From the Ecconomist
How poverty passes from generation to generation is now becoming clearer. The answer lies in the effect of stress on two particular parts of the brain
Panos.THAT the children of the poor underachieve in later life, and thus remain poor themselves, is one of the enduring problems of society. Sociologists have studied and described it. Socialists have tried to abolish it by dictatorship and central planning. Liberals have preferred democracy and opportunity. But nobody has truly understood what causes it. Until, perhaps, now.
The crucial breakthrough was made three years ago, when Martha Farah of the University of Pennsylvania showed that the working memories of children who have been raised in poverty have smaller capacities than those of middle-class children. Working memory is the ability to hold bits of information in the brain for current use—the digits of a phone number, for example. It is crucial for comprehending languages, for reading and for solving problems. Entry into the working memory is also a prerequisite for something to be learnt permanently as part of declarative memory—the stuff a person knows explicitly, like the dates of famous battles, rather than what he knows implicitly, like how to ride a bicycle.
Since Dr Farah’s discovery, Gary Evans and Michelle Schamberg of Cornell University have studied the phenomenon in more detail. As they report in this week’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, they have found that the reduced capacity of the memories of the poor is almost certainly the result of stress affecting the way that childish brains develop.
Dr Evans’s and Dr Schamberg’s volunteers were 195 participants in a long-term sociological and medical study that Dr Evans is carrying out in New York state. At the time, the participants were 17 years old. All are white, and the numbers of men and women are about equal.
Stress in the city
To measure the amount of stress an individual had suffered over the course of his life, the two researchers used an index known as allostatic load. This is a combination of the values of six variables: diastolic and systolic blood pressure; the concentrations of three stress-related hormones; and the body-mass index, a measure of obesity. For all six, a higher value indicates a more stressful life; and for all six, the values were higher, on average, in poor children than in those who were middle class. Moreover, because Dr Evans’s wider study had followed the participants from birth, the two researchers were able to estimate what proportion of each child’s life had been spent in poverty. That more precise figure, too, was correlated with the allostatic load.
The capacity of a 17-year-old’s working memory was also correlated with allostatic load. Those who had spent their whole lives in poverty could hold an average of 8.5 items in their memory at any time. Those brought up in a middle-class family could manage 9.4, and those whose economic and social experiences had been mixed were in the middle.
These two correlations do not by themselves prove that chronic stress damages the memory, but Dr Evans and Dr Schamberg then applied a statistical technique called hierarchical regression to the results. They were able to use this to remove the effect of allostatic load on the relationship between poverty and memory discovered originally by Dr Farah. When they did so, that relationship disappeared. In other words, the diminution of memory in the poorer members of their study was entirely explained by stress, rather than by any more general aspect of poverty.
To confirm this result, the researchers also looked at characteristics such as each participant’s birthweight, his mother’s age when she gave birth, the mother’s level of education and her marital status, all of which differ, on average, between the poor and the middle classes. None of these characteristics had any effect. Nor did a mother’s own stress levels.
That stress, and stress alone, is responsible for damaging the working memories of poor children thus looks like a strong hypothesis. It is also backed up by work done on both people and laboratory animals, which shows that stress changes the activity of neurotransmitters, the chemicals that carry signals from one nerve cell to another in the brain. Stress also suppresses the generation of new nerve cells in the brain, and causes the “remodelling” of existing ones. Most significantly of all, it shrinks the volume of the prefrontal cortex and the hippocampus. These are the parts of the brain most closely associated with working memory.
Children with stressed lives, then, find it harder to learn. Put pejoratively, they are stupider. It is not surprising that they do less well at school, end up poor as adults and often visit the same circumstances on their own children.
Dr Evans’s and Dr Schamberg’s study does not examine the nature of the stress that the children of the poor are exposed to, but it is now well established that poor adults live stressful lives, and not just for the obvious reason that poverty brings uncertainty about the future. The main reason poor people are stressed is that they are at the bottom of the social heap as well as the financial one.
Sir Michael Marmot, of University College London, and his intellectual successors have shown repeatedly that people at the bottom of social hierarchies experience much more stress in their daily lives than those at the top—and suffer the consequences in their health. Even quite young children are socially sensitive beings and aware of such things.
So, it may not be necessary to look any further than their place in the pecking order to explain what Dr Evans and Dr Schamberg have discovered in their research into the children of the poor. The Bible says, “the poor you will always have with you.” Dr Evans and Dr Schamberg may have provided an important part of the explanation why.
http://www.economist.com/node/13403177
Showing posts with label Child Poverty. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Child Poverty. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Thursday, February 10, 2011
It's poverty
The guest article by Robert Neid in the Times Union about the country falling behind other industrialized nations in education was pretty accurate in many regards. He was right we are falling behind and we should be alarmed. Furthermore I agree with him that we are costing ourselves both economical and socially by doing so. However he failed to mention the number one factor for the reason we currently find ourselves in the hole we are and that’s poverty.
Twenty-one percent of our children live in poverty. Another fifth aren’t that much above it and poverty is the number one measurable statistic which determines how well a student does in school, not teachers as Mr. Neid seems to imply. Simply put, children in poverty do not do as well as those who are not.
He went on to quote several impressive statistics about where our nation and our children find themselves when compared to our industrialized counterparts but once again he doesn’t mention that when we factor out poverty and just use the scores of children not living in it our scores rise tremendously. He also doesn’t mention that places like Finland, long considered a model of education excellence have very few children that live in poverty (one half of one percent) and have made education a national priority not an afterthought as we have done.
I get it that Mr. Neid wants our children and our nation to do better. I just think in order for us to improve we need to address our children and nations real issues.
Chris Guerrieri
School Teacher
Twenty-one percent of our children live in poverty. Another fifth aren’t that much above it and poverty is the number one measurable statistic which determines how well a student does in school, not teachers as Mr. Neid seems to imply. Simply put, children in poverty do not do as well as those who are not.
He went on to quote several impressive statistics about where our nation and our children find themselves when compared to our industrialized counterparts but once again he doesn’t mention that when we factor out poverty and just use the scores of children not living in it our scores rise tremendously. He also doesn’t mention that places like Finland, long considered a model of education excellence have very few children that live in poverty (one half of one percent) and have made education a national priority not an afterthought as we have done.
I get it that Mr. Neid wants our children and our nation to do better. I just think in order for us to improve we need to address our children and nations real issues.
Chris Guerrieri
School Teacher
Sunday, January 23, 2011
What don't you get? It's poverrty
From the Wall Sreet Journal
by Jonah Leher
How much do the decisions of parents matter? Most parents believe that even the most mundane acts of parenting—from their choice of day care to their policy on videogames—can profoundly influence the success of their children. Kids are like wet clay, in this view, and we are the sculptors.
As wealth increases, adults play a much smaller role in determining the mental ability of their children.
Yet in tests measuring many traits, from intelligence to self-control, the power of the home environment pales in comparison to the power of genes and peer groups. We may think we're sculptors, but the clay is mostly set.
A new paper suggests that both metaphors can be true. Which one is relevant depends, it turns out, on the economic status of families.
For a paper in Psychological Science, researchers at the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Virginia looked at 750 pairs of American twins who were given a test of mental ability at the age of 10 months and then again at the age of 2. By studying the performance of identical versus fraternal twins, the scientists could tease out the relative importance of factors such as genetics and the home environment. Because the infants came from households across the socioeconomic spectrum, it also was possible to see how wealth influenced test scores.
When it came to the mental ability of 10-month-olds, the home environment was the key variable, across every socioeconomic class. But results for the 2-year-olds were dramatically different. In children from poorer households, the choices of parents still mattered. In fact, the researchers estimated that the home environment accounted for approximately 80% of the individual variance in mental ability among poor 2-year-olds. The effect of genetics was negligible.
The opposite pattern appeared in 2-year-olds from wealthy households. For these kids, genetics primarily determined performance, accounting for nearly 50% of all variation in mental ability. (The scientists made this conclusion based on the fact that identical twins performed much more similarly than fraternal twins.) The home environment was a distant second. For parents, the correlation appears to be clear: As wealth increases, the choices of adults play a much smaller role in determining the mental ability of their children.
Children from wealthy households get all the advantages that money can buy, from music lessons to SAT tutors. Although parents might fret over the details of such advantages—is it better to play the piano or the violin?—these details are mostly insignificant, subject to the law of diminishing returns. As the science blogger Razib Kahn notes, "When you remove the environmental variance, the genetic variance remains."
These results capture the stunning developmental inequalities that set in almost immediately, so that even the mental ability of 2-year-olds can be profoundly affected by the socio-economic status of their parents. As a result, their genetic potential is held back.
Though this latest study doesn't speculate about the causes of these class differences, previous research has focused on a panoply of factors, such as the variety of words directed toward the child (more variety leads to higher test scores), the number of books in the home and even the ratio of encouraging remarks to discouraging warnings. By the age of 3, children from wealthier households hear, on average, about 500,000 encouragements and 80,000 discouragements. The ratio is reversed in households on welfare.
Such statistics have led many researchers to highlight the importance of improving the early-childhood environments of poor children. Economists such as James Heckman, a Nobel laureate at the University of Chicago, have long advocated for increased investments in preschool education, but this latest study suggests that interventions need to begin even earlier. One possible model is the "Baby College" administered by the Harlem Children's Zone, which seeks to equip brand-new parents with better parenting skills.
Eliminating such inequalities in the early years of life would simply create a new kind of inequality, driven by genetics. But such a world would at least let more children come closer to their mental potential, unconstrained by the mistakes or impoverishment of their parents. The greatest luxury we can give our children, it turns out, is the luxury of being the type of parent that doesn't matter at all.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703954004576090020541379588.html
by Jonah Leher
How much do the decisions of parents matter? Most parents believe that even the most mundane acts of parenting—from their choice of day care to their policy on videogames—can profoundly influence the success of their children. Kids are like wet clay, in this view, and we are the sculptors.
As wealth increases, adults play a much smaller role in determining the mental ability of their children.
Yet in tests measuring many traits, from intelligence to self-control, the power of the home environment pales in comparison to the power of genes and peer groups. We may think we're sculptors, but the clay is mostly set.
A new paper suggests that both metaphors can be true. Which one is relevant depends, it turns out, on the economic status of families.
For a paper in Psychological Science, researchers at the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Virginia looked at 750 pairs of American twins who were given a test of mental ability at the age of 10 months and then again at the age of 2. By studying the performance of identical versus fraternal twins, the scientists could tease out the relative importance of factors such as genetics and the home environment. Because the infants came from households across the socioeconomic spectrum, it also was possible to see how wealth influenced test scores.
When it came to the mental ability of 10-month-olds, the home environment was the key variable, across every socioeconomic class. But results for the 2-year-olds were dramatically different. In children from poorer households, the choices of parents still mattered. In fact, the researchers estimated that the home environment accounted for approximately 80% of the individual variance in mental ability among poor 2-year-olds. The effect of genetics was negligible.
The opposite pattern appeared in 2-year-olds from wealthy households. For these kids, genetics primarily determined performance, accounting for nearly 50% of all variation in mental ability. (The scientists made this conclusion based on the fact that identical twins performed much more similarly than fraternal twins.) The home environment was a distant second. For parents, the correlation appears to be clear: As wealth increases, the choices of adults play a much smaller role in determining the mental ability of their children.
Children from wealthy households get all the advantages that money can buy, from music lessons to SAT tutors. Although parents might fret over the details of such advantages—is it better to play the piano or the violin?—these details are mostly insignificant, subject to the law of diminishing returns. As the science blogger Razib Kahn notes, "When you remove the environmental variance, the genetic variance remains."
These results capture the stunning developmental inequalities that set in almost immediately, so that even the mental ability of 2-year-olds can be profoundly affected by the socio-economic status of their parents. As a result, their genetic potential is held back.
Though this latest study doesn't speculate about the causes of these class differences, previous research has focused on a panoply of factors, such as the variety of words directed toward the child (more variety leads to higher test scores), the number of books in the home and even the ratio of encouraging remarks to discouraging warnings. By the age of 3, children from wealthier households hear, on average, about 500,000 encouragements and 80,000 discouragements. The ratio is reversed in households on welfare.
Such statistics have led many researchers to highlight the importance of improving the early-childhood environments of poor children. Economists such as James Heckman, a Nobel laureate at the University of Chicago, have long advocated for increased investments in preschool education, but this latest study suggests that interventions need to begin even earlier. One possible model is the "Baby College" administered by the Harlem Children's Zone, which seeks to equip brand-new parents with better parenting skills.
Eliminating such inequalities in the early years of life would simply create a new kind of inequality, driven by genetics. But such a world would at least let more children come closer to their mental potential, unconstrained by the mistakes or impoverishment of their parents. The greatest luxury we can give our children, it turns out, is the luxury of being the type of parent that doesn't matter at all.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703954004576090020541379588.html
Saturday, January 8, 2011
The rich got richer, poor got poorer
From the blog Modern Schools
There are more than 4 million more Americans in living in poverty than previously reported and they make up 15.7% of the population, not 14.3%, as earlier estimated. The new figure takes into account actual costs of living that include medical expenses, transportation and childcare, putting the U.S. total at 47.8 million living in poverty. Keep in mind that even these estimates are artificially low, as they use the ridiculous figure of $22,050 annual income for a family of four as the threshold, when in cities like New York and San Francisco, a person would be lucky to pay $12,000 per year just for their rent.
Over 16% of seniors and 18% of children are now living in poverty and over 6% are now living in “deep” poverty, with family incomes of less than $11,000. Meanwhile, according the Economic Policy Institute, the wealth of the richest 1% of Americans was 225 times more than the median family net worth in 2009. According to the report, the bottom 20% of families saw their income grow only $200 for the entire period from 1979 to 2005, whereas families in the top 0.1% saw their income grow by nearly $6 million.
As a result of unemployment, wage cuts, furloughs, increased health costs (insurance premiums have increased 131% in the last 10 years), and overall growing immiseration, 1.53 million Americans filed for bankruptcy last year, an increase of 9%. It should be pointed out that in 2005, bankruptcy laws were changed, making it much more difficult and costly for families to file for bankruptcy, making the increase even more appalling.
http://modeducation.blogspot.com/2011/01/2010-rich-got-much-richer-and-poor-got.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ModernSchool+%28Modern+School%29
There are more than 4 million more Americans in living in poverty than previously reported and they make up 15.7% of the population, not 14.3%, as earlier estimated. The new figure takes into account actual costs of living that include medical expenses, transportation and childcare, putting the U.S. total at 47.8 million living in poverty. Keep in mind that even these estimates are artificially low, as they use the ridiculous figure of $22,050 annual income for a family of four as the threshold, when in cities like New York and San Francisco, a person would be lucky to pay $12,000 per year just for their rent.
Over 16% of seniors and 18% of children are now living in poverty and over 6% are now living in “deep” poverty, with family incomes of less than $11,000. Meanwhile, according the Economic Policy Institute, the wealth of the richest 1% of Americans was 225 times more than the median family net worth in 2009. According to the report, the bottom 20% of families saw their income grow only $200 for the entire period from 1979 to 2005, whereas families in the top 0.1% saw their income grow by nearly $6 million.
As a result of unemployment, wage cuts, furloughs, increased health costs (insurance premiums have increased 131% in the last 10 years), and overall growing immiseration, 1.53 million Americans filed for bankruptcy last year, an increase of 9%. It should be pointed out that in 2005, bankruptcy laws were changed, making it much more difficult and costly for families to file for bankruptcy, making the increase even more appalling.
http://modeducation.blogspot.com/2011/01/2010-rich-got-much-richer-and-poor-got.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ModernSchool+%28Modern+School%29
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Poverty, the ignored education factor
A fifth of the countries children are thought to live in povert. -CPG
From the associated press
by Hope Yen
WASHINGTON -- The number of poor people in the U.S. is millions higher than previously known, with 1 in 6 Americans — many of them 65 and older — struggling in poverty due to rising medical care and other costs, according to preliminary census figures released Wednesday.
A homeless person leaves the Urban Ministry soup kitchen in Charlotte, North Carolina November 15, 2009. With the potential to add more older Americans to the ranks of the poor, the numbers may underscore a need for continued — if not expanded — old-age benefits as a government safety net.(REUTERS/Carlos Barria/Files)At the same time, government aid programs such as tax credits and food stamps kept many people out of poverty, helping to ensure the poverty rate did not balloon even higher during the recession in 2009, Obama's first year in office.
Under a new revised census formula, overall poverty in 2009 stood at 15.7 percent, or 47.8 million people. That's compared to the official 2009 rate of 14.3 percent, or 43.6 million, that was reported by the Census Bureau last September.
Across all demographic groups, Americans 65 and older sustained the largest increases in poverty under the revised formula — nearly doubling to 16.1 percent. As a whole, working-age adults 18-64 also saw increases in poverty, as well as whites and Hispanics. Children, blacks and unmarried couples were less likely to be considered poor under the new measure.
Due to new adjustments for geographical variations in costs of living, people residing in the suburbs, the Northeast and West were the regions mostly likely to have poor people — nearly 1 in 5 in the West.
The new measure will not replace the official poverty rate but will be published alongside the traditional figure this fall as a "supplement" for federal agencies and state governments to determine anti-poverty policies. Economists have long criticized the official poverty measure as inadequate because it only includes pretax cash income and does not account for medical, transportation and work expenses.
"Under the new measure, we can clearly see the effects of our government policies," said Kathleen Short, a Census Bureau research economist who calculated the revised poverty numbers. "When you're accounting for in-kind benefits and tax credits, you're bringing many people in extreme poverty off the very bottom."
The official measure is based on a 1955 cost of an emergency food diet and does not factor in other living costs. Nor does it consider non-cash government aid when calculating income, which surged higher in 2009 during the recession.
Short's analysis, published Wednesday as part of a series of census working papers on poverty, shows that out-of-pocket medical expenses had a significant impact in affecting the number of poor — without those costs, poverty would have dropped from 15.7 percent to 12.4 percent.
The effect was seen most notably among older Americans. Under the official poverty rate, about 8.9 percent lived in poverty, mostly because they benefit from Social Security cash payments. But when taking into account out-of-pocket medical expenses and other factors, that number rises to 16.1 percent.
The numbers cited for 2009 are preliminary, but census officials say they offer a good representative look at the state of U.S. poverty and where the numbers are headed when new 2010 figures are released this fall.
Among the findings:
_Transportation, commuting and child care costs weigh on working-age Americans. The official poverty rate for those ages 18 to 64 is currently 12.9 percent, the highest since 1960s levels that launched the war on poverty. Under the revised formula, working-age poverty increases even higher, to 14.8 percent.
_Without the earned income tax credit, the poverty rate under the revised formula would jump from 15.7 percent to 17.7 percent. The absence of food stamps separately would increase the poverty rate to 17.2 percent.
_Taking into account millions of uninsured people in the U.S. had little effect in increasing poverty, mostly because those without insurance tend to forgo medical care rather than find ways to pay for it. Those with government-sponsored insurance generally saw decreases in poverty under the new formula, while those with employer-provided coverage saw increases. Still overall poverty for those with public insurance vs. employer insurance was higher, 31.1 percent compared to 7.2 percent.
Under the revised formula, the West had the most people in poverty at 19.2 percent. It was followed by the South (16.1 percent), the Northeast (14.3 percent) and the Midwest (12.5 percent).
The supplemental figures could take on added significance at a time when many in the government point to an overhaul of Medicare and Social Security as the best hope for reducing the ballooning federal debt. With the potential to add more older Americans to the ranks of the poor, the numbers may underscore a need for continued — if not expanded — old-age benefits as a government safety net.
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/01/05-6
From the associated press
by Hope Yen
WASHINGTON -- The number of poor people in the U.S. is millions higher than previously known, with 1 in 6 Americans — many of them 65 and older — struggling in poverty due to rising medical care and other costs, according to preliminary census figures released Wednesday.
A homeless person leaves the Urban Ministry soup kitchen in Charlotte, North Carolina November 15, 2009. With the potential to add more older Americans to the ranks of the poor, the numbers may underscore a need for continued — if not expanded — old-age benefits as a government safety net.(REUTERS/Carlos Barria/Files)At the same time, government aid programs such as tax credits and food stamps kept many people out of poverty, helping to ensure the poverty rate did not balloon even higher during the recession in 2009, Obama's first year in office.
Under a new revised census formula, overall poverty in 2009 stood at 15.7 percent, or 47.8 million people. That's compared to the official 2009 rate of 14.3 percent, or 43.6 million, that was reported by the Census Bureau last September.
Across all demographic groups, Americans 65 and older sustained the largest increases in poverty under the revised formula — nearly doubling to 16.1 percent. As a whole, working-age adults 18-64 also saw increases in poverty, as well as whites and Hispanics. Children, blacks and unmarried couples were less likely to be considered poor under the new measure.
Due to new adjustments for geographical variations in costs of living, people residing in the suburbs, the Northeast and West were the regions mostly likely to have poor people — nearly 1 in 5 in the West.
The new measure will not replace the official poverty rate but will be published alongside the traditional figure this fall as a "supplement" for federal agencies and state governments to determine anti-poverty policies. Economists have long criticized the official poverty measure as inadequate because it only includes pretax cash income and does not account for medical, transportation and work expenses.
"Under the new measure, we can clearly see the effects of our government policies," said Kathleen Short, a Census Bureau research economist who calculated the revised poverty numbers. "When you're accounting for in-kind benefits and tax credits, you're bringing many people in extreme poverty off the very bottom."
The official measure is based on a 1955 cost of an emergency food diet and does not factor in other living costs. Nor does it consider non-cash government aid when calculating income, which surged higher in 2009 during the recession.
Short's analysis, published Wednesday as part of a series of census working papers on poverty, shows that out-of-pocket medical expenses had a significant impact in affecting the number of poor — without those costs, poverty would have dropped from 15.7 percent to 12.4 percent.
The effect was seen most notably among older Americans. Under the official poverty rate, about 8.9 percent lived in poverty, mostly because they benefit from Social Security cash payments. But when taking into account out-of-pocket medical expenses and other factors, that number rises to 16.1 percent.
The numbers cited for 2009 are preliminary, but census officials say they offer a good representative look at the state of U.S. poverty and where the numbers are headed when new 2010 figures are released this fall.
Among the findings:
_Transportation, commuting and child care costs weigh on working-age Americans. The official poverty rate for those ages 18 to 64 is currently 12.9 percent, the highest since 1960s levels that launched the war on poverty. Under the revised formula, working-age poverty increases even higher, to 14.8 percent.
_Without the earned income tax credit, the poverty rate under the revised formula would jump from 15.7 percent to 17.7 percent. The absence of food stamps separately would increase the poverty rate to 17.2 percent.
_Taking into account millions of uninsured people in the U.S. had little effect in increasing poverty, mostly because those without insurance tend to forgo medical care rather than find ways to pay for it. Those with government-sponsored insurance generally saw decreases in poverty under the new formula, while those with employer-provided coverage saw increases. Still overall poverty for those with public insurance vs. employer insurance was higher, 31.1 percent compared to 7.2 percent.
Under the revised formula, the West had the most people in poverty at 19.2 percent. It was followed by the South (16.1 percent), the Northeast (14.3 percent) and the Midwest (12.5 percent).
The supplemental figures could take on added significance at a time when many in the government point to an overhaul of Medicare and Social Security as the best hope for reducing the ballooning federal debt. With the potential to add more older Americans to the ranks of the poor, the numbers may underscore a need for continued — if not expanded — old-age benefits as a government safety net.
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/01/05-6
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
Then There’s the Folks Who Like Their Schools
From Lily's Blackboard
by Lily
The friends of my friends down the street are from Norway. She works for the Norwegian embassy. He owns an accounting business. They lived in Maryland for a while before moving back to Norway with their two sons and, thanks to my friends, I met this very nice couple and got to make polite conversation and ask them if they had liked living in the United States. They did. I got to ask them what they missed about the United States after moving back to Norway.
“Well,” they said, as if it would be obvious and didn’t really need to be mentioned. “Of course, you have such excellent schools.”
I blinked. They did not know I was a teacher.
I said, “Could you repeat that?”
“We loved your schools. They cared about our children as individuals. They were wonderful.”
Let me repeat that, just in case Former Chancellor Now Employee of Rupert Murdoch In Charge of Exploring Market Opportunities in the Education Sector Joel Klein is reading this:
“We loved your schools. Our children had such caring teachers. They were wonderful.”
Why, you might ask, would I want Joel Klein to hear this remarkable string of unsolicited pearls? Because he bit my head off for saying the same thing.
I’m hoping that the Waiting for Superman obligatory events designed to hype the movie and sell tickets is finally winding down. Serious folks have already found it to be a clever Hollywood lie. The lie is that they took what appears to be the worst public schools in America and made them seem to be the rule instead of the exception. The lie is that they took what appears to be the best charter schools in America and made them seem to be the rule instead of the exception.
I know I sound bitter, but only because I am. The professional physical and psychological set up at all these events is to have three or four or (in one case) six voices on the side of the lie (charter schools all good; public schools all bad). They become an echo chamber repeating each other and congratulating each other and giving the impression that the whole world is on the side of the SuperGuys who demand “reform” (more charter schools). There was always one teacher (never a public school parent advocate or a researcher who might contradict them), always one lonely teacher set up to be overwhelmed by the invitation-only multitude of panelists as the out-of-touch defender of the “status quo” (see, no one’s on “the status quo” side -“status quo” being the old, bad public school instead of the shiny good private charter school.)
“We loved your schools. They cared about our children as individuals. They were wonderful.”
I got to be the teacher at a star-studded New York event. The topic was our “failed” public school system that needed to be thrown out and replaced with something more “market driven”; more “accountable”; something called “reform” that would give parents private market choices and light a fire under lazy teachers.
I protested the generalization and, silly me, said, “Our schools are working beautifully for a great many children. The problem is that they aren’t working for all our children.”
That’s when Joel Klein took my head off. How dare I defend a failed system? How dare I say it’s working just fine? How dare I be so out of touch with reality? How dare… well, you get it. I dared.
There is always some truth in a criticism, even though we are loathed to admit it. I will admit it. But I will speak the rest of the truth that Joel Klein will not dare. Our “system” is unforgivably inequitable. But it’s not broken for all children.
Where parents have the resources to provide decent health care and child care and a home in a safe community; where schools are not expected to make up for the ravages of crime and poverty and unemployment and drug abuse and medical neglect and hunger, our schools function quite well. But don’t take my word for it.
NAEP (National Assessment of Education Progress) in 2006 found that when adjusted for family income, there were no differences between elementary public and private school scores in Reading and public schools outperformed private schools in Math. Between secondary public and private school scores, private schools scored slightly higher but they found no difference in Math scores.
Twenty years ago, Money Magazine did a consumer report between public schools and private schools and found that when adjusted for family income, there was virtually no difference between the two in graduation rates, college SAT scores and college entrance rates, even given that private schools had the killer app – not of parent choice, but of the right of the school to carefully choose their students. Money Magazine declared public schools the best bang for the buck. And rich families agree.
Eighty percent of wealthy families send their kids to public school. Forbes Magazine cuts it down even further to the slice they call “affluent” families at 66% in public schools and even further to show that 55% of the “mega rich” (those who make over $10 million) pick public schools over private schools. Come on, now. Raise your hands. How many of you have always believed that Rich Folks send their kids to private schools? Now you know the truth: The majority doesn’t. The rich choose public schools because they live near excellent public schools.
Schools that are still mainly supported by local property taxes mean that in rich areas, the schools have everything: Computer labs, Advanced Placement Chemistry, French, the Ski Club, the best-paid teachers and the most complete support services. In most neighborhoods, they have a great public school. Great public schools exist. The problem is that they aren’t found in every neighborhood.
The failure of this “system” is that it isn’t a “system”. Every district; every neighborhood school has been structured on the premise that poor kids just need what rich kids have. Now, that would be a start. But they need something different. They need something more. They need support for the Whole Child and support for the Whole Family.
The answer isn’t to tear down our public schools that are working for the vast majority of students. The answer is to find those places where schools aren’t working and do something different. Something more. Preschool and after school programs to help parents who might be holding two or three part-time jobs to pay the rent; GED classes to help unemployed parents so that they can get better jobs that support their families; moving beyond mind-numbing standardized test labels to a world of Art and Music and Technology and Theater and Sports and Vocational Programs that make school interesting and relevant to kids who see their lives as going nowhere fast; more personalized education with smaller classes sizes; counselors and mentors to help parents understand what college might mean to family that never had a college graduate; access to health and dental care; something different; something more.
My friends from Norway were happy with their American schools. They were stunned to hear that I was slapped for suggesting that we had many excellent schools. But I also know that if they had lived in certain communities, they would not have been so happy. So there’s a worthy goal. I want my new Norwegian friends to be able to live in any American community and walk into any American public school and be able to say, as if it were obvious to anyone,
“We loved your schools. They cared about our children as individuals. They were wonderful.”
http://lilysblackboard.org/2011/01/the-folks-who-like-their-schools/
by Lily
The friends of my friends down the street are from Norway. She works for the Norwegian embassy. He owns an accounting business. They lived in Maryland for a while before moving back to Norway with their two sons and, thanks to my friends, I met this very nice couple and got to make polite conversation and ask them if they had liked living in the United States. They did. I got to ask them what they missed about the United States after moving back to Norway.
“Well,” they said, as if it would be obvious and didn’t really need to be mentioned. “Of course, you have such excellent schools.”
I blinked. They did not know I was a teacher.
I said, “Could you repeat that?”
“We loved your schools. They cared about our children as individuals. They were wonderful.”
Let me repeat that, just in case Former Chancellor Now Employee of Rupert Murdoch In Charge of Exploring Market Opportunities in the Education Sector Joel Klein is reading this:
“We loved your schools. Our children had such caring teachers. They were wonderful.”
Why, you might ask, would I want Joel Klein to hear this remarkable string of unsolicited pearls? Because he bit my head off for saying the same thing.
I’m hoping that the Waiting for Superman obligatory events designed to hype the movie and sell tickets is finally winding down. Serious folks have already found it to be a clever Hollywood lie. The lie is that they took what appears to be the worst public schools in America and made them seem to be the rule instead of the exception. The lie is that they took what appears to be the best charter schools in America and made them seem to be the rule instead of the exception.
I know I sound bitter, but only because I am. The professional physical and psychological set up at all these events is to have three or four or (in one case) six voices on the side of the lie (charter schools all good; public schools all bad). They become an echo chamber repeating each other and congratulating each other and giving the impression that the whole world is on the side of the SuperGuys who demand “reform” (more charter schools). There was always one teacher (never a public school parent advocate or a researcher who might contradict them), always one lonely teacher set up to be overwhelmed by the invitation-only multitude of panelists as the out-of-touch defender of the “status quo” (see, no one’s on “the status quo” side -“status quo” being the old, bad public school instead of the shiny good private charter school.)
“We loved your schools. They cared about our children as individuals. They were wonderful.”
I got to be the teacher at a star-studded New York event. The topic was our “failed” public school system that needed to be thrown out and replaced with something more “market driven”; more “accountable”; something called “reform” that would give parents private market choices and light a fire under lazy teachers.
I protested the generalization and, silly me, said, “Our schools are working beautifully for a great many children. The problem is that they aren’t working for all our children.”
That’s when Joel Klein took my head off. How dare I defend a failed system? How dare I say it’s working just fine? How dare I be so out of touch with reality? How dare… well, you get it. I dared.
There is always some truth in a criticism, even though we are loathed to admit it. I will admit it. But I will speak the rest of the truth that Joel Klein will not dare. Our “system” is unforgivably inequitable. But it’s not broken for all children.
Where parents have the resources to provide decent health care and child care and a home in a safe community; where schools are not expected to make up for the ravages of crime and poverty and unemployment and drug abuse and medical neglect and hunger, our schools function quite well. But don’t take my word for it.
NAEP (National Assessment of Education Progress) in 2006 found that when adjusted for family income, there were no differences between elementary public and private school scores in Reading and public schools outperformed private schools in Math. Between secondary public and private school scores, private schools scored slightly higher but they found no difference in Math scores.
Twenty years ago, Money Magazine did a consumer report between public schools and private schools and found that when adjusted for family income, there was virtually no difference between the two in graduation rates, college SAT scores and college entrance rates, even given that private schools had the killer app – not of parent choice, but of the right of the school to carefully choose their students. Money Magazine declared public schools the best bang for the buck. And rich families agree.
Eighty percent of wealthy families send their kids to public school. Forbes Magazine cuts it down even further to the slice they call “affluent” families at 66% in public schools and even further to show that 55% of the “mega rich” (those who make over $10 million) pick public schools over private schools. Come on, now. Raise your hands. How many of you have always believed that Rich Folks send their kids to private schools? Now you know the truth: The majority doesn’t. The rich choose public schools because they live near excellent public schools.
Schools that are still mainly supported by local property taxes mean that in rich areas, the schools have everything: Computer labs, Advanced Placement Chemistry, French, the Ski Club, the best-paid teachers and the most complete support services. In most neighborhoods, they have a great public school. Great public schools exist. The problem is that they aren’t found in every neighborhood.
The failure of this “system” is that it isn’t a “system”. Every district; every neighborhood school has been structured on the premise that poor kids just need what rich kids have. Now, that would be a start. But they need something different. They need something more. They need support for the Whole Child and support for the Whole Family.
The answer isn’t to tear down our public schools that are working for the vast majority of students. The answer is to find those places where schools aren’t working and do something different. Something more. Preschool and after school programs to help parents who might be holding two or three part-time jobs to pay the rent; GED classes to help unemployed parents so that they can get better jobs that support their families; moving beyond mind-numbing standardized test labels to a world of Art and Music and Technology and Theater and Sports and Vocational Programs that make school interesting and relevant to kids who see their lives as going nowhere fast; more personalized education with smaller classes sizes; counselors and mentors to help parents understand what college might mean to family that never had a college graduate; access to health and dental care; something different; something more.
My friends from Norway were happy with their American schools. They were stunned to hear that I was slapped for suggesting that we had many excellent schools. But I also know that if they had lived in certain communities, they would not have been so happy. So there’s a worthy goal. I want my new Norwegian friends to be able to live in any American community and walk into any American public school and be able to say, as if it were obvious to anyone,
“We loved your schools. They cared about our children as individuals. They were wonderful.”
http://lilysblackboard.org/2011/01/the-folks-who-like-their-schools/
Friday, December 31, 2010
2010, the year poverty became nothing but an excuse
By Mike Klonsky.Educator, Author of "Small Schools: Public School Reform Meets the Ownership Society
"We don't use poverty as an excuse for low achievement." -- Springfield, Ill. School District 186 Superintendent Walter Milton, Jr.
2010 wasn't a very good year for public education -- or public anything, for that matter.
A so-far jobless economic recovery has seen a sharp rise in child poverty and with it, new barriers for schools, teachers and learners. It's a matter of fact that hungry and often homeless children aren't as successful in the classroom as those who are well fed, clad and housed.
The past year has seen a drying up of stimulus funds along with further erosion and selling off and privatization of public space, more public school closings and consolidations. Schools and classrooms are growing in size. Massive tuition increases at both private and public colleges and universities render a college education less accessible to working class families, cutting off one of the few remaining pathways to class mobility.
To make matters worse, the past year was marked by a sharp political swing to the right, with big victories for anti-tax Republicans in the mid-term elections. This swing was accompanied by new calls to stop "throwing money at" public education and for the poor to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. Sadly, education leaders within the Obama administration are echoing many of these calls and bending to right-wing pressures.
It was just about a year ago for example, that Education Secretary Arne Duncan began his "no excuses" campaign, announcing in the press that he had "no patience for teachers and schools" that tick off all the reasons why their poor or minority students can't score as high on standardized tests.
Duncan has chosen to ignore poverty's downward effect on test scores and focus entirely on what he calls "bad teachers" and "failing schools." Recently confronted by educators teaching in some of the nation's highest-poverty areas about the need to do something about the living conditions of their students, Duncan cynically responded, "poverty is not destiny."
His "no excuses" mantra, essentially blaming poor students and their teachers for low test results, is now being echoed by many governors, urban mayors and school administrators like Springfield's Milton, all hoping their compliance will somehow be rewarded with federal dollars from Duncan to fill the holes in their shrinking school budgets.
Child poverty has been on the climb in Milton's district and surrounding counties in central Illinois. "It's a sign of the times the past decade in rural American and rural Illinois," said Les Huddle, superintendent of the Jacksonville School District.
In nearby Morgan County, the growing poverty rate and personal financial hardships create a "less-than-stable learning environment for students at home," said Huddle, noting that the Jacksonville district's enrollment dropped by more than 350 students as job losses drove many families away.
Duncan's "lack of patience" has also been taken as a call for tax breaks for the rich, coupled with deep and widespread cuts in social services, public housing, and other anti-poverty measures. The entire burden of his Race To The Top reform has been placed on teachers and their unions, and narrowly focused on schools and on the classroom. In some urban districts, teachers' names are now being posted in the media next to their students' test scores, as if individual teachers are solely responsible for those scores. Inadequate accountability measures, such as value-added, are being pushed as alternatives to collective-bargaining agreements to determine which teachers are to be fired and how much those remaining are to be paid.
Meanwhile, the Washington Post reports that for the first time since the Education Department started counting, there are nearly a million homeless students in the United States. The Post reports that most drift with their families among motels, shelters and relatives' homes with a growing fraction living completely on their own, unparented, uninsured, ill-fed and surviving by their own devices.
Fairfax (VA) one of only two counties in the nation with median household incomes above $100,000, counts nearly 2,000 homeless students in its school division - about 200 of whom are..."unaccompanied." The latter figure is twice what the comparable figure was two years ago, a surge reflected nationally as the faltering economy has undermined many families. (WaPo)
With a surge in family poverty and a growing homeless student population, public school systems are under even more stress and are being turned into beggars. Schools have increasingly been forced to take on the role a welfare provider, both on and off campus, with few of the necessary resources, personnel, or skill sets.
The notion that rising unemployment, declining real wages, and a shocking increase in family poverty are mere "excuses," with little or no impact on student learning, is unworthy of our nation's top school leaders. It tells me that current school reform policies have little to do with sound social or educational research, but instead are ideologically or politically (in the worst sense) driven. In this political environment, Duncan's chants of "poverty is not destiny" sound downright pollyannish and even cruel in light of current conditions and his own policies.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-klonsky-phd/the-year-they-begain-call_b_801931.html?ref=fb&src=sp#sb=989597,b=facebook
"We don't use poverty as an excuse for low achievement." -- Springfield, Ill. School District 186 Superintendent Walter Milton, Jr.
2010 wasn't a very good year for public education -- or public anything, for that matter.
A so-far jobless economic recovery has seen a sharp rise in child poverty and with it, new barriers for schools, teachers and learners. It's a matter of fact that hungry and often homeless children aren't as successful in the classroom as those who are well fed, clad and housed.
The past year has seen a drying up of stimulus funds along with further erosion and selling off and privatization of public space, more public school closings and consolidations. Schools and classrooms are growing in size. Massive tuition increases at both private and public colleges and universities render a college education less accessible to working class families, cutting off one of the few remaining pathways to class mobility.
To make matters worse, the past year was marked by a sharp political swing to the right, with big victories for anti-tax Republicans in the mid-term elections. This swing was accompanied by new calls to stop "throwing money at" public education and for the poor to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. Sadly, education leaders within the Obama administration are echoing many of these calls and bending to right-wing pressures.
It was just about a year ago for example, that Education Secretary Arne Duncan began his "no excuses" campaign, announcing in the press that he had "no patience for teachers and schools" that tick off all the reasons why their poor or minority students can't score as high on standardized tests.
Duncan has chosen to ignore poverty's downward effect on test scores and focus entirely on what he calls "bad teachers" and "failing schools." Recently confronted by educators teaching in some of the nation's highest-poverty areas about the need to do something about the living conditions of their students, Duncan cynically responded, "poverty is not destiny."
His "no excuses" mantra, essentially blaming poor students and their teachers for low test results, is now being echoed by many governors, urban mayors and school administrators like Springfield's Milton, all hoping their compliance will somehow be rewarded with federal dollars from Duncan to fill the holes in their shrinking school budgets.
Child poverty has been on the climb in Milton's district and surrounding counties in central Illinois. "It's a sign of the times the past decade in rural American and rural Illinois," said Les Huddle, superintendent of the Jacksonville School District.
In nearby Morgan County, the growing poverty rate and personal financial hardships create a "less-than-stable learning environment for students at home," said Huddle, noting that the Jacksonville district's enrollment dropped by more than 350 students as job losses drove many families away.
Duncan's "lack of patience" has also been taken as a call for tax breaks for the rich, coupled with deep and widespread cuts in social services, public housing, and other anti-poverty measures. The entire burden of his Race To The Top reform has been placed on teachers and their unions, and narrowly focused on schools and on the classroom. In some urban districts, teachers' names are now being posted in the media next to their students' test scores, as if individual teachers are solely responsible for those scores. Inadequate accountability measures, such as value-added, are being pushed as alternatives to collective-bargaining agreements to determine which teachers are to be fired and how much those remaining are to be paid.
Meanwhile, the Washington Post reports that for the first time since the Education Department started counting, there are nearly a million homeless students in the United States. The Post reports that most drift with their families among motels, shelters and relatives' homes with a growing fraction living completely on their own, unparented, uninsured, ill-fed and surviving by their own devices.
Fairfax (VA) one of only two counties in the nation with median household incomes above $100,000, counts nearly 2,000 homeless students in its school division - about 200 of whom are..."unaccompanied." The latter figure is twice what the comparable figure was two years ago, a surge reflected nationally as the faltering economy has undermined many families. (WaPo)
With a surge in family poverty and a growing homeless student population, public school systems are under even more stress and are being turned into beggars. Schools have increasingly been forced to take on the role a welfare provider, both on and off campus, with few of the necessary resources, personnel, or skill sets.
The notion that rising unemployment, declining real wages, and a shocking increase in family poverty are mere "excuses," with little or no impact on student learning, is unworthy of our nation's top school leaders. It tells me that current school reform policies have little to do with sound social or educational research, but instead are ideologically or politically (in the worst sense) driven. In this political environment, Duncan's chants of "poverty is not destiny" sound downright pollyannish and even cruel in light of current conditions and his own policies.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-klonsky-phd/the-year-they-begain-call_b_801931.html?ref=fb&src=sp#sb=989597,b=facebook
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