Teachers Make Handy Scapegoats, But Spiraling Inequality Is Really What Ails Our Education System

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/education/teachers-make-handy-scapegoats-spiraling-inequality-really-what-ails-our-education-system



***SNP

The place where we really see the negative affects are in the growing number of schools with concentrated poverty, where more than 75 percent of children are poor. And there -- the children in those schools score at levels that are near those of developing countries, with all the challenges that they face.

JH: In the United States, we have five times the rate of childhood poverty as the average in the OECD countries.

Let's talk about how this dynamic works. I can see at least two ways: you’d expect poor kids to have problems with preparation rising directly from being poor, and you’d also expect them to go to schools with fewer resources.

Let’s take this second one of those first. I think it's important to understand the way our local schools are financed. They get about 10 percent of their funds from the federal government and the other 90 percent are split more or less equally between state and local governments. So we know a lot about how much money we spend on kids, on average, but that doesn’t tell us about the wide disparities in school funding. If you’re in a wealthy state and in a community with a good property tax base, you’re going to do a lot better. How does that affect educational outcomes, these disparities in school funding?

[Starry Messenger]

1. Teachers just use poverty as an excuse to fail!

I thought I'd just get that talking point out of the way.

Seriously though, I don't get why this is even a mystery to anyone. Most people alive would probably agree that they can do more in their lives with more money, right? So why are schools supposed to be magic places that can just run on good wishes and unicorn love.

[d_r]

2. one way that data have been misused

by people on the wrong side of this. They will use per-pupil spending at districts or schools with high rates of poverty and argue that it is higher than in districts with schools with lower rates of poverty and therefore spending can't be the cause of lower grades. The problem of course is that those schools have a higher level of children with special needs who result in greater spending. The data need to be looked at the state or at least district level. There's no doubt that the achievement gap is driven by SES.

[riderinthestorm]

3. Sooo let's cut Head Start! And school lunches! And after school programs! And art and music -

you know, the classes that all kids love...

It makes me crazy that the PTB can't see how detrimental their blinders are when it comes to education... we are screwing our very future.



K&R!

[The Magistrate]

4. Exactly, Sir

An unemployment rate of three percent, and a minimum wage of sixteen dollars an hour would do more for student performance than any imaginable 'education reform'....

[Donald Ian Rankin]

5. Do you mean "poverty" rather than "inequality"?

I don't think rich people getting richer will make the education system any worse *in itself*.

[HiPointDem]

6. actually, it might.

[KoKo]

7. K&R

[One_Life_To_Give]

8. Yes and No

Inequality is only one systemic factor. While it contributes to a host of issues addressing it in a vacuum is unlikely to bring success. For example parental education level is also a strong predictor. Providing income equality alone is not going to produce the same results between the Plumbers Child, the Neurosurgeon and the theoretical Physicist.

School funding alone doesn't compensate for living in crime area's, family value placed upon education, personal expectations of students about their futures etc. The chair can only support as much weight as the weakest leg can bear.