Social scientists have repeatedly documented the close correlation between child poverty and academic achievement. You don’t have to be a social scientist to look at any graph that displays both test scores and family income: the kids from the richest families are at the top, and the kids from the poorest family are at the bottom. It is not surprising, because those with the least income have the least access to food security, medical care, decent housing, and all the other basics of living that affluent families take for granted.
In this blog post, Marc Tucker reviewed the data on child poverty and its relationship to education outcomes. He cites a feature in the Economist magazine about poverty in the United States. He includes a graph showing the dramatic increase in child poverty from 2000-2016. Tucker goes back even further, to 1960, to note that income inequality was not as great then as it is now. Those at the top had “more,” of course, but were not billionaires inhabiting a totally different universe than those at the bottom or those in the middle. Something is terribly wrong with hundreds of people are billionaires, some of them with assets of more than $100 billion, at the same time that more and more families and children live in poverty.
Both the standard measure of poverty and the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM), which takes benefits and cost of living into account, show that about one in six children in the U.S. is poor. (The current official poverty level is $25,750 for a family of four.) While there are poor families all over the country, the averages are misleading, because the poor are usually concentrated in clusters.
When educators think about poverty among their students, the measure that comes first to mind is the percentage of public school students eligible for free and reduced-price lunch, which is available to children in households with incomes at or below 185 percent of the federal poverty level. In the 2000-01 school year, 38.3 percent of public school students were eligible. That figure climbed to 48.1 percent in the 2010-11 school year, 51.8 percent in the 2014-15 school year and 52.1 percent in the 2015-16 school year. But these figures, like those for poverty overall, are often far higher where poverty is concentrated and its effects far worse and much longer lasting there.
The Economist points out that, when Jack Kennedy was President and Lyndon Johnson became President, it was different. Then, the poorest among us were the elderly. Now, with the growth in Medicare and Social Security, the elderly are doing much better and the young much worse. The experience of the elderly, however, is instructive. Policy changed the outcomes for them dramatically. There is no reason why that should not be equally true for the young. What is most interesting about The Economist’s article on child poverty is not the statistics, which are well known. It is their comments on the policy options for dealing with the problem of child poverty in the U.S.
The simplest solution is cash transfers. The Economist refers to the work of Stanford professor David Grusky, who calculates that California could end child poverty in that state by spending only $2.8 billion a year, one quarter of what it spends annually on its prisons. Conservatives often oppose cash transfers to poor people on the grounds that they stifle initiative. But we could probably all agree that transfers for young children will not destroy their initiative. Many first-world countries in Asia, North America and Europe award means-tested and non-means-tested allotments to families with young children, especially countries where the domestic fertility rate is falling below the birth rate. The Economist quotes Jane Waldfogel, a Columbia economist, saying that a relatively small universal child credit could cut the U.S. child poverty rate in half all by itself.
But, says The Economist, the problem cannot be dealt with solely with a transfer program, because poverty in the U.S. is so concentrated. Researchers have shown that young children who are doing very poorly in schools serving students in concentrated poverty do much better if they can go to schools serving families in wealthier communities. Those other communities don’t necessarily have more money per student, but they provide much more support to the student in the form of higher expectations, a wider range of experiences and more rigorous schooling. While this strategy is not fully scalable, it could certainly be ramped up.
In this vein, we note that Howard County, Maryland, recently redistricted its schools to allow many more children whose schools were made up of large numbers of students in concentrated poverty to go to schools with wealthier children and spread the number of children in poverty more equitably across that district. They did this because their own research showed that earlier efforts to do this same thing worked to lift performance in students who come from impoverished backgrounds.
Many of the schools that are economically segregated are also racially segregated. The Economist points to data showing that moving students from racially segregated schools to unsegregated schools can, over five years, improve student incomes by 30 percent and greatly reduce the likelihood of incarceration. But, just as poverty is rising among school children, our schools are becoming more, not less, segregated.
In the early days of desegregation, inner-city predominantly African-American school districts were merged with predominantly white ones into a single district. But, in recent years, white, relatively well-to-do areas within large urban districts have been applying to their state legislatures for the right to form their own school districts, or, failing that, their own cities or towns (which would enable them to get their own school district), thereby contributing to the isolation and concentration of low-income, often minority, families in communities where hope for a better future is dying.
The Economist article ends with a reminder of Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s warnings, back in the Nixon administration, about trouble in the African American family. Around a quarter of African Americans then were born out of wedlock. That proportion is now 70 percent for African Americans, 50 percent for Hispanic children and 30 percent for whites. The proportion for poor whites living in poverty is, of course, much higher. Research shows that households with single parents are more likely to live in poverty and the children in those families are more likely to experience lower academic achievement than households with two parents. When critics insist that American teachers need to be held accountable for the poor performance of American school children, the teachers shoot back that they are being held accountable for the failure of American parents and taxpayers to take care of their children.
When some of us point out that there has been no improvement in the performance of all high school students or of protected subgroups of students in the United States on NAEP measures of reading and mathematics in 30 years, they tell us we should consider ourselves lucky that we have teachers who have been able to hold student performance steady while the American people have been sending them students who get poorer and more isolated every year.
I think they have a point. Don’t you?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
In my book I talk about poverty that leads to childhood stress, malnutrition, sleep deprivation etc, literally slows the brain. But what is important is tip have solutions. And that takes systemic change.
And the politicians IGNORE this fact.
Just like people like Gates and Zuckerberg ignore the fact that the Internet was built with PUBLIC TAX Dollars.
“[W]e should consider ourselves lucky that we have teachers who have been able to hold student performance steady while the American people have been sending them students who get poorer and more isolated every year.”
Amen to that!!!
And thank you, Mr. Tucker!
Marc Tucker. Truth teller.
Bob, the article does not warrant praise for Mark Tucker. Please recall that Marc Tucker is no real friend of public education unless you like the Common Core and OECD tests as measures of “performance.”
Mark Tucker has pushed for public education organized around workforce preparation. He is famous (infamous) for trying to get that policy adopted at the federal level in a “Dear Hillary” letter.
Today’s post is also a confusing hash with an Economist article the apparent source of Tucker’s commentary. The ending has a nice little bit about teachers doing ok on “holding performance steady while the American people have been sending them students who get poorer and more isolated every year.” Faint praise, at best.
Marc S. Tucker is currently the Vice Chair of the Board and President Emeritus and Distinguished Senior Fellow, National Center on Education and the Economy, Washington, DC. He is a big fan of OECD measures of “performance” and greater federal and state control of education. He is against local governance of schools. He has long viewed education as not much more than a system of job preparation.
I think you need to read how Tucker’s NCEE has fueled big problems in education including the national standards movement, founding of Achieve, and promotion of the Common Core. Most of his work in education has studiously ignored the poverty issue. Credit the Economist article if he suddenly sees poverty as relevant to thinking about education.
NCEE’s ugly history is presented here as if a great achievement. http://ncee.org/who-we-are/history-of-ncee/
Except that he HAD to say that wealthier schools are better because of, “higher expectations.” I am so done with people who believe that.
Poverty is a formidable foe as so-called reformers are finding out the hard way. Many of them have chosen to ignore its existence. All poverty is not equal. Some poverty is functional with caring family members in the home, and some is highly dysfunctional with substance abuse. The children fend for themselves and grow like little weeds. In a country with so much wealth, it is absurd that we do not have universal health care. We can and should do better.
Integration is a tremendous benefit to poor students. I saw this first hand. Many of my minority ELLs have moved into the middle class from receiving an equitable education, and many foreigners are aspirational. When they see opportunity, they often grab it with both hands.
As a nation. we must invest in working families and provide more support for those earning less. This is not welfare. It is investment in the future. We already have a bloated criminal detention system. We cannot afford to warehouse a large segment of our population. This is far more expensive than providing an equitable education to those in need. We should be supporting our teachers for the hard work they do instead of trying to scapegoat them by blaming them for our systemic failure.
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2019/12/02/781152563/researchers-find-a-remarkable-ripple-effect-when-you-give-cash-to-poor-families
https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/10/25/240590433/what-happens-when-you-just-give-money-to-poor-people
I’m having a hard time with you sharing Marc Tucker’s thoughts. Do you not realize this is all about data-driven “pay for success” global markets in human capital? The poor are not data commodities to be run through Heckman’s Equation. This ranks up there with your Salesforce and MacArthur promo posts. https://www.google.com/amp/s/wrenchinthegears.com/2018/06/10/heckman-and-pritzker-pitch-apps-as-poverty-solutions-yielding-a-13-return-on-investment/amp/
Did you disagree with Tucker’s point about the importance of child poverty? Or are you veering off to another subject?
Alison,
When you insult me, your comment gets deleted.
Poverty is a proximate cause of poor performance by students in schools. The real question is why are some people in a state of poverty. Poor performance is often seen as the fault of a school or school district. Data suggests otherwise. Poverty rates are significantly lower for both blacks and whites who are married and this has been the case for many years.
Those who finish high school, then get a job, then get married and then have a child statistically have very low rates of poverty. Conversely, those who have a child at a young age, don’t get married and do not finish high school statistically have a very high rate of poverty. That is based on data. Study the data and it becomes informative. (Data is not information, rather it is a fact or facts or statistics.)
Institutional “solutions” fail when the cause of the problem is not institutional. That is the case in much of public education. This may not be politically correct but there is tons of data to support the above.
Marc, I appreciate your post. Poverty is one of the greatest inhibitors of academic and personal success. However, talk as we may about the many ways it negatively impacts children across the world, talk in and of itself will not solve the problem. Thanks for suggesting a few realistic ways to battle this issue. I have personal experience teaching in a school in which about 95% of students qualified for free and reduced lunch. The school was very segregated, and students were not held to high standards with regard to academic progress. Teachers spent more time dealing with behavioral issues than actually teaching. This was due, in part, to a lack of support from administrators and district level personnel when it came to discipline. I left this school after seven years because I was so drained from the daily battle of trying to teach while simultaneously managing outrageous student behaviors in my classroom with no support from school officials. I don’t blame the kids! In fact, I felt guilty for leaving. I now teach in a mostly upper middle class district. Though the majority of my students do not suffer from poverty and all its problems, there are still about 30% who qualify for free and reduced lunch. We are a Title I targeted assistance school, and there are pockets of poverty in my county. Some of these students deal with the very same issues as students from my previous school, but as you pointed out, they flourish in this educational setting. They are exposed to rigor, high expectations (for academics and behavior), and peers from different walks of life. I don’t know exactly how to replicate this situation for students from high poverty districts, but I think it is definitely worth looking into. If only government officials would see the importance of combating childhood poverty and its correlation to educational success!
“They” absolutely have a point. That IS the point when it comes to analyzing the data. Free or reduced lunch numbers have increased roughly 14% since 2000. Students born out of wedlock has increased from 25% to 70% in African American families alone. This data shows more students considered in poverty and more students isolated. The social scientist tell us of the close correlation between child poverty & academic achievement, so how does this data get totally looked over with glazed eyes when looking for better test scores from students? Teachers are amazing, but they cannot replace parents and economic status. So yes, the public should be thankful that the teachers have kept the decline from sliding any more than it has.
The school boards, counties, states have got to start listening to the social scientist and the researchers of education. They are documenting the facts and the correlations. How do we end up judging teachers beyond their research acclaimed strategies and assessments? We need to support teachers in dealing with students that need so much more than a teacher can provide.
When I first started teaching, I worked at an extremely impoverished school that was also very segregated. Many of my students came from broken homes and situations that I, myself, cannot begin to fathom. As a result, my students were far less concerned about reading, writing, and grammar, and much more concerned about where they would get their next meal, using the classroom as a safe place to sleep, and defending themselves physically against anyone that they felt was a potential threat. As frustrating and heartbreaking it was as a teacher to have adolescent students who lacked motivation to learn, it is obvious that poverty has a massive effect on students’ ability to focus in school.
I now teach at a charter school that has effectively diversified the student population and accepts students from all over the county and surrounding counties. I have personally seen that integrating students from all walks of life and joining them in classroom communities allows impoverished students to thrive. As you mentioned in your blog, children living in poverty who are attending a school that serves a majority of other children in the same situation are likely to fall further behind, or worse- fall through the cracks. Schools that have such a large population of impoverished children are not equipped to adequately meet the needs of all of these students. Teachers often wear many hats, even in “ideal” situations where the majority of students have all of their basic needs met at home and have parents who can provide a comfortable life for them. In the most difficult situations, teachers are responsible for protecting, providing for, counseling, and teaching classes of children who are struggling with poverty by no fault of their own. By integrating impoverished students with students who are more affluent, school systems can better support these students and their families.
I work at a low-income school in a rural area. I believe that our school holds all students accountable and to high standards. However, I also know that when students don’t have food, water, or electricity at home they are not concerned about school. I see it every day, students just trying to survive, how can they properly focus on learning in these situations? We all try to encourage them and assure them that education is the way out of poverty, but when graduation is years away, they are just worried about tomorrow. Teachers do all they can for students while we have them, but when they go home it is out of our hands. We provide two meals a day, we have a clothes closet, we have free summer lunch programs, and we send home food for long breaks but were does education fit in when you are in a bad situation? Education is the priority, survival is. I feel like the key is offering education to the parents. We need send uneducated parents back to school for at least a trade skill. We have so many adults that are able to work but are unable to afford higher education or feel they will fail. To me, it would serve the country better to fund higher education then we wouldn’t need as much funding for food stamps and Medicaid. I believe education is the key for everyone.
Kimberly,
You can’t eat high standards.
I agree with Marc’s post to a certain degree. Poverty is one of the greatest factors affecting academic success. There are low-income parents, both single and married, who are working hard to make sure they are holding their children to high expectations. I’m the sixth child born to parents that didn’t have a college degree. My mom worked as a civilian for the NYPD. My dad was a professional painter. Out of the six children, three went to college. One went into the military and two got the best jobs they could. Two of the three went to law school and medical school. My mom was a firm believer in education even though she didn’t have the opportunity. That gap of income inequality is greater now than then is not surprising. I can fathom how California can spend ¼ on education as it does on prisons. Where are their priorities? Do they expect for those children who are not well educated to go to those prisons? I can see how teachers dealing with children who are more concerned with the next meal or having a warm safe place to sleep face an enormous problem. Of course, this will lead to behavior problems. I love the quote by Nelson Mandela that says” Poverty is not an accident. Like slavery and apartheid, it is man-made and can be removed by the actions of human beings.”
How can I, only bottom of the totem pole teacher make a difference in her students’ life? This is only one of the thoughts I have after reading this eye-opening article.
I decided to read this article because I am hoping for ways to inspire my young learners; all blogs that were suggested were great reads and they all have the opportunity to impact every student within my classroom. This blog however, has me questioning so many things and pondering what I can do as an educator to help. Below you will find the mind boggling questions that I felt during this reading.
My students are within the Pre-Kindergarten age group; to me this is the age group where education makes its first and lasting impression. Even though my students are four and five they are able to see the struggles that their family is experiencing. My students may not be able to put words to what they are witnessing at home but I do believe it is truly making a lasting impact in their lives and even more so than the “norm” due to Corona Virus.
Why is it that are improvised students and schools are not getting the appropriate means necessary in order to promote life-long success? The numbers of free/reduced lunches have almost double from 2000 to 2016. If we are seeing such a trend, what is the government and Boards of Education doing to help? I also feel that this number has only sky-rocketed since schools have been shut down and made to go virtual. I am lucky that my classroom is full time, in person and I can ensure that my kids are eating two meals and day as well as snack before they come home. With COVID impacting schooling, how are we ensuring that students are not living in unfair conditions? Are we ensuring food drop offs to the students who come from one parent families or the families who have no way to pick food up?
I never looked at segregation to go deeper than just a bias based on a person’s skin color. Segregation is also being noted in schools not only by skin color but by economic status as well. Often times we know these schools because they are labeled “Title 1”, although they get funding, it still is not enough to make a difference in promoting success and education in these low-income areas. What happened to equal education for all? It appears that those who come from well to do families are provided to education to be more successful. What happens to the students who are not from well to do families? Why are we letting these students fall through the cracks? Why are we not funding and providing the same opportunities to help families in the future have a way out of poverty?
I realize I am just one teacher in the grand scheme of things but these questions resonate within my soul. I hope to see changes in the future. I hope that this blog post gets into the right hands who are able to make a difference in education, that students are not just barely getting by and that all students are treated equally no matter their race, sex or income level.
I have only been teaching for 10 years, and not only have a seen a correlation in the number of students needing assistance for basic needs, either proper clothing provided by the school clothes closet or food initiatives like free and reduced lunches & weekend food bag programs, but also through emotional needs. Many a day I have heard teachers in my school setting, and similar title I settings, quote the “Maslow before Bloom’s” (more on that here: https://www.exploringthecore.com/post/maslow-before-bloom), concerning basic needs being met before any learning, especially learning which requires higher order thinking to occur.
I am constantly baffled as an educator and question: why is it that we know what the issues are (basic needs), but are still requiring students to reach lofty expectations before such needs are met? I agree that educators cannot possibly rise to the challenge of being the be-all, end-all, saviors of societal ills. However, I feel too often that we are the scapegoats when findings and data go awry.
First, I think society needs to better understand the challenges and struggles which those in poverty face. We also need to understand that while we discuss poverty as a blanket term for those who are below a certain income, that not all poverty situations or outcomes are the same. Some are generational, while others are circumstantial and temporary. Some have family units that are loving and caring while others have family units which are chaotic and abusive.
Regardless of the circumstance, we can work toward helping students and families. Compton-Lilly and Delbridge (2018) refer to the resources that those in poverty often may lack as: economic academic capital, embodied academic capital, and social academic capital. “Once teachers learn more about students and their families, teachers can serve as advocates. This is particularly important because teachers possess funds of social academic capital that can be harnessed to help families who are attempting to navigate complex institution systems, including schools.” (Compton-Lilly & Delbridge, 2018, p. 537). “School and education” can be daunting for parents with the acronyms (RtI, EIP, IEP, ESOL, etc.), the RtI levels (tier 1, 2, 3, 4), data charts that require significant understanding of statistics to translate, and of course, overwhelming meetings where we spew all this information in their direction. As educators, we must listen, support, and advocate for families.
The first way we can do this is by being the interpreter for the myriad of data we discuss with families. When parents realize that you are for them and not against them, many preconceived inclinations of how teachers will treat them are barriers which are removed, and no longer a hinderance in the process of providing support.
The second support is to give families the knowledge and tools needed to help provide help at home. Bhattacharya (2010), noted from Padak & Rasinkski (2007), as well as Scales & Snyder (2004), that “Parents may need specific guidelines and suggestions for participating in the reading development of their children.” Creating programs which model, scaffold, critique, and equip parents to support their child’s literacy efforts not only allow parents to “…help their children with school activities…”, but also “…increased parents’ confidence in their own reading abilities.” (Bhattacharya, 2010, p.127). Parents need to be taught explicit instructional techniques such as “echo reading, choral reading, and partner reading” (Bhattacharya, 2010, p.129). Parents can also be taught extension skills such as: questioning, further explaining their child’s response, specific co-reading activities, and praising their child’s story-telling efforts (Bhattacharya, 2010, p.129). Empowering the whole family is a greater long-term impact than just the student.
The third is by being supportive of students’ and parents’ cultural and social funds of knowledge regarding the use of print. We can do so by including print that is found in their every-day lives such as “magazines, comics, and catalogs” (Bhatacharya, 2010, p.132). Bhattacharya also mentions Moje’s (2000) suggestions with using graffiti, rap, gang symbols, terminologies (slang terms), and dialects (AAVE). By using these day-to-day familiar items, we can motivate students to see reading as something that they do and enjoy doing. Which ties into the fourth support of helping students to identify as readers (Bhattacharya, 2010, p.124). As a primary grades teacher, this is one I love to cultivate because when students realize they can read, it makes them feel empowered, important, and a little more “grown-up”. For me, empowerment is the most important because of its life-long longevity in helping students and their families attain literacy goals. Just like riding a bike, once you learn to read, no one can take that skill away from you.
Bhattacharya, A. (2010). “Children and Adolescents from Poverty and Reading Development: A Research Review.” Reading & Writing Quarterly, 26(2), pp.115-139.
Doi: 10.1080/10573560903547445
Compton-Lilly, C. & Delbridge, A. (2018). “What can parents tell us about poverty and literacy learning? Listening to parents over time.” Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 62(5), pp.531-539. Doi: 10.1002/jaal.923
Jeremy sits at his desk, head down, asleep again for the second day in a row. There are many different ways to handle this situation but no one should offer advice if they do not know the child. The teacher has developed a relationship with this student and knows that he does not get to sleep much at night. He is trying his best to watch out for his little sisters while his mom is at work and usually does not get home until late, their father no longer lives with them. Jeremy helps by fixing them something to eat and helping with any homework they have, to the best of his ability. This same situation can be found in many schools today. Children that have more responsibility than their lives should hold. Children that have more worries than reading and math. We live in one of the richest countries in the world, yet our students are suffering. Many homes do not have resources that will help their students achieve success. Compton-Lily and Delbridge (2019) state that “without resources at home to support academic and literacy learning, students are at a significant disadvantage.” Teachers building relationships with families can help them to be more open about the resources they may lack and which the teacher may be able to facilitate help. In my experience, parents, low, middle or higher class, want their children to succeed and will work with and do what they can to help.They hold the value of education high so that their children can do “better than me”. Dworin and Bomer (2008) concur, “Much research has demonstrated that many poor families care about their children’s growth in and out of school, and hold the values often associated with the middle class”. So how can we help? What is the answer, cash transfers, higher expectations, rigorous curriculum, moving students around, putting more pressure on teachers, or taking care of our communities? There are so many questions and not only one right answer. We have to start somewhere and stop just being a voice. It was shocking to see the amount of money spent on prisons in California. I am sure it is the same in many other states. We need to invest in the future of our youngest members of society to see a change in the number of people that are incarcerated yearly. Comber (2014) writes, “Poverty is produced beyond the school gates and will need solutions beyond heroic teachers.”
Compton-Lilly, C., & Delbridge, A. (2019). What Can Parents Tell Us About Poverty and Literacy Learning? Listening to Parents Over Time. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 62(5), 531-539
Dworin,J., & Bomer R. (2008). What We All (Supposedly) Know About the Poor: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Ruby Payne’s Framework. English Education, 40(2), 101-121.
Comber, Barbara (2014). Literacy Poverty and Schooling: What Matters in Young People’s Education? Literacy, 48(3), 115-123.