Rotting Apple

Today's article goes into more issues regarding poverty, race, and education, focusing particularly on those schools in the poorer districts of New York, and basing itself on a report done by the same organization hosting it. As the largest school district in the US, it gives a nice demonstration of just how big a problem this is. According to the report, a students' success is much more influenced by their wealth and racial background, wealthier schools have better teachers, poorer schools have less stable teaching staff and aren't likely to be tested for programs like gifted-and-talented. Not really all that surprising given what we've already talked about here.

What WAS surprising about the article was the really strange, off-putting emphasis on race. While the connection between race and poverty is confirmed statistically, and household wealth has a clear connection to the quality of schools students attend, the phrase "correlation does not prove causation" is important to remember. There's evidence that the correlation of race and poverty is more rooted in the sustained behavioral programs passed from parent to child than actual racism (something which might be fixed by better education).

As an ever more progressive society, we've (mostly) evolved past racism, to the point where we're approaching the point where it's no longer relevant enough to deserve comment (do note, though, that racism is still somewhat prominent in certain regions, as well as cases at the individual level. I'm talking about the US as a whole). However, this article tries to weave race into an issue that really has nothing to do with it. I've seen other articles touching on these subjects mention it, too.

It's not that big of an issue, but I wonder if this itself may be an issue within efforts to help relieve educational inequality. That is, a misapplication of cause to situations that historically were affected by racist tendencies which have since faded with time. Both viewpoints (race-based and wealth-based educational inequality) have the same end goal and would likely get there given enough time, but with the idea that race is a large factor, it would take a lot longer as it's going after the wrong cause.

Beside misplaced mentions of race, the article also presented a few solutions to the issues it discussed:

• Restore funding for education that was previously reduced
• Fantastic, it was ridiculous that their funding was cut to begin with.
• Fund schools based on need
• This, however, isn't so fantastic. The idea is nice, but how do you balance the complicated budget involved in running a school, especially based on the ill-defined notion of "need"? What do you do if a school's bureaucracy gets leaky and the funds are abused for things other than student education? Cut the budget? Then the students suffer. But throwing more money at it won't fix it, either. I suppose that's what their last point is for, but such things can be easily circumvented depending on how well they're handled.
• Test for Gifted and Talented in kindergarten and have students take the Specialized High School Admissions Test in middle school
• Fine, though as per my blog post on tracking, this (mostly the Gifted program) can potentially be abused if you're not very careful. A distinction must be made between a better education for Gifted students than the average student and something that's just better suited to the student.
• Offer tutoring for low-income students
• It really shouldn't just be for low-income students (especially when the line can be blurry and heavily context-dependent), though giving them a higher priority could avert any issues.
• Submit schools to an "opportunity audit" to ensure they're offering a fair opportunity to learn
• This is a good idea in theory, but in practice such an audit would have to be carefully handled to provide as much scrutiny as possible. There's the distinct possibility of an apathetic check-the-box mentality that would fail to provide the kind of support it would theoretically provide.

The solutions presented were in the right place, but need more thought to be rigorous enough to be applied to real schools and districts.

And that about wraps it up. Thanks for reading, and see you next week.

The Article:

• Pedro Noguera & John H. Jackson. Why Education Inequality Exists - And How To Fix It. Received from http://schottfoundation.org/drupal/media-center/why-education-inequality-persists-and-how-to-fix-it

Sources:

• NCES. Enrollment, poverty, and federal funds for the 100 largest school districts, by enrollment size in 2010: Fall 2010, 2009-10, and federal fiscal year 2012. Received from http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d12/tables/dt12_104.asp
• Suzanne Macartney, Alemayehu Bishaw, & Kayla Fontenot. Poverty Rates for Selected Detailed Race and Hispanic Groups by State and Place: 2007-2011. Received from http://www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/acsbr11-17.pdf
• Sharmila Choudhury. Racial and Ethnic Differences in Wealth and Asset Choices. Received from http://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/ssb/v64n4/v64n4p1.html