Rachel M. Cohen writes in The Atlantic about a new study by Jesse Rothstein, showing that education is important but it is not the key to economic and social mobility.
She writes:
“A new working paper authored by the UC Berkeley economist Jesse Rothstein builds on that research, in part by zeroing in on one of those five factors: schools. The idea that school quality would be an important element for intergenerational mobility—essentially a child’s likelihood that they will one day outearn their parents—seems intuitive: Leaders regularly stress that the best way to rise up the income ladder is to go to school, where one can learn the skills they need to succeed in a competitive, global economy. “In the 21st century, the best anti-poverty program around is a world-class education,” Barack Obama declared in his 2010 State of the Union address. Improving “skills and schools” is a benchmark of Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan’s poverty-fighting agenda.
“Indeed, this bipartisan education-and-poverty consensus has guided research and political efforts for decades. Broadly speaking, the idea is that if more kids graduate from high school, and achieve higher scores on standardized tests, then more young people are likely to go to college, and, in turn, land jobs that can secure them spots in the middle class.
“Rothstein’s new work complicates this narrative. Using data from several national surveys, Rothstein sought to scrutinize Chetty’s team’s work—looking to further test their hypothesis that the quality of a child’s education has a significant impact on her ability to advance out of the social class into which she was born.
“Rothstein, however, found little evidence to support that premise. Instead, he found that differences in local labor markets—for example, how similar industries can vary across different communities—and marriage patterns, such as higher concentrations of single-parent households, seemed to make much more of a difference than school quality. He concludes that factors like higher minimum wages, the presence and strength of labor unions, and clear career pathways within local industries are likely to play more important roles in facilitating a poor child’s ability to rise up the economic ladder when they reach adulthood….
“Jose Vilson, a New York City math teacher, says educators have known for years that out-of-school factors like access to food and healthcare are usually bigger determinants for societal success than in-school factors. He adds that while he tries his best to adhere to his various professional duties and expectations, he also recognizes that “maybe not everyone agrees on what it means to be successful” in life….
“Rothstein is quick to say that his new findings do not mean that Americans should do away with investments in school improvement, or even that education is unrelated to improving opportunity. Certainly the more that people can read, write, compute, think, and innovate, the better off society and liberal democracy would be. “It will still be good for us if we can figure out how to educate people more and better,” he says. “It might help the labor market, our civic society, our culture.” But Americans should be more clear, he says, about why they are investing in school improvement. His research suggests that doing so in order to boost a child’s chances to outearn their parents is unlikely to be successful. According to Rothstein, education systems just don’t go very far in explaining the differences between high- and low-opportunity areas.”
Union membership is another factor that explains whether children can escape poverty. But unions are under siege, and that route has been nearly closed off by the joint efforts of ALEC, the Koch brothers, the Walton family, and other billionaires who want to pull the ladder up behind them and claim that school choice will solve the economic disparity that benefits them.
And another one gone
And another one gone
Another one bites the dust.
Poor Raj.
The Nobel horse seems to be riding off into the sunset without him in the saddle.
Perhaps some of the reason Rothstein does not see a stronger connection between education and social and economic mobility is that he is rating schools by test scores. I am not discounting his assertion of the importance of out of school factors. Social and economic conditions obviously influence an individual’s ability to take advantage of the opportunities education have to offer. It is no mystery why high test scores are associated with communities with a higher socio-economic base. If you have a full stomach and stable housing in a well resourced community without the stressors common in low income communities, deriving benefit from schooling is much easier.
I’m not sure why these conclusions are so hard to see. Just take a student who has grown up in a stable home with a stable income. Add social or economic stressors and chances are that stress is going to show up in the student’s academic performance. In a community rich in resources, help is more likely to be available to weather that stress. In a community with limited support services, either informal or formal, that student is likely to be left to handle the stress on his/her own. Add into that the evidence that low socio-economic communities are subject to chronic stressors, and the reasons for poor outcomes should not be a surprise. That’s why the wrap-around services in community schools are so important. I guess the bottom line is that in order to benefit fully from educational opportunities, it is essential that we somehow ensure access to the basic necessities.
One of the items on Trump’s chopping block is community based services. With all the other cuts, there is little chance of combating the harmful impact of poverty.https://www.cbpp.org/research/state-budget-and-tax/the-trump-budgets-massive-cuts-to-state-and-local-services-and
See also today’s blog post by Lary Cuban with several studies.
Questioning the Unquestionable: Schools and the Economy
by larrycuban
Did he plagiarize my comment from last week . OK we all have a little Trump in us. (LOL) Another way of saying he is stating what should be obvious. Educational attainment for all Americans has increased at the same time as wealth inequality has increased . There is a reason that the under 50 vote went to a man who called himself a socialist, even if he wasn’t.
But here is the thing, if education is focused more on a citizens role in Democracy and Society in general . Then it becomes more difficult to control that citizenry . More difficult for the Plutocracy /Oligarchy to exist.
Precisely why the most powerful forces in the nation have maintained an increasing assault on education k-U, since 1971 . An assault that mirrors the assault on Unions. An assault that has gained control of the media and not just the right wing fringe media. An assault which should be obvious in the ” Liberal” (NOT)media’s assault on Public Schools among other things. The first target of the Business Round-table was Unions, the second Public Schools. The first target of the extreme right Universities . Setting up their own bought and paid for research to counter University research . Then attempting to control that research inside the University itself.
A well rounded education aids but does not guarantee upward mobility (corporate consolidation and monopoly prevents that (see John Oliver’s episode last week on corporate consolidation)). What does NOT aid upward mobility is narrowing education down to learning how to use tech products. STEM is no good stretegem.
Stratagem. How did I make THAT spelling error? Oy vey.
A good documentary that might get you fired . On the general topic .
“Heist who stole the American Dream ”
On the same day I read Ms. Cohen’s article I read two others from the NYTimes: one describing a practice among franchises that prevent employees from moving from one location to another to get better wages, hours, or working conditions and one describing the fact that IBM has more employees in India than any other country.
I came away thinking we might need to change our narrative about education as a means of increasing earnings and instead emphasize education as a means of overall well being. As Ms.Cohen noted in the Atlantic article, emphasizing economic well-being may well be a dead end street…. especially if corporations collude to suppress wages and technology businesses look overseas to secure skilled employees willing to work for lower wages.
I did not read that Times article . I suspect it is related to the up coming court case on workers rights to use class action suits.
What was featured front and center in today’s NYT editorial section was an opinion piece bemoaning the decline of the center left and rise of the populist right , in Europe and America.
Perhaps the problem was that there was nothing “LEFT” in center left.
As Thomas Frank Points out . Everyone of Clinton’s policies the right only dreamed of . Obama more of the same. Including a Republican designed healthcare plan, an attack on Public Schools , a bailout for Wall Street and not Main Street , the abandonment of organized labor. …. …..
The solutions are Political .
“Politics who decides who gets what when and how ”
Education that focuses on that . On a citizens role in society, education that builds empathy for others is the key to solving this problem.
Why does Bill Gates have the Government maintaining price supports for his products and a Court that will in all probability allow him to limit his employees right to sue.
The sad part, we have allowed the right to grab on to these issues.
Your analysis is on the mark!
Here’s one difference between the right and the left: when Goldwater lost in a landslide the right held its course and their donors doubled down… when McGovern lost in a landslide the left decided to “moderate”… and neoliberalism resulted.
So I read your NYT link. Here is another
There are no free markets . Somebody is always picking winners and losers .
https://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2017/09/collective-action
wgersen
That is spot on. That has to do with the composition of the Party.
The Democrats were never a truly left party . As the Republicans moved right . The Democrats abandoned their working class base.
Money went into pockets and into campaigns.
“Content to go down with the ship as long as they have a first class cabin.” Supported by the “Liberal media ” that on rare occasion actually features a liberal.
There’s something circular, maybe it’s tautological, about saying that the key to intergenerational mobility is “labor markets.” I would assume that the narrative about the importance of education to social mobility took hold as a response to changing labor markets, around the same time that people began to agree in large numbers that America’s post-war manufacturing economy was in decline, with the best-paying manufacturing jobs to be replaced by “information economy” jobs for which college education was a prerequisite. The key to economic and social mobility is jobs that pay better than the jobs your parents had. If those jobs don’t exist, then there is no “key” to upward mobility because it’s impossible. And if most of the jobs that fit that bill are jobs that require college educations, then it would make sense to think education is key to economic and social mobility.
I think Laura Chapman posted the stats out of BLS on job creation .
The good paying jobs in the information economy for the most part ,excluding the high end, pay less than many blue collar jobs .
So the question then becomes why.
There is no difference between a 1960s auto worker and a Walmart worker in terms of skills . So there is something else that accounts for the outcomes. I wonder what that could be??????
The answer is the same for those hint “White Collar” information technology workers who in our home town earn less than many construction workers .
Forget the hints
“The good paying jobs in the information economy for the most part ,excluding the high end, pay less than many blue collar jobs.”
And presumably they pay better than many other blue collar jobs, as well as retail jobs, and especially no job at all. My point being the rather obvious one that employment in the “information economy” hinges on education in a way that employment in the manufacturing economy of the 20s-70s did not. When education is a precondition for employment, it’s pretty fair to say that education is “key” to economic mobility.
BTW, why do you say there’s no difference between a 1960s auto worker and a Walmart employee in terms of skills? Do you think both jobs required the same amount of training? (I would guess not, but then again I’m more familiar with what it takes to work at Walmart than what it takes to assemble automobiles.)
I posted the data about new jobs on Labor Day. From the Bureau of Labor Statistics
While most auto jobs were/are “semi-skilled” assembly work, every auto plant has a cohort of highly skilled workers: electricians, millwrights, model and pattern makers, tool and die makers…
As for good-paying jobs in the information economy, ever more of them are temporary contract jobs which, combined with the rampant sexism and ageism in the industry, makes even those highly educated workers contingent and insecure.
Which is how employers want it.
PS: Look no further than what has happened in academia, with the emergence of an immense highly-educated precariat of adjuncts, to see that all the blather about education as an economic equalizer from so-called reformers (and most Democrats, sadly), is just that and little more.
Economic and social mobility is facilitated by higher education which depends on economic standing.
“Chutes and Ladders”
To climb up the ladder
It helps to be rich
If not of the latter
Then climb is a bitch
Economic and social mobility are facilitated by”