Some critics of the current wave of education reform focus on the simplistic argument that the real problem with our education system is poverty. For example, see this article by Valerie Strauss a while back. For me, this battle between the “It’s poverty stupid” camp and the education reform camp has grown tiresome, and it is time to change this discussion to one on how best to break the vicious cycle of poverty.
Of course we all know that poverty is one of the strongest predictors of educational attainment. If there were no children raised in poverty, then our system’s educational outcomes would be better (likely top in the world), and this would ensure that the next generation would also not face poverty. So, if you could solve poverty for one generation, then you could likely solve it forever.
The problem is that there is a vicious cycle that links educational outcomes, poverty, and incarceration. If your parents are poor or incarcerated at some point in their lives, it is much more likely that you will end up poor and incarcerated at some point in your life. Unfortunately my sense is that this linkage is true whether you received government assistance to soften the impacts of poverty or not (although this is an important empirical question that needs to be answered).
This issue of intergenerational impacts is strongest among black males and it is getting worse. It is un-American to talk about this intergenerational impact because it goes against the work-hard and everyone can achieve American dream philosophy. A special issue of Daedalus addresses the topic of incarceration including its relationship to educational attainment.
This figure from one of the papers shows that in 2008, 37 percent of black male high school dropouts were incarcerated. By age 30-34, over two-thirds of black males without a high school diploma have been incarcerated at some point in their lives. And, given that less than half of black males graduate from high school, well you can do the math. And, once someone is incarcerated, the probability of employment is low, much less a job paying above the poverty line. According to this paper, less than 30 percent of black men without high school diplomas between 20-34 were employed. So, low educational attainment leads to incarceration and future poverty resulting in poverty for the next generation which leads to low educational attainment, and so on.
How do you break this cycle?
The question for policymakers is to determine where to attack this problem, and break this cycle? There are potential opportunities in each relevant policy area – education reform, changes in criminal justice, broader social service policies… To my knowledge, there is not research that tells us which of these areas is likely to be most effective at breaking the cycle. I would argue that it is at least feasible that for students currently living in poverty, education is the best opportunity to break this cycle (This is one of the reasons that I decided to work on education policy instead of another area of government services). Just getting a black male through high school would correlate with a 75 percent reduction in the propabilty of ending up incarcertated.
And in a world with limited resources, education could likely be the most cost effective place to start. These investments need to start with a quality preschool program (see recent post on new efforts to improve Head Start quality). It also includes many of the reforms that are currently being debated like efforts to improve teacher effectiveness, accountability, changing expectations, no excuses reforms… Does poverty make it more difficult for students to succeed? Yes. But, is education a better investment to break the cycle of poverty than any other alternatives? That is the debate that we should be having. Let that debate begin.
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John Thompson, please contact me for further discussion. It seems to me that everyone is overlooking the elephant in the room – generational incarceration. Kids w/ parents in prison live in two cultures which often causes a negative impact on the culture of the school they attend. Where do you think sagging pants came from – kids emulating their parents who were in prison. Our nation has pretty much ignored the needs of these students to feel safe; allowing them to view themselves as keepers of a BIG SECRET that defines them as a person (child). We are not helping them navigate through these two cultures but instead demonizing the prison culture where their parent(s) live and pushing them toward it by reacting in punitive ways when they act out from the terrors experienced at home (such as seeing their parent arrested). Unless there is intervention for the children, and a nationwide push to turn prisons into healing centers so that people come out of prison more functional rather than more dysfunctional (as is our current trend), we can only expect to see our schools continue declining. MUCH more research and effort is needed in this ares!
I am going to disagree with John on this: “We should face facts that the slow, hard, frustrating work at improving schools is the only thing we know how to do.”
I do not believe we do. American consistently education low on lists of national priorities, and it shows. We, as country, just don’t know how to improve our schools, and, we aren’t committed to putting in the frustrating, hard work to do so.
Creativity (ironically) in administrating and teaching is not encouraged. Students are bored (49%), apathetic, feel disrespected (66%); only 45% feel teachers care that whether the student is absent (survey here: http://millionvoice.org/downloads/MVP_Preliminary_Results.pdf)
Until Americans rank “Education” as a top priority– along side national security and employment (in which, of course, education is, like poverty, is linked intergenerationally)– we are just mucking about the fringes. Charter schools? There are more homeschoolers than charter school students! (you want parent involvement, small community schools, tailored curricula, and creative teaching and learning not driven by standardized tests? That is what homeschooling is now delivering) Longer school hours? When 49% of students feel bored? Ravitch recommends all students learn musical instruments. Great, but inconsequential to this debate.
Until we demand Harlem School Zone level funding and commitment from entire neighborhoods across the country, we are looking at another lost generation.
Robert,
Ravaitch has a coherent alternative – she doesn’t have a transformative alternative. She is much too subtle to believe in a golden age. She wants poor kids to have the same opportunities as more fortunate Baby Boomers and affluent kids today. She wants us to a) learn from experience (like she did) and stop going down the path that has had minimal effects for the poor and which may have actually hurt poor kids at the cost of tens of billions of dollars; and b) get to work on INCREMENTAL improvements. We should face facts that the slow, hard, frustrating work at improving schools is the only thing we know how to do. (By the way, Gerald Bracey’s reading of research made the strong case, repeated today by Nancy Flanagan, that the entire system isn’t broken. We just don’t yet know how to systematicallu undo the effects of generational poverty)
I’ll admit that I didn’t want to like Linda Darling Hammond’s book because her approaches sound too much like the old traditional liberal beliefs that I’ve always held, and I’m searching for something better. But a) maybe old-fashioned, tolerant, liberal, cobbled-together reforms is the worst of all systems – except for all of the rest. Being a former historian, I could write another book on the internal contradictions and limitations of the old New Deal/Fair Deal/Great Society good ol boy system of reform. But dang, it worked for seventy years and created the most affluent fairest democracy in history. And b) Hammonds and Ravitch point out that those ugly, incremental reforms worked better in the 70s than we remember. They sure worked better than any of the data-DRIVEN “reforms” of the last two decades. .
Three times you ask for research for my approaches, but I note that you didn’t ask for research on the failures of the last twenty years.
My “answer” is that there is no answer and we need to a) reduce mistakes, and b) concentrate on “blocking and tackling, and c) somehow create a system of “team players.” For instance, I agree with Justin Cohen about the importance of middle management but I want them to “play their own position,” to focus on their own blocking and tackling and not telling people in the classroom how to play their positions. I support a reasonable number of turnarounds. We can afford to gamble a few billion on them, but we shouldn’t race ahead and take the risk of further poor damaging schools by replicating those few turnarounds. I’m assuming – not proving, but assuming – that many great lessons will come out of those turnarounds and when you empower turnaround leaders some will use that power and help kids and that others will abuse power and make things worse.
I’ll continue to contribute research, but this is the level where I’ll probably be thinking about it. I’m a consumer of research who has practical experience with the blocking and tackling of instruction. I have no magic wand that lets me determine what nobody else has determined – which research is definitive. I can “post hole” down into my personal experiences to help determine how much trust I have in research. I’m going to continue to subjectively seek research-based solutions. BUT the real bang-for-the-buck is avoiding mistakes, and I’m always going to be more confident in research the documents how and why past efforts have failed than in research into transformative change.
Please, notice the the soltuions I advocate, even though their research base is somewhat thin – have little downsides. If community schools do meet the tougher challenge of increase college graduation rates as much as I like, they would still reduce diabetes, heart attacks, obesity rates, etc. If we can do more than show poor kids the respect of inviting them into the rousing give and take of the liberals arts schooling that I enjoyed, have we caused harm? If we restore dance and PE, and field trips, and offer opportunities for inter-generational communication, and we don’t have transformative outcomes, we still have caused no harm.
Reading the LA Times today – about something that you know more about than I do – I saw an obvious compromise. Go with the proposal to lay off teachers at the same rate at all schools, protect the 45 schools as much as in practical, and in return, put test scores for evaluation purposes on the back burner. How about making a deal on something that you, the ACLU, and the LAUD understand, and back off from something that is incredibly dangerous that nobody understands?
John, I appreciate your comments, and your continual call it like you see it attitude. But, let’s turn this around for a minute. For example, I am completely aware of Ravitch’s criticism of the current approach to education reform, but I have not seen her provide a coherent alternative. Her alternative or lack there of seems to be a let’s return power to local decision makers and it will all work out. She seems to have a let’s go back to the golden era of education which we know may have been golden for middle class kids, but has never been golden for students in poverty. Show me the research that supports that approach.
You throw out the concept of community schools, and I find the idea appealing. In fact, I am starting to get involved in this type of effort locally. But I find it equally lacking in a research foundation as charter schools. Clearly there are some very successful case study examples like the Children Aid Society in NYC. But, there is not a research base to support it. This does not mean that I do not support this type of experimentation, just that it is exactly that an experiment that may or may not work.
This brings me back to the question that I raised, what is the best method to break the cycle of poverty. Show me the research. thanks
I agree with Bethany. We must have some programs for parents to learn how to manage their children effectively. We also need to teach day care providers about positive guidance teaching methods. So many day care centers hire completely unskilled young women who have no idea how to take care of a toddler or a two year old. They tend to treat the children like they’re dogs. They’ll slap the child’s hand and say, “No!!” and that’s about it when it comes to guidance. If the parents are taught about positive guidance techniques and the day care providers taught their staff how to deal with the children, then these kids would be better prepared for kindergarten. Even some of the Head Start preschools are staffed by women who don’t know anything about positive guidance techniques. They’ll teach by instinct and they will scare the children into submission by making verbal threats and menacing facial and body expressions. They know that they’ll get fired if they get caught hitting the child, so they terrorize the children in other ways in order to control them. Anyone dealing with birth to four age children need to be knowledgable about positive guidance techniques and they need to understand children’s social and emotional development. This knowledge is neccesary to raise a confident and curious child who is ready and eager to take on the challenge of school
What is happening here? I used to read your posts for information but now they read like Kevin Carey’s or Matt Lauer’s. You completely misrespresented Strauss’ post. Have you now joined “reformers” in concluding that social science is too tiresome to read?
Contrary to your post, Strauss was doing what you call for, debating the educational approachs necessary to increase the graduation rate. Contrary to your implication, Strauss uses a large body of social science to debate for a better way to increase teacher effectiveness. If you want to join the knownothingism that claims that “accountability, changing expectations, no excuses reforms …” can increase teacher effectineness, that’s fine. But you’re already whistling past the graveyard, seeming to realize that the evidence isn’t on your side.
I can understand why, because one of the experts you cite is David Berlinner, the scholar who has consistently demolished claims of succcess by accountability hawks.
Given limited resources, the best approach is found in Strauss’ approach. She cites Ravitch and the Casey Foundation that reported “Statistics tell this tale. Here are some from “Early Warning!: Why Reading by the End of Third Grade Matters,”
I’d be glad to show you individual kids that illustrate the realities of the inter-generational cycles that have wrecked urban schools. You could listen to them on why accountability-driven reform heads us down the wrong path. A large body of research – not to mention practical experience – says that building relationships is the key. Its the socio-EMOTIONAL stupid! (I’m not calling you stupid but just borrowing your trope)
Please reread your post and see how it supports Strauss’ arguments. Too many kids from too many families damaged by inter-generational poverty and incarceration, ill health etc. mean that too many kids haven’t been taught the emotional skills to succeed in school or the outside world, and the problem is magnified by severe concentrations of those problems. So, the educational answer is the opposite of “reform.” It is community schools. It is teams of adults. It is holistic education – the opposite of teach to the test. It is an engaging curriculum, the opposite of the curriculum narrowing encouraged by Rheeocrats. It is linking classroom instruction to the outside world, which again is the opposite of standardized test driven reform. It is getting kids out of the building and into the community and nature – another set of instituions destroyed by “reformers” who seem determined to squeez joy out of learning and teaching.
This debate has been going on for a long time. Or at least, this is what our side of the debate have been arguing. When you say “let the debate begin” I have to wonder if you are reading and listening to us. Frankly, i don’t know how Strauss, Ravitch, Berliner, the Casy Foundation (all cited by Strauss, and generations of scholars could be more clear. Pay attention to our evidence and arguments, not the PR talking points of the “reformers” mischaracterization of us.
I think education is probably the best bet, but I’d add that in order for education reforms to be successful for low-income students, you absolutely have to have the investment of the parents. Support services and programs that teach poor parents how to encourage their child’s growth and development are so instrumental in increasing the impact of education policy reform.
Like his Markham posts, Manwaring keeps shining light where many would rather not look. Far away from glitzy film premieres and Oprah lies horrific systemic failures in our education nation that do not get the attention they deserve.
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