Paul Thomas of Furman University has emerged as one of the most eloquent voices on behalf of children in poverty. In this essay, linked by Maureen Downey in the Atlanta Journal-Consitution, Paul explains why “grit” and “no excuses” are not enough to overcome the burdens of poverty.
Paul says that the reformers’ narrative is not only wrong but misguided because it distracts public attention from the root problems of poverty and segregation.
Paul Tudor Jones was featured in an article in Forbes magazine.
Raised in Tennessee, he is now worth $3+ billion and has decided that his new mission in life is to save the public schools.
He has decided to start his mission in New York City.
He has so many misconceptions about public education that I hardly know where to begin.
Please, dear readers, is there one of you who will send Mr. Jones a copy of Reign of Error?
He doesn’t seem to know that New York City’s public school system has just gone through a decade of “creative disruption” at the hands of a far bigger billionaire, Michael Bloomberg, than Mr. Jones.
He doesn’t seem to know that the U.S. is the greatest nation in the world, and that our public schools are not failing.
He thinks that charter schools have demonstrated that they can close the achievement gap between the poorest kids and the richest kids.
His foundation–the Robin Hood Foundation–raised $81 million in one night, much of it for charter schools.
He doesn’t seem to know that charter schools on average do not outperform public schools unless they exclude low-performing students.
He thinks that the Common Core “was our Sputnik moment,” because it showed we don’t measure up to other developed countries. He seriously doesn’t know what he is talking about.
He doesn’t seem to know that Common Core was not our Sputnik moment, because it is only now being implemented and proves nothing except that state officials can set the passing mark wherever they want.
He doesn’t seem to know that we are #1 among the advanced nations of the world in child poverty.
He doesn’t seem to know that income inequality is at its highest point since the days of the robber barons.
Please help this man.
I am sure he means well.
Remember the song, “Kids! What’s the Matter with Kids Today?” from “Bye, Bye, Birdie?”
Watch this. It’s wonderful, and it reminds of how every generation thinks that the younger generation is rotten and declining.
Bill Mathis is a former superintendent in Vermont and now serves as a member of the state board of education. He has steadily opposed the Bad News Club, which constantly bashes the schools and the younger generation, which every generation decries. In this post, he patiently explains that Vermont has exceptionally successful schools. After citing the examples of improvement, Mathis writes:
“As for the greatly lamented “unprepared” college students, only the top scoring 45% enrolled in higher education in 1960. Today, 73% of Vermont children attend higher education — although fewer graduate. As we dip deeper into the pool, we are comparing different cohorts.
Then, there’s the “school failure” industry. Charter school advocates, test manufacturers and politicians profit by manufacturing bad news. They are ably assisted by the media. For example, with the release of the latest national assessment scores, instead of touting the record high scores, ABC led with the theme of “not good enough.” The media did not report that the standard is set so high that no nation in the world could have even half their students meet it.”
Mathis cites the challenges that face Vermont schools. He concludes that “The increasing income gap represents the greatest of problems for our society and our schools. Pretending that adopting higher standards and more tests, by themselves, will close the achievement gap is an irrational distraction.”
This is a hugely important point. Raising standards and adding on more tests do not create jobs, do not feed hungry children, do not narrow the income gap, which is a scandal across our society.
The blogger known as “Red Queen in LA” responds to a petition she posted here, asking the Los Angeles school board not to remove those schools in which 40-49% of students are poor from their source of Federal funding, called Title I. She also notes that charter schools receive Title I funding even if they have a tiny proportion of students below the poverty line.
She writes:
Mike, did you read the essay highlighted above? This one:http://redqueeninla.k12newsnetwork.com/2013/11/07/enacting-economic-equity/
It may not add more of the hard information you are looking for, but it is certainly available. Allow me to try to address some of the issues you raise.
Most important, is the presumption that funding the 40-49% poverty concentration (pc) schools will necessitate “robbing Peter to pay Paul” — or as you put it: “I am sure the schools with a poverty rate more than 50% would not be happy with the proposed change, losing some of their Title I funds, in order to also include the 40-50% range.”
I’ll get to a substantive argument against this point in a moment. But from an emotional vantage, which is what you are channeling when you say ‘I am sure the schools …would not be happy with…’, let me just state for the record that my own child attends a 50%+ school and I am more than happy with this change. This is just one family at one school, and obviously isn’t very weighty in some sense. But it is not the case that everyone is strictly aligned regarding this according to what happens to be in their very own pocket. No way. This is a question of distributing title I funds equitably to children and schools that *need it*. And it is a question of challenging the presumption that we cannot “afford” this equitable distribution.
So here’s the more important argument: these 40-49% schools can be funded with the title I monies to which they are entitled *without taking a single solitary dime from any current title I school — that is from any school of 50%+ pc*. This resolution does not seek to instruct how the policy would be implemented because this is not in the purview of the board (this is perhaps debatable but is at least a conservative reading of the balance of power). However, from looking at past budgets, it is hard to see why monies that are currently going to title I schools directly need be in any way affected.
The amount of money needed to provide supplemental title I funds to schools of 40-49% poverty concentration is less than $1.4M.
By studying past budgets the following appears to be true. Note that attempts to request numbers from the district to clarify this research have all been rebuffed. But to the best of our understanding, the amount of money budgeted for _administrative_ title I costs last year (these have not yet been budgeted for the coming year we just counted for title I-eligibility, so this contrast is an estimate as it uses figures from two different years) is *five* times higher than the entire additional amount needed for these 40-49% schools. The amount of money budgeted for _indirect_ costs is *six* times as great as what is needed for these schools. And the amount of money budgeted for _”Other”_ programs, *including monies carried over from the previous year that were _just never spent to ameliorate poverty at all_*, is approximately *seventy-nine* times that $1.4M needed to provide schools of 40%-49% poverty concentration with title I funds. The amount of title I funds devoted to “Other” programs rather than being given to the kids in need at our schools directly, was $110.4M in 2012-13. That’s fully >>_34%_<< of LAUSD’s entire 2012-13 $328.7M title I “receipts” (the district “bills” the state for title I funds, which come ultimately from the federal government). More than one-third of the title I funds received by LAUSD from the federal government for the purpose of supplementing academic needs among our economically disadvantaged children, did not go to our kids directly.
More questions: “don’t the feds decide what poverty level Title I funds go to?”. No, they do not. The guidelines are quite loosely provided about some stringent limits. Schools with pc above 75% must receive title I funds. Schools with pc down to 35% may receive title I funds. How the local educational agency chooses to distribute funds within these outer limits is up to them. LAUSD has a long history of funding title I schools with pc from 40-65% at 75% the rate of funding for schools of pc 65%+ (that is, the per capita funding rate is less in schools of lower poverty concentration). This resolution seeks to return that historical distribution that was altered in the wake of the aftermath of title I distributions that were temporarily inflated as a result of federal stimulus funds, that LAUSD failed to budget for the cessation of. Please see the above-referenced article for a lot of references to the title I rules and history.
You also ask: “What is being done with the money saved by changing the threshold from 40% to 50%? Going to pet projects of Deasy?” ….. Please see the “more substantive” response above. It would be awfully nice to know what that $110.4M “Other projects” is for. Some of it includes funds carried over between years. This may not be legal. What the rest of it is for, is entirely unclear. It would be nice if the LAUSD budget office received several thousand inquiries regarding this. Ours have gone unanswered. Why the federal government is not more curious about the disposition of their monies is also rather unclear to me. There was a federal audit recently of title III monies; perhaps the auditors should expand their scrutiny?
You claim that upon halting title I distributions to schools of 40-49% pc the money saved “…didn’t go to Deasy. It meant that more Title I funds went to those schools where 50% or more of the students families are considered poverty level.” With all due respect I must ask: how do you know? When funding was cut for the 40-49% schools, the resulting per capita rate for both 65%+ and <65% pc schools both remained higher than prior to the artificially augmented stimulus years. There has been an unbroken ramping up of per capita title I funds yearly. In what way does it seem that unspent 40-49% funds went to augment 65%+ funds? In fact, during every one of these years before and after the cessation of 40-49% pc title I funding, the yearly carryover in title I funds was adequate to cover the amount needed to fund the 40-49% schools. In what way does money saved in this way equate to augmented funds for 65%+ schools?
I agree there are two sides to this issue. But they are not staked out across a divide between schools. All schools are in the same boat here; we are all educating children of very limited means. And the title I-eligible students in schools of 40% pc are just exactly as poor as the children in schools of 80% pc. An argument could be made that the students attending schools of middling poverty concentration could need comparatively more rather than fewer anti-poverty funds to level their own particular playing field. I have not seen this argument made theoretically or explicitly but it is certainly commented about among families informally; this is what it feels like to us in “the field”. And yet note that the funds which would be disbursed to the 40-49% schools are a fraction that dispersed to the 65%+ schools anyway (25% fewer funds per capita go to schools <65% pc).
As for the reputation of the two sponsoring board members, recall that this is a complicated world we live in. I have had some conversations with the one “we like” that caused quite a bit of consternation in terms of what “we like”. That’s just me and YMMV, but sometimes it does not serve well to look deeper for motivation. Sometimes one just treats the symptoms.
Conversely, the sponsoring board member “we do not like” (and I *so* do agree with you here!!!), is nevertheless sponsoring a resolution that increases educational equity. I may disagree with most everything she does in general and in specific. But here, for whatever reasons, she is, IMHO, right. And I choose not to look deeper than the immediate action on the surface. If I did, and did not fight for this resolution, thousands of children would be ill-served. If I did, and did not fight for this resolution, we might miss the opportunity to shed some light on those $110.4M worth of “other programs”. Some greater accountability for title I funds would be rather excellent. Taxpayers across the nation will benefit from that.
But as I said, I do agree there are two sides to this issue, but I did not complete the explication of where they fall. They do not fall on either side of this 50% threshold. That would be pitting friend against friend. Again, the children of poverty on either side of this divide are just as poor regardless of the divide. And the monies do not have to come from one to support the other.
No, the divide is between the children in our schools, the children who are *entitled to these funds*, and the adults disbursing these funds somewhere, anywhere other than _to these children directly_. The problem is with the opacity of the LAUSD budget, and the near-impossibility of following its money. Perhaps there is not enough money and we’re all just f-ed. But until the LAUSD budget office explains that carryover that is larger than the funds needed for the 40-49%, or explains the “other programs” or releases a full and detailed line-item accounting of title I funds, I will be hard-pressed to see any division other than that which delineates the children of LAUSD from the central administration of LAUSD.
Finally, you mentioned that ‘most of the 40-49% schools are located in the valley’. At the time of defunding that was true; 23 schools were defunded of which — can’t find my notes for the precise figures on this but perhaps another will chime in with them — many if not most were indeed in the valley at this time. However subsequently, most of these valley schools became independent charters for the express purpose of receiving these title I funds directly from the state. LAUSD is no longer “billed” by these schools for title I funds; they receive them directly from the state. These schools are gone from the LAUSD system, as a direct result of this defunding move. For this current year there are just 16 schools in the 40-49% pc category. 1 is in LAUSD2, 8 in LAUSD3, 4 in LAUSD4, 1 in LAUSD5, 1 in LAUSD6, 1 in LAUSD6. You are correct that the majority of schools fall in the valley, though the actual number of affected students are very nearly equal in LAUSD3 and LAUSD4. No matter, the point is: support is more complicated than a simple accounting of number and location of schools.
Finally, note this lovely little factlet. While LAUSD is pretzeling itself over this issue of poverty concentration and some sliding point at which desperate need is pinpointed, charter schools blithely bill the state for per capita title I funding *completely independent of poverty concentration*. That’s right, if you’re a charter school of 2000 and 3 of your students are title I-eligible, you’ll receive those title I funds for the asking.
So there’s another divide. But it’s not between the +/- 50% poverty concentrated.
Please Mike and any/everyone else — please follow the links in this article for some primary sources on poverty I funding:http://redqueeninla.k12newsnetwork.com/2013/11/07/enacting-economic-equity/
Please ask more questions if necessary.
Please sign this petition:https://www.change.org/petitions/lausd-board-members-stop-taking-money-away-from-our-kids-please-vote-for-educational-equity-and-achievement-for-all-title-i-students-resolution-on-11-12-13
And please come out to the board meeting this Tuesday at 4pm to request that LAUSD stop robbing the 40-49% “Peter” to pay for the LAUSD downtown-administrator’s “other projects-Paul”.
David Sirota points put the facts that most educators acknowledge: poverty is a far more potent threat to academic success than “bad” teachers or unions. The bugaboos of the loon right have become the basis for federal policy, and it is taking its toll on teacher morale.
An excellent and unexpected article appeared in the business section of the New York Times on November 5, written by Eduardo Porter.
Despite bipartisan rhetoric about “closing the achievement gap,” and giving every child an equal change “regardless of zip code,” the evidence suggests that this is empty blather. What really matters is which schools get the best funding.
Porter writes:”
The United States is one of few advanced nations where schools serving better-off children usually have more educational resources than those serving poor students, according to research by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Among the 34 O.E.C.D. nations, only in the United States, Israel and Turkey do disadvantaged schools have lower teacher/student ratios than in those serving more privileged students.
Andreas Schleicher, who runs the O.E.C.D.’s international educational assessments, put it to me this way: “The bottom line is that the vast majority of O.E.C.D. countries either invest equally into every student or disproportionately more into disadvantaged students. The U.S. is one of the few countries doing the opposite.” The inequity of education finance in the United States is a feature of the system, not a bug, stemming from its great degree of decentralization and its reliance on local property taxes.
And he adds that much of the disparity stems from our nation’s heavy reliance on property taxes:
Today, the federal government provides only about 14 percent of the money for school districts from the elementary level through high school, compared to 54 percent, on average, among other industrial nations. More than half the money comes from local sources, mostly property taxes, which is about twice the share in the rest of the O.E.C.D.
This skews the playing field from early on. In New York, for instance, in 2011 the value of property in the poorest 10 percent of school districts amounted to some $287,000 per student, according to the state’s education department. In the richest districts it amounted, on average, to $1.9 million.
The state government in Albany redresses part of the imbalance: In the 2010-11 school year it transferred $6,600 per student to the state’s poorest school districts, about four times as much as it sent to the richest. But it’s still a long way from closing the gap.
That year, the most recent for which comprehensive data is available, the wealthiest 10 percent of school districts, in rich enclaves like Bridgehampton and Amagansett on Long Island, spent $25,505 on average per pupil. In the poorest 10 percent of New York’s school districts — in cities like Elmira, which has double the nation’s poverty rate and half its median family income — the average spending per student was only $12,861.
In other states, the disparity between the richest districts and the poorest districts is even larger.
What a shame that Race to the Top was targeted at test scores and not at leveling the playing field in systematic ways.
Governor Chris Christie has made clear that he doesn’t like the public schools in his state. He calls them “failure factories,” as he campaigns for vouchers. (He is a graduate of Livingston High School.) He seems to despise public school teachers. He enjoys berating teachers, especially if they are female. He is one big, tough, strong guy who knows how to put down women.
Melissa Tomlinson is a public school teacher in New Jersey. She went to a Rally for Governor Chris Christie and she held up a sign.
Read this wonderful description on Jersey Jazzman’s blog of Melissa’s courage in confronting a bully.
Her sign said:
“I am a public school teacher.
“We are NOT failing our students.
“N.J. is ranked 3rd in the US.
“Christie’s refusal to finance public education is failing our students.”
She asked him: “Why do you portray our schools as failure factories?” His reply: “Because they are!” He said: “I am tired of you people. What do you want?”
So, the most powerful executive in the state of New Jersey treated this dedicated public school teacher with arrogance, rudeness, and disrespect. She didn’t back down. She had him cornered. She is right. He is wrong. Probably, he knows he is wrong, so he felt compelled to shout her down instead of engaging in civil dialogue.
Melissa Tomlinson was right that Governor Christie has underfunded the schools. He froze the spending that was supposed to be used to repair schools with leaky pipes and mold and crumbling facilities.
But Tomlinson was wrong about one thing: on the 2011 NAEP, New Jersey was second in the nation in reading, behind Massachusetts and tied with Connecticut. In math, New Jersey was second in the nation. Not third, but second.
The districts in New Jersey that are failing are the ones that are controlled by the state, some for decades. The state has no idea what to do other than to hand students and public funds over to private corporations.
As Julia Sass Rubin pointed out in an earlier blog today, the Christie administration has systematically underfunded districts that enroll children of color. It has stripped them of democratic governance. It has overloaded them with charters that skim the best students and increase segregation. Governor Christie praises charter schools that exclude children who have serious disabilities and children who don’t speak English. The state has embarked on a policy of separate and unequal for the districts that are powerless.
Governor Chris Christie should be ashamed of himself for his systematic neglect of the education of New Jersey’s most vulnerable children as well as his rude and disgraceful behavior towards public school teachers. He should stop his war against public education. It will not help him become president. It will be a huge liability.
Here is a blog in California. Governor Christie, your reputation as a bully is going national.
Julia Sass Rubin, an associate professor at the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University and a founder of Save Our Schools NJ, here explains the ugly face of what is deceptively called “school reform” in New Jersey during the administration of Governor Chris Christie.
It would be more accurate, she writes, to say that Governor Christie has promoted a policy of “separate and unequal,” targeting children of color.
First, he imposed massive budget cuts that disproportionately harm children of color. She writes:
For example, the Paterson, Elizabeth, and Newark school districts combined lost over $300 million since 2010. If the New Jersey Supreme Court had not intervened in 2012 to restore some of the funding, the damage would have been even greater. Gov. Chris Christie also tried repeatedly to permanently alter the State’s school funding formula, to reduce funding for the almost 40 percent of New Jersey public school students who are low-income and/or Limited English Proficient.
Second, allowing schools that serve the neediest children to become unsafe and unsanitary. Rubin writes: Trenton High’s 1,800 students, and thousands of others, attend schools plagued by rats, roaches, asbestos, and black mold because the Christie Administration has all but frozen the work of the Schools Development Authority. The authority is charged by law with building and renovating public schools in the 31 former Abbott districts, while those school districts are precluded from repairing or rebuilding their dilapidated public schools.
Third: Suspending local control in districts where most students are children of color and subjecting these districts to years of state control, which facilitates privatization. The assumption behind this policy is that democracy is the problem; but the state’s lack of success demonstrates that poverty and segregation are the problems that the state refuses to address.
Fourth, the state is determined to get rid of public schools wherever possible, and replace them with privately-managed charter schools. The suburbs have staunchly resisted charters, which would weaken their public schools and divide their communities, so the state controlled districts have become the petri dishes for charters. Rubin points out that the charters have intensified segregation: The Christie administration “has ignored the fact that many of the charter schools are contributing to the segregation of students by income, language proficiency and race…New Jersey Department of Education 2012 – 2013 data shows that Hoboken’s three charter schools educate 31 percent of the City’s total public school students, but a significantly larger proportion of its white students (51 percent), and a significantly smaller proportion of its impoverished students (6 percent of the free lunch and 13 percent of the reduced lunch). The charter schools also educate none of the city’s Limited English Proficient students. Thanks to the charters, the remaining public schools are weakened by the concentrated enrollment of students with the greatest needs.
What is in store for New Jersey in another Christie administration?
A sustained assault on public education, especially in communities of color. More charter schools that skim off the highest-performing students and kick out those that don’t meet their standards. More segregation. The destruction of community participation and democratic governance in communities of color. The suburbs may think they are safe from these policies, but with a renewed mandate, they should expect to see budget cuts, and a redoubled effort to divide their communities by introducing charter schools.
Rubin concludes:
We know what is effective: addressing concentrated poverty; involving parents and communities in decision-making; providing adequate funding and healthy and safe facilities; ensuring access to high-quality pre-kindergarten and wraparound social services. The research is clear and consistent. We only need the political will to follow.
It is ironic that Governor Christie is so hostile to public education, inasmuch as he was educated in the state’s public schools. Even more ironic is that New Jersey has one of the top public school systems in the nation. On the National Assessment of Educational Progress, New Jersey ranks second or third in the nation, along with Massachusetts and Connecticut, on tests of math and reading. If New Jersey took realistic and research-based steps to improve its poorest districts–like Camden, Paterson, and Newark–New Jersey would very likely rank first in the nation. Yet Governor Christie continues to badmouth the state’s good public schools and tear down urban public education with failed privatization policies.
The Christie administration will renew its attack on public schools across New Jersey. Join other parents to save public education in New Jersey.
The Atlantic published a very interesting article about the latest international test scores by Julie Ryan, and the title is significant.
It says: “AMERICAN EDUCATION ISNT MEDIOCRE, ITS DEEPLY UNEQUAL.”
That’s an apt way of saying that poverty drags down test scores.
This is true of every standardized test, whether it is the state tests, the SAT, the ACT, the NAEP or international tests.
As I wrote in an earlier post, the tests ores don’t predict our economic future.
If we wanted higher scores, we would reduce poverty and foster greater equality.
Friends, I was interviewed this morning on MSNBC by Melissa Harris Perry and was incredibly impressed by her. Unlike most TV journalists, she had actually read the book.
She asked smart questions. She really gets it.
This was the best conversation I have yet participated in on national TV, including the panel that followed. No “Gotcha” questions, just a thoughtful effort to assess some important issues.
Here is the link: http://www.msnbc.com/melissa-harris-perry/watch/the-case-against-school-privatization-57195587667
Diane
Diane Ravitch's blog 