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Poverty isn’t just about money

December 16, 2011 By
If I was a poor black kid, I’d work hard in school and use technology to succeed, writes Gene Marks, a middle-class white man, in a Forbes column that’s angered and annoyed  many people.
Being poor is a lot harder than middle-class people think, responds Megan McArdle in The Atlantic. She lists the many reasons why poor black kids don’t just work, study, log in to Google Scholar and get ahead.
Number 14 is that not everyone likes school. She quotes Orwell in The Road to Wigan Pier:

The time was when I used to lament over quite imaginary pictures of lads of fourteen dragged protesting from their lessons and set to work at dismal jobs. It seemed to me dreadful that the doom of a ‘job’ should descend upon anyone at fourteen. Of course I know now that there is not one working-class boy in a thousand who does not pine for the day when he will leave school. He wants to be doing real work, not wasting his time on ridiculous rubbish like history and geography. To the working class, the notion of staying at school till you are nearly grown-up seems merely contemptible and unmanly.

People for whom school us fun have made “education a virtual pre-requisite for a stable and well paying job,”  McArdle writes. People who don’t like school and aren’t good at it can choose between a career as a fry cook or dealing drugs.

In another post, McArdle takes on the idea that more and better jobs would create “education parents” in low-income communities.

Poverty isn’t just about not having “the same stuff” as the middle class (education, a marriage license, a home), McArdle writes. It’s about the choices people make. And those choices are affected by generational poverty and by bad decisions made at a young age, such as unprotected sex with an unreliable male or dropping out of school. But they’re choices.

 A middle class parent after a long and crappy day at work struggles to deal with the kid’s school because other parents expect it, because they were raised to treasure education, and because people will work harder to avoid loss (a kid who drops out of the middle class) than to achieve gains (a kid who makes it into the middle class).  Also, that middle class job probably isn’t as miserable as changing diapers on Alzheimer’s patients, or cleaning houses, so you have more psychic energy to spare.

Or you can blame a “sick culture” or personal laziness, as some conservatives do–at some level, it doesn’t matter.  Poor people are actually choosing not to hassle with their kid’s school.  It’s a real choice that they have made.  There is no reason to assume that you will be able to override it if you just get the policy levers in the right position.

Higher-wage jobs enable people to earn more money, which solves some problems, she writes. But it’s not so easy to change people. And it would be “pretty creepy” if we could tweak a policy here and there to “remake people into something more to the liking of bourgeois taxpayers.”

 

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If poverty is destiny, what about Maine?

December 14, 2011 By

If the education crisis is all about poverty, what about Maine? Maine is a poor state — especially for blacks — yet graduation rates are high, writes Michael Holzman on Dropout Nation. Some 84 percent of black males in Maine complete high school compared to 89 percent of white males. Nationwide, 49 percent of black males and 73 percent of white males earn a diploma. That means those low-income blacks in Maine are outperforming the national average for whites by a healthy margin.

Of course, there aren’t many blacks in Maine. They’re not concentrated in inferior schools, writes Holzman.

 They attend the same schools as their white peers, have the same teachers, and must meet the same expectations. They are not herded into “drop-out factories” and expected to fail.

I’d guess ghetto culture hasn’t taken root in Maine. We drove up there  in late September to meet our future son-in-law’s family, who live way up north in potato-and-moose country. The week after we were there, his grandmother shot a moose. There was talk of serving it at the rehearsal dinner, but it was an old, tough moose which apparently requires injecting pig lard and cooking for several days to be edible. So maybe not.

 

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The education gospel and its heretics

November 25, 2011 By

Education is as close as the U.S. gets to a secular religion, writes Steven Brint in the Los Angeles Review of Books.  “In a time when Americans have lost faith in their government and economic institutions, millions of us still believe in its saving grace,” writes Brint, a UC-Riverside sociology professor.

The American education gospel is built around four core beliefs. First, it teaches that access to higher levels of education should be available to everyone, regardless of their background or previous academic performance. Every educational sinner should have a path to redemption (most of these paths now run through the community colleges). Second, the gospel teaches that opportunity for a better life is the goal of everyone and that education is the primary — and perhaps the only — road to opportunity. Third, it teaches that the country can solve its social problems — drugs, crime, poverty, and the rest — by providing more education to the poor. Education instills the knowledge, discipline, and the habits of life that lead to personal renewal and social mobility. And, finally, it teaches that higher levels of education for all will reduce social inequalities, as they will put everyone on a more equal footing. No wonder President Obama and Bill Gates want the country to double its college graduation rate over the next 10 years.

Brint looks at books by education heretics: Education, edited by Feliciy Allen; What Is Education?, by Philip W. Jackson; Class Dismissed: Why We Cannot Teach or Learn Our Way Out of Inequality by John Marsh; and In the Basement of the Ivory Tower: Confessions of an Accidental Academic by Professor X.

Brint calls the leading heresy  “the new restrictionism.” It argues that open access to higher education has flooded colleges and universities with unprepared, unmotivated students who spend all their energy texting, tweeting and “facebooking,” rather than studying.  Colleges must dumb down the curriculum and offer easy A’s to keep tuition flowing.

Professor X, who teaches writing at a community college and an unselective four-year college, sees students going into debt in pursuit of a degree of dubious utility that they probably won’t complete.

We don’t like to admit that one student may be smarter, sharper, harder working, better prepared, more energetic, more painstaking — simply, a better student — than another … Our quest to provide universally level playing fields has made us reluctant to keep score.

“Romantic” heretics argue that schooling crushes the spirit. The “fools’ gold” heretics challenge the idea that education leads to social progress. “True educators” don’t care about changing society. They want to transform individuals.

Like Brint, I think the education gospel’s strongest challenge will come from heretics who say college should be reserved for academically competent, motivated students. Even the gospel’s crusaders, led by President Obama, are talking about a year of “postsecondary education” –  job training — for all, not a bachelor’s degree for all, though they want to push more people to an associate or bachelor’s degree as well.

Failure rates are sky-high at open-admissions colleges and universities. In New York City, taxpayers shell out $17,700 (including federal and state financial aid) for every community college dropout, according to a new report. And only 28 percent of students complete a degree in six years. The community colleges with the highest student success rates are technical colleges, which specialize in job training, usually at the certificate level.  The two-year, for-profit career colleges also have strong completion rates, despite recruiting high-risk students. Everyone can benefit from college — if we define job training as “college.”

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Schools need better parents

November 21, 2011 By

Schools need good teachers — and better parents, writes New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. “Parents more focused on their children’s education can also make a huge difference in a student’s achievement,” he writes.

Surprise!

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has data to back up common sense.  Students whose parents often read books with them during their first year of primary school earned much higher test scores at age 15.

(Andres) Schleicher explained to me that “just asking your child how was their school day and showing genuine interest in the learning that they are doing can have the same impact as hours of private tutoring. It is something every parent can do, no matter what their education level or social background.”

Reading, telling stories and talking with children raise scores more than just playing, the study found.

Not all parental involvement affects academic performance to the same degree, agrees a study by the National School Boards Association’s Center for Public Education.

“Monitoring homework; making sure children get to school; rewarding their efforts and talking up the idea of going to college. These parent actions are linked to better attendance, grades, test scores, and preparation for college,” (Patte) Barth wrote. “The study found that getting parents involved with their children’s learning at home is a more powerful driver of achievement than parents attending P.T.A. and school board meetings, volunteering in classrooms, participating in fund-raising, and showing up at back-to-school nights.”

OK, we already knew this. What we don’t know — and should be trying to figure out — is how to help poorly educated parents support their children’s learning at home and in school.

 

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Do we spend too much on education?

August 25, 2011 By

Do Americans spend too much on education? asks the New York Times‘ Room for Debate.

Americans are spending more and more on education, but the resulting credentials — a high-school diploma and college degrees — seem to be losing value in the labor market.

Americans who go to college are triply hurt by this. First, as taxpayers: state and federal education budgets have ballooned since the 1950s. Second, as consumers: the average college student spends $17,000 a year on school, and those with loans graduate more than $23,000 in debt. And third, as a worker: in 1970, an applicant with a college degree was among an elite 11 percent, but now almost 3 in 10 adults have a degree.

Several debaters kick around the question: Does college pay? Others asks whether the traditional comprehensive high school pays.

Sandra Stotsky, professor of education reform at the University of Arkansas, calls for tailoring K-12 education to students’ interests.

Other developed countries offer adolescents a choice of curricula. Finland, for example, offers all students leaving ninth grade — the end of compulsory schooling — the option of attending a three-year general studies high school or a three-year vocational high school, with about 50 percent of each age cohort enrolling in each type of high school. The “comprehensive” American high school has outlived its usefulness, but our policy makers have chosen to weaken its academic goals and ignore its career-forming capacity rather than serve the diversity of adolescent interests, talents and needs in grades 9 through 12 — at a much greater cost to the students, their families and society

Middlebury Psychology Professor Barbara Hofer wants to reallocate time and money.

High school degrees offer far less in the way of preparation for work than they might, or than many other nations currently offer, creating a growing skills gap in our economy. We encourage students to go on to college whether they are prepared or not, or have a clear sense of purpose or interest, and now have the highest college dropout rate in the world.

We might look to other counties (like Germany, Finland or Denmark) for models of how high schools can offer better training, as well as the development of a work ethic and the intellectual skills needed for continued learning and development. I recommend Harvard’s 2011 “Pathways to Prosperity” report for more attention to this persistence of the “forgotten half” (those who do not go on to college) and ideas about how to address this issue.

“Spending on K-12 schools, adjusted for inflation and enrollment growth, has roughly tripled over the last 50 years, yet there is little solid evidence that today’s students are better prepared for work and citizenship than their grandparents were — and even some evidence that they are less so,” writes Richard Vedder, director of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity and an Ohio University economist.

 

Filed Under: Careers, College, Education Tagged With: , , , , ,

College grads start at $36,000

August 3, 2011 By

One year after earning a bachelor’s degree, the average employed graduate earns $36,000. The average lifetime value of a college degree is $570,000 on an average $102,000 investment, estimates Brookings’ Hamilton Project. The field makes a big difference: A degree in engineering can add $1 million in earnings over a lifetime while a degree in education can add $241,000, conclude Georgetown researchers.

Also on Community College Spotlight: A Tennessee college is training chemical workers for a huge new German-owned plant.

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A caste rises through education, trade

September 13, 2010 By

Southern India’s lower-caste Nadars, once only a step above untouchables, are now well-educated business leaders, reports the New York Times.

. . .  southern India has rocketed far ahead of much of the rest of the country on virtually every score — people here earn more money, are better educated, live longer lives and have fewer children.

Why? Southern India’s lower castes concentrated on education and business, while northern India’s castes worked for “political power and its spoils.”

Charismatic leaders in the north from lower castes have used caste identity as a way to mobilize voters, winning control over several large north Indian states.

Lower castes in southern India began fighting upper-caste domination a century ago, before independence from the British. Gaining political power wasn’t an option, so the Nadars focused on “dignity, education and self-reliance.”

Nadars created business associations to provide entrepreneurs with credit they could not get from banks. They started charities to pay for education for poor children. They built their own temples and marriage halls to avoid upper caste discrimination.

“Our community focused on education, not politics,” said R. Chandramogan, a Nadar entrepreneur who built India’s largest privately owned dairy company. “We knew that with education, we could accomplish anything.”

Filed Under: Culture, Education Tagged With: , , , , ,

Obama on education

February 25, 2009 By

Education was the “third challenge” in Barack Obama’s speech last night. He’s for it.

There was the usual nod to the global knowledge economy: “We know the countries that out-teach us today will out-compete us tomorrow.” He promised “access to a complete and competitive education” to every child from birth to first job. Then there was the one-two punch: More money for programs and more money for reforms.

We’ve dramatically expanded early childhood education and will continue to improve its quality, because we know that the most formative learning comes in those first years of life. We’ve made college affordable for nearly seven million more students — seven million. (Applause.) And we have provided the resources necessary to prevent painful cuts and teacher layoffs that would set back our children’s progress.

But we know that our schools don’t just need more resources. They need more reform. (Applause.) That is why this budget creates new teachers — new incentives for teacher performance; pathways for advancement, and rewards for success. We’ll invest in innovative programs that are already helping schools meet high standards and close achievement gaps. And we will expand our commitment to charter schools. (Applause.)

(Applause was not universal: Check out Edspresso’s How do I react? for the photo of Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi.)

Obama asked young Americans to commit to at least one year of college or career training after high school.  He offered tuition aid to those who “volunteer in your neighborhood” or in the military. If the Kennedy-Hatch bill, which he touted, is the guide, that doesn’t mean the feds will offer college aid only to those who’ve served in some way.

Education stimulus money won’t be distributed based on need, reports Education Week.

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Education vs. unemployment

February 9, 2009 By

More Americans are jobless. The unemployment rate is 3.8 percent for college graduates, 6.2 percent for those with some college or a two-year degree, 8 percent for high school graduates and 12 percent for drop-outs.

The numbers show the importance of postsecondary education, writes Eduwonk.

Joblessness is rising for every group, counters Sherman Dorn. The link between education and employment hasn’t changed significantly.

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Stimulus and strings

January 21, 2009 By

Schools will receive an extra $142 billion over two years in the $825 billion stimulus bill, reports USA Today.  Strings include:

• High-quality educational tests.

• Ways to recruit and retain top teachers in hard-to-staff schools.

• Longitudinal data systems that let schools track long-term progress.

On Swift & Change Able, Charles Barone, a former congressonal staffer, analyzes the potential to use the extra money to fund change — or more of the same.

For example, states promise that funds will be used “to improve assessments, more efficiently collect data, and equalize the distribution of qualified teachers,” he writes. But states already have made those “assurances.”

All they will have to do is copy and paste language from their old plans and re-submit them.

This means that with all the complaints we have heard about current assessment systems (the responsibility for which lies solely with the states) and the inequitable distribution of teachers (the responsibility for which lies with both schools and districts) and the promises for change, states and districts can take billions and billions in new federal education dollars and do more or less on these issues exactly what they are doing now.

He’s got a lot more on the way to hand out money without creating a giant slush fund. A congressional committee starts the write- up today.


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