Response
"Poverty Hinders Learning" Theory
Dear Mr. Fiedler:
It's been no secret for years to those who have examined the data that poor children, most of whom are minorities, have had the lowest student achievement in public schools, generating about $100 billion dollars extra through the Federal Chapter/Title One programs since 1965. The Herald (Marilyn Marks [11-13-94]) reported several years ago that black children are labeled outrageously out of proportion as mentally handicapped, bringing in even more, up to $3000/student. We venture the same holds true for most public school districts.
Professor Walter Tschinkel of Florida State University, using the data provided by the districts he examined, made a statistical correlation between poverty and low student achievement, and then went on to equate that correlation with causation. Correlation, however, does not equal causation. The reasons for the failure are complicated, subtle and political, and if we as a nation are to survive, we must understand and correct the situation.
To begin with, "school factors" are reported by the districts, and therefore are subject to verification and definition. One cannot take for granted that those reported as "teachers" possess either subject area expertise, are actually teaching anywhere near a full class load, or are not in fact out of the classroom over half the school year, allowing substitute teachers to take over.
Another reality not reported by the districts is that to become certified, a teacher needs six hours of methodology, but only limited grade level knowledge of subject matter. Candidates for certification have been allowed to take the test as often as needed to pass. Without those six hours and a passing grade on that test, an Albert Einstein would not be considered certified to teach in most public school systems. The law requires no minimum percentage of time teaching a full class load in order to be reported to the state as "instructional personnel". This, of course, affects student-teacher ratios in practice as opposed to statistical theory.
Parents will tell you what a large percentage of the school year their children spend with substitute teachers. After we began asking questions about the huge jumps in dollars spent on substitutes (from $3 million to $23 million in one year), Dade has refused for several years to disclose how much the district has spent since the early '90s. Most districts don't want anyone to see those figures.
Neither do graduate degrees guarantee teacher expertise. Too many teachers and administrators have taken courses given by schools which have allowed union leaders to dictate curricula and time needed on task. Many are not required to write theses and dissertations. One of our legislative priorities requires all degrees to be from accredited schools which have rigorous standards for such degrees, and all papers connected with them to be public record. We've seen enough weekend/mail order diploma recipients. There is quite a difference between the statistics reported and the reality of schools.
We've been told by rookie teachers of poverty-stricken students -both verbally and in writing- about physical violence inflicted upon children by principals down to longtime staff, about union stewards who promise investigations which never happen, and about what the systems refer to as "passing the trash" (transferring incompetent or otherwise un- acceptable personnel to schools with unempowered families). Union contracts and/or family and political ties make firing anyone almost impossible.
We see no evidence from what Professor Tschinkel wrote that educators' attitudes were taken into consideration to determine the "quality of schools". Unquantifiable in the sense that it does not fit neatly into the kind of statistical analysis he has done, it is one of the crucial reasons we have such abysmal gaps between the ethnicities in public schools. The lack of expectations comes from the top and infects the entire system.
We heard it for ourselves back on June 9, 1993 at a Dade School Board meeting. Lucy Margolis and I were speaking for IVBE at Public Hearing, and the issue was, as usual, lack of achievement among poor, minority students. We pointed out that there were programs proven to work for these children, that the gaps were unconscionable given that fact plus the billions districts had at their disposal.
A longtime member of the board really did say, "I think it is only fair if you compare our whites to whites and our Hispanics to Hispanics and not take--and our blacks to blacks, and not just take a national average, because the national average is composed of those three groups.. you are not comparing apples to apples, you are comparing apples to oranges."
The Chairperson then threw in the old red herring: "There is an assumption that we are not trying to teach our children to read, and we are working very hard to teach our children to read. The national tests are standardized on a group quite different from this school system... usually... on a national school population of around 70-75% non-minority whites... And for anyone to assume that people who are putting in a lifetime of long, hard effort on behalf of teaching children that they don't-- aren't devoted to that idea is to be unaware of the dedicated people in this school system."
They then went on to talk about how they've known which schools have had lots of transfer-out requests, named a few, and that was that. I took my time to express my outrage at the attitude that blacks and Hispanics couldn't be compared to whites, telling them that it was nauseating evidence of the "white man's burden" mindset which drives most of the old education establishment. Professor Nicholas Berry of Ursinus College wrote to tell us that he "... couldn't agree with the IVBE more." Professor Berry has written extensively in The Miami Herald about this subject.
There are curricula which work especially well with disadvantaged children, but school districts have tied themselves down with contracts which actually allow teachers to vote these programs out. Programs such as Saxon Math, and "Sing, Spell, Read and Write", which most good teachers love, are never allowed in large enough samplings to make comparisons. School boards watch, by their own admission, as schools "shotgun" programs without studying carefully which work. Curricula is often bought by principals and districts based on the generosity of vendor political contributions, and they wonder why all student achievement is down nationally. We learned all of this by spending hundreds of hours at school board meetings, by poring over data and by listening to the troops in the trenches, not to mention the time our members have volunteered in classrooms.
In order to make the case that poverty itself causes lack of achievement, comparison of like groups in different educational settings must be done. We did not see this in Professor Tschinkel's article. Professors Paul Peterson, Jay Greene and William Howell (Harvard; University of Houston) found in their studies of voucher programs in Milwaukee and Cleveland that poor children scored above their peers in public schools. The original studies by John Witte (University of Wisconsin) were "...so methodologically flawed as to be worthless (Milwaukee)". In the original Cleveland study, "...the second-grade [public school] test scores used by the Indiana study as a benchmark for (assessment) were inflated." When the children used as a control group for the Cleveland study were tested by an independent proctor and compared with the public schools' results, poor students' reading scores dropped from 51.6 percentile to 39.6! (emphasis mine) All of this research is available at www.edexcellence.net, the Fordham Foundation's website. Naturally, the teachers' unions cited the skewed data as a basis for opposing vouchers.
We are very uneasy with Professor Tschinkel's assertions. We hear echoes of the "Bell Curve". Even though here we're dealing with poor children, instead of black children alone, the conclusions aren't too different: Being poor in the former and being black in the latter are supposedly the causal factors in low student achievement.
We are coming to the end of a
40-year-long repressive, politically corrupt education regime, and are now
electing people who understand what true reform and accountability are about.
Our history as a nation is replete with examples of poor and immigrant
children who have thrived. This has
been the promise of America for generations of many of our ancestors.
With revolutions in Milwaukee, Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, and now our
whole state of Florida, we are returning to our core values as a people.
Yes, the Bush/Brogan A+ Plan will have the opportunity scholarships
tested in the courts, because those who have profited from the old system for so
long will fight to the bitter end to retain power.
We believe justice shall prevail, and our country will regain her
preeminence among the nations of the world.
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From IVBE's newsletter Voices -- Fall, 1999
