[Xmca-l] Fwd: Does “Poverty” Cause Low Achievement?

Tue Oct 8 13:15:46 PDT 2013

The poverty.development conversation. Agai/still....  And obviously
relevant to long term XMCA concerns.
Mike

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: *EPI Newsflash*
Date: Tuesday, October 8, 2013
Subject: Does “Poverty” Cause Low Achievement?
To: mcole@ucsd.edu

    <http://link.email.dynect.net/link.php?H=tiMleQXvuhG3cVWUKKJFwgesMDniOk1P4g3yn%2FBx%2Fn%2BV24glLqFSFggA9rW3Tdq7sH6Mc%2BwfPSwL0%2BpXKkBDHiAb1AULA8v8&G=26&R=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.epi.org%2F&I=%3C20131008192402.0EC4070A137C%40mail6-08-ewr%3E&X=MHw1NjA0Nzo5YzZlOGVmZGQxNjk2Yjk1MDJjYWZiMDIxYWQ5M2I2Yjk3MWQ2MjFmOzF8NTYwNDg6MTI0MzM4Ow%3D%3D>
       From *Working
Economics<http://link.email.dynect.net/link.php?H=tiMleQXvuhG3cVWUKKJFwgesMDniOk1P4g3yn%2FBx%2Fn%2BV24glLqFSFggA9rW3Tdq7sH6Mc%2BwfPSwL0%2BpXKkBDHiAb1AULA8v8&G=26&R=http%3A%2F%2Fepi.org%2Fblog&I=%3C20131008192402.0EC4070A137C%40mail6-08-ewr%3E&X=MHw1NjA0Nzo5YzZlOGVmZGQxNjk2Yjk1MDJjYWZiMDIxYWQ5M2I2Yjk3MWQ2MjFmOzF8NTYwNDg6MTI0MzM4Ow%3D%3D>
*, the EPI Blog Does “Poverty” Cause Low
Achievement?<http://link.email.dynect.net/link.php?H=tiMleQXvuhG3cVWUKKJFwgesMDniOk1P4g3yn%2FBx%2Fn%2BV24glLqFSFggA9rW3Tdq7sH6Mc%2BwfPSwL0%2BpXKkBDHiAb1AULA8v8&G=26&R=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.epi.org%2Fblog%2Fpoverty-achievement%2F&I=%3C20131008192402.0EC4070A137C%40mail6-08-ewr%3E&X=MHw1NjA0Nzo5YzZlOGVmZGQxNjk2Yjk1MDJjYWZiMDIxYWQ5M2I2Yjk3MWQ2MjFmOzF8NTYwNDg6MTI0MzM4Ow%3D%3D>

by Richard Rothstein<http://link.email.dynect.net/link.php?H=tiMleQXvuhG3cVWUKKJFwgesMDniOk1P4g3yn%2FBx%2Fn%2BV24glLqFSFggA9rW3Tdq7sH6Mc%2BwfPSwL0%2BpXKkBDHiAb1AULA8v8&G=26&R=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.epi.org%2Fpeople%2Frichard-rothstein%2F&I=%3C20131008192402.0EC4070A137C%40mail6-08-ewr%3E&X=MHw1NjA0Nzo5YzZlOGVmZGQxNjk2Yjk1MDJjYWZiMDIxYWQ5M2I2Yjk3MWQ2MjFmOzF8NTYwNDg6MTI0MzM4Ow%3D%3D>

Washington, DC | *Oct 8, 2013*

On her “Bridging Differences” blog, educator Deborah
Meier<http://link.email.dynect.net/link.php?H=tiMleQXvuhG3cVWUKKJFwgesMDniOk1P4g3yn%2FBx%2Fn%2BV24glLqFSFggA9rW3Tdq7sH6Mc%2BwfPSwL0%2BpXKkBDHiAb1AULA8v8&G=26&R=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.edweek.org%2Fedweek%2FBridging-Differences%2F2013%2F10%2Fdemocracy_is_an_idea_not_a_rec.html&I=%3C20131008192402.0EC4070A137C%40mail6-08-ewr%3E&X=MHw1NjA0Nzo5YzZlOGVmZGQxNjk2Yjk1MDJjYWZiMDIxYWQ5M2I2Yjk3MWQ2MjFmOzF8NTYwNDg6MTI0MzM4Ow%3D%3D>began
a discussion with Mike
Petrilli of the Thomas B. Fordham
Institute<http://link.email.dynect.net/link.php?H=tiMleQXvuhG3cVWUKKJFwgesMDniOk1P4g3yn%2FBx%2Fn%2BV24glLqFSFggA9rW3Tdq7sH6Mc%2BwfPSwL0%2BpXKkBDHiAb1AULA8v8&G=26&R=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.edweek.org%2Fedweek%2FBridging-Differences%2F2013%2F10%2Fhas_the_left_lost_faith_in_upw.html&I=%3C20131008192402.0EC4070A137C%40mail6-08-ewr%3E&X=MHw1NjA0Nzo5YzZlOGVmZGQxNjk2Yjk1MDJjYWZiMDIxYWQ5M2I2Yjk3MWQ2MjFmOzF8NTYwNDg6MTI0MzM4Ow%3D%3D>
*, *on whether urging disadvantaged women to defer childbearing until they
had sufficient income (whether from work or marriage) to adequately support
their offspring would result in better outcomes for those children. This,
in turn, led to an extended discussion (not on the blog, but widely
circulated among some education policy experts and commentators by e-mail)
about whether alleviating poverty would raise student achievement, whether
alleviating poverty through tax reform or income redistribution might be
effective for that purpose, whether poor children in the United States have
worse outcomes than poor children in other countries, what the best way
might be to calculate poverty levels across countries, and whether school
reform in the absence of alleviating poverty can be significantly effective.

The shortcoming of this discussion is that because Americans are averse to
acknowledging the concept of social class and hold to a widely shared myth
of unrestricted mobility (that is less and less reflective of reality), we
tend to use the term “poverty” as a proxy for lower social class status.
This shortcut causes great mischief in educational policy. Lower class
children are not only characterized by having families with low current
money income; they also have a collection of interacting characteristics,
each of which affects the ability to learn.

Years ago, the Heritage Foundation published a report called *No
Excuses<http://link.email.dynect.net/link.php?H=tiMleQXvuhG3cVWUKKJFwgesMDniOk1P4g3yn%2FBx%2Fn%2BV24glLqFSFggA9rW3Tdq7sH6Mc%2BwfPSwL0%2BpXKkBDHiAb1AULA8v8&G=26&R=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.heritage.org%2Fresearch%2Freports%2F2000%2F04%2Fno-excuses-for-poor-children-not-to-learn-research-shows&I=%3C20131008192402.0EC4070A137C%40mail6-08-ewr%3E&X=MHw1NjA0Nzo5YzZlOGVmZGQxNjk2Yjk1MDJjYWZiMDIxYWQ5M2I2Yjk3MWQ2MjFmOzF8NTYwNDg6MTI0MzM4Ow%3D%3D>,
*by Samuel Casey Carter. Among others, one school it found enrolled a
majority of children who were eligible for subsidized lunches yet who still
had high achievement. According to the report, this (along with other,
equally flawed examples) proved that poverty is no bar to high achievement.
The school in question was in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and it turned out
that the students mostly had parents who were graduate students at Harvard
or MIT, whose stipends were low enough that their children were eligible
for the lunch program.

Of course, how much money a child’s parents earned last year (the qualifier
for the lunch program) does not itself impede learning. But poverty is a
good proxy, sometimes, for lower class status because it is so highly
associated with other characteristics of that status. Lower class families
have lower parental literacy levels, poorer health, more racial isolation,
less stable housing, more exposure to crime and other stresses, less access
to quality early childhood experiences, less access to good after school
programs (and less ability to afford these even if they did have access),
earlier childbearing and more frequent unwed childbearing, less security
that comes from stable employment, more exposure to environmental toxins
(e.g., lead) that diminish cognitive ability, etc. Each of these predicts
lower achievement for children, but none of these (including low income)
itself causes low achievement, and lower social class families don’t
necessarily have all of these characteristics, but they are likely to have
many of them. Sociologists used to define social class solely by assigning
a reputational status to a father’s occupation. That no longer is as
useful, but sometimes it might lead to less mischief than “poverty.”

Click here to read the full blog
post.<http://link.email.dynect.net/link.php?H=tiMleQXvuhG3cVWUKKJFwgesMDniOk1P4g3yn%2FBx%2Fn%2BV24glLqFSFggA9rW3Tdq7sH6Mc%2BwfPSwL0%2BpXKkBDHiAb1AULA8v8&G=26&R=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.epi.org%2Fblog%2Fpoverty-achievement%2F&I=%3C20131008192402.0EC4070A137C%40mail6-08-ewr%3E&X=MHw1NjA0Nzo5YzZlOGVmZGQxNjk2Yjk1MDJjYWZiMDIxYWQ5M2I2Yjk3MWQ2MjFmOzF8NTYwNDg6MTI0MzM4Ow%3D%3D>

###
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