Poverty Issues Get Short Shrift in Today’s Education Debate

by
Gerald Bracey

Center for Education Research, Analysis, and Innovation
School of Education
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
PO Box 413
Milwaukee WI 53201
414-229-2716

November 2, 1999

CERAI-00-04

Poverty Issues Get Short Shrift inToday’s Education Debate

By Gerald Bracey

Presidential candidate BillBradley has put forth a plan to deal with child poverty, an issue thatpreviously no politician had touched. Even the educators and governors at therecent National Education Summit were silent on the problem.

Faced with the chronically low performance of poverty-ridden schools, somepeople -- even some educators -- say, "poverty is not an excuse" andpoint to a few exceptional kids and a few exceptional schools as proof.

But these few children are not proof, precisely because they are exceptions.Poverty is not an excuse. It is a condition that affects virtually everything.

Poor children get off to a bad start before they're born. Their mothers arelikely to get prenatal care late, if at all, which can impair later intellectualfunctioning. They are more than three times as likely as nonpoor children tohave stunted growth. They are about twice as likely to have physical and mentaldisabilities, and are seven times more likely to be abused or neglected. Andthey are more than three times more likely to die.

What these kids need are high standards, right?

Grades vs. achievement
Poverty stifles school performance. Researchers once examined the achievementof students in high- and low-poverty schools. High-poverty schools were thosewith more than 75% of the students eligible for free and reduced-price lunch.Low-poverty schools had 0-20% eligibility.

The researchers first categorized the kids in terms of the dominant lettergrade on their report cards, then looked to see how the various categoriesfared on standardized tests of reading and math. On such tests, average is the50th percentile. Students in low-poverty schools who took home ''A's'' scoredat the 81st percentile in reading and 87th percentile in math. Students inhigh-poverty schools whose report cards said ''A'' did not reach even the40th-percentile average on either test.

Nothing new
These research findings just put numbers on descriptions of poverty- riddenschools that have been around for a long time. Thirty years ago, the educationcrisis of children in poverty was described in books -- written by teachers --such as Death at an Early Age, 36 Children and The Way ItSpozed To Be. At that time, people hoped that Head Start and Title I wouldcure the problem. Jonathan Kozol, author of Death at an Early Age, returned in1991 with Savage Inequalities to tell us they haven't.

Researchers analyzing one international study concluded that if the U.S. samplehad been made up only of affluent school districts, the United States wouldhave placed second in math, the subject in which we are such putative dolts. Ifthe American sample had come from poor districts, however, we would have landedat the bottom, near Nigeria and Swaziland.

These same researchers found that, among industrialized nations, the UnitedStates has by far the highest incidence of child poverty, 21.5% at the time,falling to ''just'' 20% currently. No one else even came close. Australia hadthe second-highest poverty rate at 14%.

Not on anyone's agenda
Given the devastating impact of poverty on school performance and given theimportance of schooling, one would think that a rich country such as this onewould make the elimination of poverty a high priority.

But it isn't on anyone's agenda. The affluent eye is watching the Dow Jones,not the poverty rate.

Instead of facing the problem head-on, people are creating a smoke screen,arguing that to cure the problems of poor schools we need vouchers that willpermit poor kids to attend private schools.

This is absurd. Most private schools are not about to accept large numbers ofstudents who score as low as the lowest nations, just as they do not acceptstudents with limited English proficiency or students requiring specialeducation services.

And, even under the most optimistic of assumptions, private schools couldaccommodate no more than 4% of the students currently enrolled in publicschools.

So, unless we face the problem directly, it won't disappear. But should Mr.Bradley become president, he will have to deal with it using animals currentlyin short supply: politicians with spines.

Copyright 1999, Gerald W. Bracey

CERAI-00-04