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Charter Schools and Magnet Schools

By dianeravitch
September 9, 2012 //
35

A reader asked me to describe the differences between charter schools and magnet schools

This is what came to mind.

I welcome readers’ thoughts about other differences.

Magnet schools and charter schools have superficial similarities. They may or may not be selective. Their differences are greater than their similarities.

Magnet schools were initially created by local school boards in the late 1960s and 1970s to promote racial integration. The idea behind them was that a theme like the arts, or the sciences, would attract so many applicants that the school could select a racially diverse student body. Charter schools rarely seek racial integration; many charter schools are one-race, one-ethnicity. The UCLA Civil Rights Project warns that charter schools are more segregated than the districts in which they are located.

Another significant difference is that a magnet school is part of the public school system, the result of a decision by a democratic board to create a school for a special purpose. By contrast, a charter school requires a transfer of public funds to private management; it is a form of privatization.

The magnet school is subject to the same laws, rules and regulations as other public schools; the charter is exempt from most of the laws, rules and regulations applied to public schools.

Magnet schools don’t boast of their higher scores because everyone understands that they have a selection process and do not represent a random representation of all students; charter schools do boast of their higher scores (when they have them) and claim to be “better” than public schools and deserving of more public and private funding.

Magnet schools have the same funding sources as public schools; charter schools have private boards which are able to raise additional funding for them. In some districts, like New York City, charters spend more than public schools.

Another difference is the workforce: where unions are permitted by law, public school teachers are part of a union or collective bargaining unit; this is not true for charters. Nearly 90% of charters do not have unions.

Some charter schools are owned by for-profit corporations; some part of the tax dollars they receive are paid to investors and stock-holders. Some charter schools are nonprofit but pay exorbitant executive salaries and management fees; it is a matter of record that some high-profile charter leaders are paid $300,000-500,000 annually to oversee a small number of (non-profit) charter schools. The charters pay a hefty management fee to those who run them. A well-known charter chain in New York City is paid a management fee of $2,000 per student, all from taxpayer funds. That’s a nice income for a “nonprofit.” One charter in Pennsylvania pays a management fee of $16 million to chief executive officer, whose for-profit company supplies all goods and services to the charter.

No public schools are run by for-profit organizations.

Magnet schools are part of the public system; charters are part of a separate system, which has its own interests, its own lobbyists, its own separate advocacy organizations.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Reform, Unions, US Education

An Inquiring Mind Wants to Know

By dianeravitch
September 9, 2012 //
12

A new reader has joined our discussion and is looking for answers to important questions. I assured this reader that we have explored these topics in some depth; that we know that the purpose of reform is to eliminate unions; to get rid of tenure; to cut the budget for schools; and to privatize the greatest extent possible, with profits where possible for smart investors in “reform.”

I invite the new reader to hang out with us and join our discussion.

Any advice for the new member of our discussion group?

Please forgive me if I am pulling this conversation back to farmed-out ground (I’m new); but is it fair to say that the gist of the corporate-backed educational “reform” movements today is generating cheaper teachers?This is how the equation boils down for me (a public school teacher). As I’ve been trained to show my work, my thinking is that the greatest “reform” that privatization and charter school movements bring is the elimination of union contracts. And that the primary consequence of eliminating unions in any field is lower labor costs.If the above argument holds water, is it acceptable to eliminate the obfuscating phrase “educational reform movement ” and replace it with the clearer “reducing educator salary” movement? Or, more simply, the “labor-busting” movement? Or the “cheapness” movement?In a similar vein, I am wondering if Dr. Ravitch and others have exposed the cant behind the argument that problems with tenure stem from unions. There don’t seem to be many general-public sources pointing out that no one from a public teacher’s union awards tenure to teachers. Every single public decision to grant tenure is made by an elected school board, advised by its appointed educational managers. If the nation’s schools are saddled with incompetent tenured teachers, the blame falls on leadership and management, does it not? From all the complaints being voiced about tenure that outsiders — many from the world of corporate management — it seems pretty clear to me that the nations educational managers apparently couldn’t recognize an incompetent teacher if they got hit with a hammer by one of them. What is eliminating tenure going to help this group of apparently bumbling crop of managers transform into brilliant predictors of pedagogy? At least tenure forces educational decision-makers to live with the consequences of their incompetence. Lifting the pressure of having to evaluate their teachers in three years and educational managers will be even less accountable for their bad decisions. In the world of corporate management, weakening the chains of accountability is an insane act — something that you would think the corporate nabobs nattering about our schools would understand. Unless they absolutely do understand what they are saying is absurd but don’t care, since the real goal isn’t improving our schools at all.
Categories Corporate Reformers, For-Profit, Privatization, Teacher Evaluations, Teacher Tenure, Testing, Unions, US Education

What He Learned by Studying the History of Education

By dianeravitch
September 8, 2012 //
33

David Lentini, a reader in Maine, comments (in response, I promise to do some instruction on this blog about the history of school reform, which has been an American pastime for over a century):

I started reading about the history of education reform in America about 10 years ago, when our national insanity was becoming too extensive to ignore under the reign of “W”.  Wondering how a country could boast both the most widely and extensively educated population in history and also have the greatest disdain—if not outright loathing—for intellect, I found my way to Richard Hofstader’s “Anti-Intellectualism in American Life”.  Hofstader’s book (which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1964) gives an excellent description of America’s historical distaste for intellectual discourse, instead favoring a volatile combination of fundamentalist religion and laissez-faire capitalism that emphasizes received wisdom over deliberative thought.  In discussing this history, Hofstader gives an excellent overview of the heavy influence that business had on the education reform movements that started about 1890 and their brutal treatment of those who wanted to center American schooling around a traditional liberal education model.  His comments on the NEA’s “The Committee of Ten” report in 1892, advising a rigorous liberal arts education for all American children and its drubbing by the elites at schools like Columbia’s Teachers College makes rather depressing reading.

Following Hofstader, I came across a copy of the first edition (1940) of Mortimer Adler’s “How to Read a Book”.  Adler’s book, which I found to be an excellent tutorial for what we now seem to call “deep reading”, included a blunt discussion of the reformist forces that demanded the end of the traditional liberal arts curriculum and its replacement with electives which he and Robert Maynard Hutchins fought against at the University of Chicago in the ’30s and ’40s.  I’ve read both Adler’s and Hutchins’s later critiques of education as well, and, having attended several of the notable schools in this country (including Chicago) and watching the increasing barbarity of our culture the graduates of the schools seem so bent on imposing on us all, I can only say I consider much of what they wrote to have been prescient.  I’m a big fan of Adler’s Paideia approach to education.

I also highly recommend Diane’s book “Left Back”, which is a more focused history on reforms in public secondary education than Hofstader, Adler, and Hutchins.  Diane, I hope you will write about your book to share the history of our reformist “misery-go-round” in education in which the same tired and failed ideas are recirculated every generation or two, and the wild-eyed, take no prisoners reformers simply move from one fad to the next without any care of the history of reforms.  American education reform truly echos Santayana’s famous remark that “those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it.”  I’m currently reading “Education and the Cult of Efficiency: A Study of the Social Forces That Have Shaped the Administration of the Public Schools”, by Raymond Callahan.  Callahan’s book take a very focused look at the influence that business leaders have had on reform, how they and the elite university Education schools drove a brutal “efficiency” agenda in the early decades of the 20th Century, and how so much of the criticisms we see today are nothing but rehashes of the same straw men, red herrings, and defamation that were common a century ago.  Callahan makes many references to the demands of business leaders that schools abandon traditional education in favor of what is essentially job training and the rebuttals from educators, including an excellent excerpt from a school superintendent who called out the reformer’s charade for what is really was (and still is): another public subsidy for big businesses.

From all of this, I have come to some tentative conclusions:

1. Americans won’t ever be happy with public education until they understand that education and job training are two different things, and that we can’t have a functional democracy and market economy—the two most intellectually demanding forms of society imaginable—without the sort of education that historically has done the most to produce sound thinking—a traditional liberal arts education that develops the whole intellect.

2. The reformers will continue their pernicious campaigns until we abandon the childish fantasy that education can be done cheaply, painlessly, and effortlessly by some technical fix.  Having earned two degrees in chemistry and a law degree, and having taught my own children as well as the children of others, I know that learning any subject is an intensely personal experience.  Good teachers are more like good coaches than sales persons or entertainers.  The idea that we can substitute pedagogical training for mastery of actual subject matter, or that filmstrips, radio, television, movies, or computers, or whatever whiz-bang technology comes next can substituted for actual intellectual engagement between a teacher-master and a student is nothing but charlatanism.  We—parents, school boards, and tax payers—have to start saying “no” to the self-proclaimed experts reformers who are nothing but shills for corporations that seek to insert they probosces into the tax revenue stream.

3. Our political and economic structures are founded on certain ideas that grew out of a region of the planet we call the “West”.  These political and economic structures thus reflect certain cultural ideas and practices that are different (not necessarily better, just different) from the cultural ideas and practices found in other parts of the world, and are expressed in a large body of history, philosophy, literature, and art that all who want to be citizens of our country should understand.  These ideas and practices are open to all people, not just to those who claim some vestigial cultural heritage (like northern European Protestant ancestry).  The best way to create a tolerant society is to teach everyone about that society’s cultural heritage, so that the members of that society have a sound foundation from which to study and understand other cultures.  (I have to agree with Allan Bloom on this point.)  The key however, is that we recognize there are differences among cultures, that we have to accept that our way is unique (but not necessarily better), and that we first must understand our culture and ourselves before we can understand other cultures and others.  Now, I fear, we start from the premise that all cultures are equally valued; therefore all are the “same”; therefore there is no need to learn about our history, philosophy, literature, and art; therefore we should just learn what we need to in order to get a job.  And we wonder why America is beset with bullies and war mongers.

Diane, I hope you will comment more on the history of reform movements in America, so that we all can better communicate the current reform charades we are plagued with.  And any comments on my thoughts are most welcome.  I expect some will find point 3. controversial, I can only say that I make my points without prejudice to anyone.

Categories Curriculum, Education Reform, Teachers and Teaching, US Education

Why The Chicago Teachers Union Deserves Support

By dianeravitch
September 8, 2012 //
37

http://withabrooklynaccent.blogspot.com/2012/09/press-statement-on-chicago-teachers.html


Press Statement on Chicago Teachers Strike
Dr Mark Naison, Fordham University

The Chicago Teachers strike is an incredibly important development because it is a the first time a union local has threatened to strike against education policies pushed by the Obama Administration through its Race to the Top initiative, policies, in my judgment, that have had incredibly destructive consequences for Urban school systems and distressed urban communities

The policies pushed by Rahm Emmanuel, which are being simultaneously implemented in New York and many other cities, involve evaluating teachers and schools on the basis of student test scores, closing schools whose test scores fail to meet a certain standard and firing half their staffs, replacing public schools with charter schools, some run as non profits and some run for profit, and trying to weaken teacher tenure and introduce merit pay

The first three components have been already introduced in Chicago and the mayor wants to intensify them and legnthen the school day. The union is saying enough is enough.

I support the union in taking this stand for the following reasos

1. Closing schools, many of which have been a bulwark of neighborhoods for generations, has been a complete disaster. It has destroyed one point of stability in the lives of young people who have precious little. It removes teachers who have been a part of students lives. It is not an accident that Chicago has seen a serious uptick of violence since Emmanuel became mayor. Young people in distressed neighborhoods need to see community institutions strengthened and teacher mentors protected. School closings and staff turnover take away needed anchors

2. Rating teachers and schools on the basis of student test scores, and threatening to close schools and fire teachers if the proper results aren’t achieved have not only ratcheted up stress levels in schools, they have led to the elimination of art music, sports, school trips and even recess for test prep. The result is that more and more teachers hate teaching and more and more young people hate school, increasing the drop out rate in neighborhoods which desperately need schools to become community centers where young people want to go. The union wants to make schools welcoming places where students want to come by reducing class size, and bringing back sports and the arts, and strengtheining struggling schools rather than closing them. That makes a lot of sense to me

3. Favoring charter schools over public schools has resulted in the systematic creaming off of high performing students by the charters and the warehousing of ELL and special needs students, along with students who have behavior issues, in the remaining public schools. The result is that overall academic performance in the district has not improved

4. Removing teacher tenure and job protections has resulted in the most talented teachers leaving the city system or trying to move from low performing schools to high performing ones where they are less likely to be fired. The result is an accentuation of racial and economic gaps in performance

Basically, what the union wants is to strengthen neighborhood schools an invest in making them places where students are nurtured and want to come, rather than stress filled test factories which the Emmanuel plan and Race to the Top guarantees

The union, in this instance is far better advocate for the children
of Chicago than the mayor

I am available for interviews on my cell all weekend (917) 836-3014

Mark D Naison
Professor of African American Studies and History
Fordham University
“If you Want to Save America’s Public Schools: Replace Secretary of Education Arne Duncan With a Lifetime Educator.” http://dumpduncan.org/

Categories Chicago, Democrats, Emanuel, Rahm, Obama, Privatization, Race to the Top, Unions, US Education

Who Elected Eli Broad?

By dianeravitch
September 5, 2012 //
11

Eli Broad made billions in the home mortgage business and the insurance business (AIG).

He runs a foundation that specializes in education reform, medical research, and art.

One assumes he does not tell the medical researchers what to do or the artists what to create.

If only he had the same modesty about education.

He thinks he knows what works.

School choice. Test-based accountability. Merit pay. Business-style management.

None of his favorite nostrums are supported by research or evidence.

No matter.

Now he plans to expand to generate even more “disruptive,” “entrepreneurial,” “transformational” leaders of your schools.

He boasts about listening to no one and plunging ahead.

It worked for him in the home mortgage business, though he was long gone when millions of people lost their homes.

It worked for him at AIG, but he made his billions before that giant collapsed.

Now Broad trains school leaders in his unaccredited “academy.”

They learn his principles.

His Broadies are leading districts and states.

Some are educators, some are not.

Some are admired, some are despised.

But the question remains, who elected Eli Broad to reform the nation’s schools?

He is like a spoiled rich kid in a candy shop, taking what he wants, knocking over displays, breaking jars, barking orders.

America’s public schools are not his playground. Or should not be.

How can he be held accountable?

And who will pick up the pieces when his latest fancy blows up like AIG?

Categories Accountability, Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, Privatization, Race to the Top, Teacher Evaluations, US Education, Vouchers

The Super-Rich Are Different from Us

By dianeravitch
September 5, 2012 //
12

This is an important article about our society today. It is titled “The Revolt of the Rich.” It is especially interesting that it appears in a conservative magazine. The author, Michael Lofgren, was a long-time Republican (now independent); his new book is called The Party Is Over: How Republicans Went Crazy, Democrats Became Useless, and the Middle Class Got Shafted. Read Bill Moyers’ interview with him here. 

There is an apocryphal exchange between F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway in which Fitzgerald allegedly said, “The rich are different from us,” and Hemingway allegedly answered, “Yes, they have more money.”

The article linked here says the super-rich are indeed different from the rest of us. They have no sense of place. As the article begins, the thesis unfolds:

It was 1993, during congressional debate over the North American Free Trade Agreement. I was having lunch with a staffer for one of the rare Republican congressmen who opposed the policy of so-called free trade. To this day, I remember something my colleague said: “The rich elites of this country have far more in common with their counterparts in London, Paris, and Tokyo than with their fellow American citizens.”

That was only the beginning of the period when the realities of outsourced manufacturing, financialization of the economy, and growing income disparity started to seep into the public consciousness, so at the time it seemed like a striking and novel statement.

The author worries that the people who have disproportionate power in this country don’t care about anyone but themselves:

Our plutocracy now lives like the British in colonial India: in the place and ruling it, but not of it. If one can afford private security, public safety is of no concern; if one owns a Gulfstream jet, crumbling bridges cause less apprehension—and viable public transportation doesn’t even show up on the radar screen. With private doctors on call and a chartered plane to get to the Mayo Clinic, why worry about Medicare?

The super-rich, he says, have seceded from America. They have no regard for our public institutions. They are disconnected from the lives of ordinary people. They don’t even have a sense of noblesse oblige. This explains their contempt for public schools attended by other people’s children:

To some degree the rich have always secluded themselves from the gaze of the common herd; their habit for centuries has been to send their offspring to private schools. But now this habit is exacerbated by the plutocracy’s palpable animosity towards public education and public educators, as Michael Bloomberg has demonstrated. To the extent public education “reform” is popular among billionaires and their tax-exempt foundations, one suspects it is as a lever to divert the more than $500 billion dollars in annual federal, state, and local education funding into private hands—meaning themselves and their friends. What Halliburton did for U.S. Army logistics, school privatizers will do for public education.

What is so astonishing these days is that the super-rich–call them not the 1% but the 1% of the 1%–have control of a large part of the mainstream media. They can afford to take out television advertising, even though their views are echoed on the news and opinion programs. And the American public, or a large part of it, is persuaded to vote against its own self-interest. A friend told me the other day that his brother, who barely subsists on social security, was worried that Obama might raise taxes on people making over $250,000. How can you explain his concern about raising taxes on those who can most afford it?

People like Bill Gates, Eli Broad, the Walton Family, and Michael Bloomberg have a disproportionate influence on our national politics. They have only one vote. But their money enables them to control the instruments of power and persuasion. Their money gives them a voice larger than anyone else’s. Governors, Senators, presidential candidates come calling, hoping to please them and win their support.

This is not what the Founding Fathers had in mind.

Categories Bloomberg, Michael, Broad Foundation, Corporate Reformers, Economy, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, US Education

Which Democrats Are Hostile to Teachers?

By dianeravitch
September 3, 2012 //
41

As a historian, I can assure you that the roots of the current “reform” movement are on the far right. Vouchers began with Milton Friedman in 1955; charters began in 1988 with liberal origins, but were quickly adopted by the right as a substitute for vouchers because voters always defeated voucher proposals. The attacks on teachers’ unions are out of the rightwing playbook. The demands for test-based accountability did not originate in the Democratic party. The effort to remove all job protections–seniority, tenure, the right to due process–did not originate with liberal thinkers or policymakers, but can be traced to the Reagan administration and even earlier to rightwing Republicans who never wanted any unions or job protections for workers. The embrace of privatization and for-profit schooling is neither liberal nor Democratic.

How this happened is a long story.

No matter who supports this agenda, it is not bipartisan. It originated in the ideology of  the rightwing extreme of the GOP. Its goal is privatization.

This reader notes the long list of Democrats who have adopted the rightwing GOP agenda:

It’s not just right wing states and politicians that want to harass teachers.

Plenty of Dems are in on the fun.

Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado is a nominal Democrat who never saw a teacher he didn’t look upon with suspicion or a test company he didn’t want to give a contract to.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel is leading the charge in teacher demonization efforts in the Midwest, and I would argue that his anti-union, anti-teacher track record is beginning to rival that of his brethren to the north, Scott Walker and Paul Ryan.

Emanuel is a Democrat in name and once led the DCCC when Dems took back the House of Representatives.

Congressman George Miller, who chairs the House Education Committee, is a Democrat but like Bennet in the Senate, he too never met a teacher he felt could be trusted to teach without “high stakes accountability measures” imposed from afar.

Cory Booker is a Democrat who is currently engaged in the wholesale privatization of the Newark school system.  He’s got buddies in the hedge funds and Wall Street who bankroll him, he’s great friends with Chris Christie and loves Christie’s privatization efforts at the state level and his demonization of teachers and teachers unions in the media.  That won’t stop Booker from running against Christie for governor next year, however, so those of us who live in NJ can expect privatization of the schools no matter who wins – Christie or Booker.

Michelle Rhee, Joel Klein and Michael Bloomberg were all nominal Democrats before they embarked upon their teacher demonization/school privatization agendas as well.

And of course the Democratic politician who has had the most impact in the teacher demonization/school privatization effort is Barack Obama – from Race to the Top to Central Falls, Rhode Island to Race to the Top II: The Municipal Version to Race to the Top III: The District Version, few politicians have been as successful at bringing teacher evaluations tied to test scores and changes to tenure laws or promoting a broad expansion of high stakes testing in every grade in every subject, K-12, as Barack Obama.

I wish it were simply right wingers and Republicans out to harass teachers who were the problem.  Unfortunately, because both parties take money from the same corporate masters, politicians in both parties are out to give those masters what they ultimately want when it comes to public education – a privatized system with busted unions, cheap labor costs, and lots and lots of opportunities to cash in on the latest ed buzz craze (these days that being the Common Core Federal Standards, the tests that are going to be aligned to those standards and the test prep materials that are going to be needed to get students prepared for those tests.)

Categories Emanuel, Rahm, Privatization, Teacher Evaluations, Testing, U.S. Department of Education, Unions, US Education, Vouchers

A Labor Day Gift: Samuel Gompers on Public Education

By dianeravitch
September 3, 2012 //
1

Thanks to Thomas J. Mertz,  who sent me this item from his regular blog.

This post contains Samuel Gompers’ views on the importance of public education for working people and for democracy.

In Gompers’ time, the rich took care of their children, as they always had, with private tutors, boarding schools, and private academies.

The role of public education was and should be to make possible a good public school for all of the people. Its goal is not to raise test scores but to enable the fullest development of children and young people and to prepare each to participate as citizens in our society in the fullest sense of the word.

Public education made education a right, not a privilege. Be it noted that at every step in the expansion of public education, such as the opening of high schools, there was opposition, typically from industrialists, business leaders, and others who did not see why their tax money should be used to educate other people’s children. They were willing to pay for basic literacy, which future workers needed, but they saw no point in paying for high school and “frills.”

Let’s mark this Labor Day by noting that we are today in the midst of a movement for privatization of public education unlike anything we have ever seen in our history.

In the past, the wealthiest elements of society railed about paying for education and spoke out against expanding opportunity to others, but there has never before been an organized effort to turn public schools over to private hands on the scale that exists today.

Never before did the wealthiest people find allies in rightwing think tanks and at the highest levels of both political parties for policies that would eliminate neighborhood community schools, that would give public school funding to private management, and that permit for-profit entrepreneurs to open publicly-funded schools.

If education were privatized, you can be sure that the wealthy will continue to get the best for their children, and everyone else will be left to rummage through the offerings of private vendors, or to seek a school that will accept their child.

And with the loss of public education will come the death of an institution whose overriding purpose was to prepare the next generation of citizens. And  as we are already seeing in cities around the nation, privatization shatters communities, when the one institution that held them together and reinforced communal ties is handed over to the marketplace.

Categories Education Reform, For-Profit, Privatization, Unions, US Education, Vouchers

Plaudits for US Public Education

By dianeravitch
September 3, 2012 //
19

NASA’s rover called Curiosity landed on Mars on August 5.  It is now exploring that planet, in a spectacular demonstration of space technology.

Professor Ralph E. Shaffer wondered about the team of scientists and engineers responsible for this great breakthrough. He discovered a website with bios of the 141 people involved.

He wondered, where did they go to school?

This is what he learned:

104 of the 141 were products of American public schools. The others didn’t say where they went to school or went to private school or were educated abroad.

Professor Shaffer thinks this should serve as a rebuke to the reformers who love to decry the quality of our schools.

I wish his discovery would change their minds.

Not likely, considering that one of the loudest critics is Governor Chris Christie. He is a graduate of Livingston High School in Livingston, NJ. He must have really bad memories. Maybe he was bullied.

Categories Education Reform, New Jersey, US Education

A Journalist Who Gets It

By dianeravitch
September 3, 2012 //
11

Daniel Akst writes editorials for Newsday, the Long Island, New York daily.

He just wrote an excellent editorial.

Long island has some great schools that are the heart of their community.

It also has pockets of poverty.

This wise editorial educates the public.

Are American schools the best in the world? The answer is a resounding maybe — which is good news indeed for this back-to-school season.

Beating up on public education is practically our national sport. I often do it myself. But overlooked in the ongoing assault is strong evidence that U.S. schools actually are worldbeaters — except for the problem of poverty.

When it comes to reading, in fact, our schools may well be the best in the world. As Stanford University education professor Linda Darling-Hammond points out, U.S. 15-year olds in schools with fewer than 10 percent of kids eligible for free or cut-rate lunch “score first in the world in reading, outperforming even the famously excellent Finns.”

This 10 percent threshold is significant because, in high achieving countries such as Finland, few schools have more poor kids than that. In other words, if you look at American schools that compare socioeconomically, we’re doing great.

But wait, it gets better. U.S. schools where fewer than 25 percent are impoverished (by the same lunch measure) beat all 34 of the relatively affluent countries studied except South Korea and Finland. U.S. schools where 25 to 50 percent of students were poor still beat most other countries.

These results are from the 2009 Programme for International Student Assessment, a widely followed effort to compare educational outcomes. PISA scores inspire a good deal of hand-wringing in this country — overall, we were 14th in reading — but I suspect we’ve been taking away the wrong message by not adjusting for poverty.

That’s odd, because most people know there’s a connection between poor families and poor school performance. The link is reflected in various sources, including the SAT, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, and the Trends in International Math and Science Study.

So the connection, which exists in most countries, is clear. But somehow the implications haven’t been, and now that school is again upon us, it’s worth thinking this through. If American kids who aren’t poor are doing so well, maybe our problem isn’t bad teachers or inadequate school spending or indifferent parents or screen-besotted children. Maybe the problem is simply poverty — and the shameful fact that we have so much more of it than any comparable country.

How much child poverty are we living with? A study this year by UNICEF found a U.S. child poverty rate of 23.1 percent — way beyond any other economically advanced nation except Romania. In Spain, which is in a depression, the figure was 17.1 percent. In Canada it was 13.3. In Finland, 5.3.

If poverty is the problem, families in middle-class school districts needn’t worry much about their kids’ schools. But they should be worried about the society in which they live, for even if we have hearts of stone, we do not have heads made of the same material. Economic growth — to say nothing of a healthy democracy — depends on an educated citizenry, and we cannot afford to let a large segment of the populace embark on adulthood seriously underschooled.

Some education reformers, such as Diane Ravitch, understand poverty’s effects on our schools. Geoffrey Canada has launched the Harlem Children’s Zone Project to provide poor children with a comprehensive set of programs addressing both poverty and education. It’s an effort well worth watching.

If the problem with education in this country really is poverty, it will not be easy to fix. Yet that is no reason for kidding ourselves about what’s actually wrong.

Categories Education Reform, US Education
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