Risley thesis is correct, school reform focusing on K-12 is too late and mostly a waste of effort. We should instead focus on improving the quantity/quality of adult-child verbal interaction in the low-SES families from as early an age as possible through kindergarten — i.e., parent-training programs and pre-schools that focus on high-quantity/high-quality adult-child verbal interaction (rather than on socialization or learning the alphabet). Of course, programs long these lines would be vulnerable to attack as being racist or classist. And, implementing such programs would not weaken teachers unions, would not allow school systems to replace higher-paid senior teachers with lower-paid junior teachers, and — compared to Common Core, high-stakes testing, or charters — probably would not offer as many lucrative opportunities for private firms to make large profits.
You provide a great summary of the Hart/Risley research. Poverty is all this and more; nutrition, prenatal care, etc. We have tons of research addressing the root causes of poverty and school failure. Our main problem is that we are not considering research with regard to educational policy. In fact, academics are targets of attacks.We have politicized and monetized education. Thus, educational policy is in the hands of back room deals and corporate graft. We will continue on this course unless the public revolts. After all, there is money to be made!
Completely agree re the value of providing wraparound support for the low-SES children/families. My (and I think Hart/Risley’s point) would be that providing wraparound support for the low-SES families would still probably leave the low-SES students with inadequate adult-child verbal interaction from birth to kindergarten with resulting inferior vocabulary, cognitive skills, and neural pathways when they start kindergarten. The Hart/Risley research argues — I think — that improving the quantity/quality of pre-K adult-child verbal interaction is the sine qua non for substantially improving academic outcomes in the low-SES schools.
Well, let’s see. NC “should” address poverty. Really? Two things that have happened this week convince me that the powers-that-be don’t care. First, we just finished our taxes, and we owe the state. One reason, our accountant says, is that NC has changed tax code so that dependents are no longer deductible. It hurts families, our accountant said. What does that do to people of even lower income?
Second, a University of North Carolina System advisory panel has recommended disbanding several university-based institutes that focus on various social issues, including poverty.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/20/us/ideology-seen-as-factor-in-closings-in-university-of-north-carolina-system.html?hpw&rref=education&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region®ion=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well
Like I said, I don’t think they care. I am convinced that NC is going to follow the punitive ways of Wisconsin and Illinois. Watch and see.
Labor Lawyer,
Amen, amen, amen, amen, amen! This is my mantra. Talk to your children from the moment they come into the world Read to them too. Share your thoughts and talk about what you see. You had a child, a little person, nurture him or her. Children need parents, parents who are not on the cell phone, who aren’t watching television, who aren’t neglecting their progeny for their own entertainment. It breaks my heart every day when I see my young students living lives surrounded by apathy and ignorance. It is just so very sad. We work hard to make up for these deficits but we don’t get them until they are four or five and that is far too late to make up for years of chronic neglect and ignorance.
If parents don’t have a lot of money, the public library is a gift that keeps on giving. I believe public schools and libraries are cornerstones of democracy.
I saw the young homeless woman from NYC that got into Harvard. The public library was her salvation.
Ms. Librarian — It’s surprising (more accurately, amazing) that the Hart/Risley research (emphasizing the importance of high-quantity/high-quality adult-child verbal interaction from birth through kindergarten) gets so little attention in the school-reform debate. And, when the research is mentioned, it is usually limited to a recognition that low-SES children start kindergarten with a smaller vocabulary than high-SES children — implicitly suggesting that teaching a lot of vocabulary in early elementary grades will allow the low-SES children to catch up with the high-SES children. This, of course, ignores the problems of limited cognitive skills and less-developed neural pathways that will not be remedied by enlarging the second-grader’s vocabulary as well as the fact that the low-SES student who starts kindergarten with the small vocabulary/limited cognitive skills/less-developed neural pathways disadvantages will probably find expanded vocabulary drills in the early elementary grades to be difficult/frustrating, so it is likely that teaching a lot of new vocabulary to such a student will be an uphill battle.
Perhaps there are some huge flaws in the Hart/Risley analysis. Or, perhaps there have been pilot projects that subjected low-SES children to high-quantity/high-quality adult-child verbal interaction from, say, age 2 through kindergarten with negative results. If so, I have not seen references to such flaws or failed pilots.