About two weeks ago, a new Twitter hashtag was born: #povertymatters. For a little over a week, hundreds of people came up with 140-character tweets that were essentially one-line zingers aimed at the policymakers they believe are “blaming” teachers for low achievement in urban schools, while ignoring the impact poverty has on students’ lives and learning. Two examples:
- “Poverty matters,” @cyndyw2, tweets to @DianeRavitch and her followers, “when kids don’t have ‘homes’, instead they have ‘the place where I stay’.” (Jun 16, 2011 12:04:52 AM)
- Or, according to @JSamuelCook, “#PovertyMatters when students can’t do their homework because their electricity has been disconnected.” (Jun 16, 2011 12:04:03 AM)
The crux of the argument is that, because we have so many children living in poverty, we can’t possibly expect schools to close the achievement gap. Instead, we need to eliminate poverty—or treat the symptoms of poverty—first.
The implication, in short: stop asking so much of schools and teachers, these problems run deeper than they can be expected to solve.
Of course, the link between student achievement and socioeconomic status is unmistakable. Students who come from middle class or affluent families tend to start school ahead of their more disadvantaged peers. And, without serious, direct, and deliberate intervention, that gap only grows wider over time.
But saying we need to fix poverty before we can fix schools is like a doctor saying that he’s going to wait until you get better before he treats you. Education is the path out of poverty, not the consolation prize offered to children whose families have managed to dig their way out on their own.
As anyone who has worked in gap-closing schools can tell you, that path is twisted and rocky, with almost innumerable setbacks and roadblocks. What powers teachers in these schools forward is the unshakable belief that they can have a life-changing impact on their students. That, while poverty matters, it doesn’t need to constrain what’s possible.
It’s this belief in the power of schools that makes places like KIPP Infinity possible—a school that wins over nearly every visitor who walks through its doors with its energy, it’s passion for learning, and its deep commitment to its students.
Can you create the same kind of energy and commitment in a school on a foundation of “poverty matters”?
In the end, the “fix poverty first” rhetoric is not only misguided, but saps the energy from those who oppose today’s education reforms. Why try to compete with new models of schools reform if the culture of poverty is insurmountable?
It’s a rhetorical trap that binds these advocates to a culture antithetical to the “roll up your selves and do whatever it takes” attitude that powers not only high-performing charter schools but every major burst of social entrepreneurship over the past century.
And, it makes you wonder: If these critics don’t believe that schools matter more than poverty, why would anyone trust them with our schools?
–Kathleen Porter-Magee
I think you are missing the idea behind poverty matters. It’s not that schools can’t be expected to close the achievement gap, it’s that schools ALONE can’t close the acheivement gap. Schools like KIPP are successful because they have an unbelievable amount of parental support (in addition to longer school days, school years, Saturday school etc.). That doesn’t happen in many low income schools and it shouldn’t be ignored.
Jocelyn,
While what you say about KIPP, and other highly successful schools, is true, maybe the “poverty matters” tagline isn’t the best way to get that across.
Instead of hashtagging “poverty matters” which focuses on forces out of schools’ control, the emphasis should have been placed on what IS needed. Such as #schoolscan’tdoitalone or #parentadvocacy to highlight what it is anti-reform (for lack of a better term) advocates are FOR.
As it is, the example listed above of #poverty matters in action are not making your point. They read like excuses. I taught my students, “Excuses usually aren’t lies. They may be very true, but they ignore your responsibility or your role in solving the problem.”
Instead of teachers and other advocates expending so much energy proving to us that “poverty matters” when very few people would disagree, I’d like to see that energy channeled toward what schools and the systems they are a part of, CAN do.
You said:
“But saying we need to fix poverty before we can fix schools is like a doctor saying that he’s going to wait until you get better before he treats you.”
Sometimes the doctor refuses to treat you at all because you are too far gone or will cost too much for too little of a return (death).
You guys do think kids can educate their way out of poverty. You’ve been saying it for 60 years, yet it hasn’t happened.
Poverty is the stifling agent, not bad teachers, or ill-equipped schools. Teachers cannot close the gap. Society must help.
“You guys do think kids can educate their way out of poverty. You’ve been saying it for 60 years, yet it hasn’t happened.”
I would argue it’s because our school systems and the people within them (including teachers and administrators) haven’t done their jobs in the way that needs to be done to make that happen. Can students educate their way out of poverty? Certainly. But it has been the exception, not the rule. Comprehensive reform is trying to make it the rule.
“Poverty is the stifling agent, not bad teachers, or ill-equipped schools. Teachers cannot close the gap. Society must help.”
Teachers are a part of society, right? Maybe you meant teachers cannot close the gap alone?
Everyone, teachers included, need to do their part. If you do not think you can make an impact (however small) on the achievement gap, I hope you are not teaching disadvantaged students. I taught for six years, and I got discouraged too, but I never questioned my ability to make an impact, however small it may have seemed at the time.
Poverty matters, of course, but to throw your hands up and say nothing can change until no one is poor? That is not a way forward.
The issue for me is there are multiple things needed that encompass the idea that “poverty matters”. I don’t view it as an excuse but a way of saying that more needs to be done than just saying teachers aren’t doing enough. I teach everyday so my students have a chance at a different life but everyday they go home to circumstances that are out of my and their control. Poverty matters, for me,is the acknowledgement of that fact.
Nobody is saying that schools can’t educate poor kids. Instead, people are frustrated with the way that “reformers” focus almost all of their attention on blaming teachers for the problems in inner-city schools. They talk about everyone being responsible, and yet ignore the role of parents, administrators, school leaders, and even students themselves. Teachers alone cannot change things.
“Education is the path out of poverty.”
I’m a neophyte to ed reform discussions. I’m wondering: can you provide any evidence that this is true, either on an individual or a communal level? It certainly seems plausible, but is there any evidence that good schools can help more people get out of poverty? I’m sure that great schools have some impact on the number of people from a community who can get out of poverty, but I’m wondering how large that impact is. Have any studies been done on this topic?
Straw-man argument here. NO ONE is arguing that since poverty matters we should stop trying to improve teaching. In fact, it is the reformers who are making the argument that since a few schools are closing the gap we can, in theory, get all schools to close the gap without tackling poverty. The reality, of course, is that we need to tackle both issues. I believe we would all agree on that but disagree on how much we should tilt in one direction or the other.
In fact, among industrialized nations, the U.S. has among the poorest social mobility ratios and pretending more education will pull everyone out of poverty is not serious and belies these data (but it distracts us from the real problems of massive inequality). There are lots and lots of highly educated people who cannot get any jobs, millions of well-educated people who are underemployed, including lots of people who got trained in science but who could not get a good job in science and switched fields–because the U.S. spends so little on science R&D.
Perhaps in part unwittingly, we have chosen a variety of policies that ensure that we have a much more unequal country than most industrialized nations, and one in which education actually pays off less and is less likely to pull you out of poverty.
A few boutique schools (public or private) that boost test scores through extreme measures and built-in selection processes prove nothing about the ability of anyone to boost the real learning and development of all the kids (not just test scores in two subjects) in a whole high-poverty urban district to the levels of upper-middle class suburbs. No one has done that, and until someone does, I stand by the assertion that profound inequality in student outcomes will continue until societal inequality is drastically reduced. Even if poor kids are learning just as fast as rich kids (meaning the teachers of the poor kids are probably doing a more heroic job than the teachers of the rich), the gap doesn’t close. Boutique schools are largely created through processes that simultaneously make other schools in the district worse, making closing the real learning gap even harder.
Also, the broad brush of education debates in the media is that teachers and unions have been blamed for virtually everything for decades, and CEOs and politicians have taken little responsibility for policies that create entrenched and stubborn inequality and that limit social mobility. The national discussion needs to shift much, much more to “poverty matters.”
Finally, Kathleen misunderstands the nature of human motivation, learning, and the nature of the data these debates rest on. The optimal rate of real learning for high-poverty kids might be the same or slightly slower than that of the kids in the wealthy suburbs. Starting with at least a 2 grade performance spread between the two groups in early elementary, the learning of poor kids is not optimized by trying to catch the test scores of the rich kids: that only leads to shallow, parrot-learning and the illusion of competence, while the rich kids got the whole package. Closing the test score gap is the wrong ambitious goal to set. Teachers know they can make a difference, and that is actually a separate issue from whether poverty makes a difference, but asking teachers to close the test score gap alone (which has been the party line since 2000) is asking an inappropriate thing of teachers.
Next, ambitious goals are motivating, but impossible ones are de-motivating. A lot of these data we talk about are intentionally designed to produce a spread in scores across individuals, schools, and districts. Lake Wobegone aside, half the children will be below average forever, and There will always be schools in the bottom 10% no matter what we do … this is just the nature of statistics, and where you are on the bell curve is absolutely the wrong way to judge one’s own or others’ success or failure, and making this mistake creates permanent motivation problems for teachers (and kids) forever. A school at the 15th percentile in test scores could be one of the greatest success stories in the nation, and a school in the 85th percentile could be one of the biggest disappointments.
We need to see our challenges with new eyes.