In the course of a long post explaining that poor children are educationally doomed, Valerie Strauss says:
…we need to accept this reality: The strongest predictor of student success in school has long been family income and parents’ education level. So we can applaud and shower with attention the students and teachers and schools that beat the odds, but it’s a bad idea to pretend that the exceptions are anything but exceptions.
New statistics released by the Census Bureau this week show that three out of 10 children in the nation’s capital were living in poverty last year, with the number of poor African American children rising at a breathtaking rate.
Among black children in the city, childhood poverty shot up to 43 percent, from 36 percent in 2008 and 31 percent in 2007. That was a much sharper increase than the two percentage-point jump, to 36 percent, among poor black children nationwide last year.
Does this affect the city’s public school system?
You bet it does, even if D.C. Schools Superintendent Michelle Rhee likes to say that it is just an “excuse.”
In addition to more students being poor, it’s probably safe to assume that most students who were poor in 2007 are even more poor now. There’s no doubt that the recession has been terrible for economically distressed families in Washington, DC. So, naturally, given the Straussian theory of economic determinism in education, there must have been a corresponding decline in student performance in DC from 2007 to 2009.
Instead, the opposite happened. The rate of black fourth graders in DC scoring above Basic on the NAEP math exam increased from 45 to 50 percent. For low-income students, the rate increased from 43 to 48 percent. Both increases were statistically significant. For low-income 8th graders, 28 to 34 percent. For black 8th graders, 31 to 36 percent. 4th grade reading? 29 to 35 percent for low-income students, 33 to 37 percent for black students. (8th grade reading scores increased too, although not at statistically significant level.)
In other words, Michelle Rhee said poverty was no excuse for her own performance, and then delivered.
The Answer Sheet, meanwhile, continues to be a kind of perfect, unfiltered expression of education policy revanchism.
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These children stand a less chance in high academic achievement than middle class and the rich. First of all, poor parents cannot provide the proper tools to help their children to succeed in life, due to the lack of resources. secondly, these poor communities lack in role models who will provide these children with a sense of hope and pride. Finally, most people do not have respect for poor black people and most often they are treated as if they are subhuman, which makes them feel inferior. It is amazing when a child is able to prevail against the odds.
Assuming that residents did, in fact, become more poor during that time period, I’m still failing to see what the test score gain proves.
Poor kids can learn? We already knew that.
There’s not a 1:1 relationship between income and test scores? We already knew that.
There was room for improvement in DC schools? We already knew that.
But it in no way proves that poverty doesn’t impact students or schools (I don’t think that’s what you’re arguing, but I didn’t really see any explicit argument in the post). The relationship between poverty and academic performance is complex. Income is but one factor that influences academic performance, so we wouldn’t expect short-term changes in income to be perfectly correlated with changes in academic performance. And there’s zero evidence that growing up in poverty means a child absolutely will not succeed in school no matter what happens. So even if we assume that test scores are a perfect proxy for academic performance, the news that students in a poor, urban area raised their test scores a bit during a recession really sheds little light on the relationship between poverty and education.
If poor children aren’t capable of learning, then I see no reason to make them sit through academic lessons. Let them play, draw pictures, dance and sing to help pass the time. They could be supervised by aides, saving money to pay for more teachers for middle-class children.
However, if it’s possible for low-SES children to learn reading, writing, math, history and science, then I think we have an obligation to provide good teachers, solid curriculum and safe, orderly schools. Most will not catch up to high-SES children. But they have the potential to do a lot better and we don’t know how much better till we try.
That TNR article is right on the money.
I imagine Strauss was indicating that if the recent rise in poverty proves durable, it will have bad long-term consequences for DC kids.
And if you’ve read the column, you know her real argument is not that poor kids are “doomed” but this:
“This isn’t to say that schools can’t make some difference in some circumstances, and that they should get a pass for failing to try. It is not to say that lousy teachers should be allowed to stay in classrooms.
But we need to accept this reality: The strongest predictor of student success in school has long been family income and parents’ education level.”
Strauss said that the sharp increase in poverty will “affect the city’s public schools system.” What do you think she meant by that, if not that it would make it more difficult for children to learn?
I understand you find it frustrating to have someone makes Strauss’ argument. Especially when the whole point of the Waiting-for-Superman-Education-Nation onslaught was to make it unacceptable in polite company to mention poverty as a cause of low educational achievement. But when you find yourself inventing a whole new argument and attributing it to someone before bravely knocking it down, that’s a really good sign you have nothing persuasive to say. Strauss did not say or even hint that she believes children’s educational achievement is sensitive to short-term changes in family income, and frankly it’s hard to imagine that you even believe that she thinks that.
Moreover, the increased number of low-income families is likely to lead to the higher test scores for low-income kids you describe. What that means is a whole lot of 2009 low-income kids are in families that were NOT low-income two years ago, and likely have parents with higher average educational attainment. Essentially the 2009 low-income sample will include fewer long-term poor families, and so slightly higher test scores are not really surprising.
Not one of your finer efforts…..
No, actually, the “Straussian theory of economic determinism in education” as you so sarcastically put it, says nothing of the kind. Poor children getting more poor does not mean their poor performance on standardized tests will get correspondingly poorer. I’ve seen no one, Ms. Strauss or otherwise, suggest this.
And I notice that the suggestion that one lay off the ad hominem attacks, per Hess, is not being followed by Mr. Carey? How unfortunate.
I wouldn’t be so sure poverty increased in Washington, D.C. during this period 2007-2009.
The city’s demographics are changing and there has been plenty of federal spending in the area recently
D.C.’s economy doesn’t necessarily track the US economy.
Of course poverty is an issue. That’s the wrong debate. NOBODY is claiming poverty isn’t an issue.
The real question: How do educators and our educational system respond? Strauss implies that students’ educational fate is pre-determined and we should just accept it. I disagree.
Kevin has written more about this: http://www.tnr.com/article/education-the-wrong-track-6
Yet the gap remains. Maybe poverty is an issue.
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