Poverty: The Factor Educational Reformers Don't Want to Consider

Amidst all the debates about charter schools and Race to the Top and No Child Left Behind, educators may have missed the latest report that 22% of children are now living in poverty--the highest figure since 1993.  But that is a shame, because that fact is likely to have more of an impact on student test scores than all the policies enacted by all the politicians put together.

At the end of last year, there was a whole hullabaloo about the fact that US students only scored around average or below on the international PISA test scores.  YIKES!  AMERICAN SCHOOLS ARE FAILURES!!!!!

Except, on further analysis of the data, it doesn't really reflect poorly on American schools.  Instead, our poor showing internationally doesn't really seem to be based on our school system at all.  Rather, it speaks to the shocking fact that in a country of such abundance, one out of every five children lives in poverty....one of the highest levels of poverty among the OECD countries with whom we have been compared.

How can I say that?  Because the National Association of Secondary School Principles analyzed the data by separating it by the level of poverty in the schools (as measured by the number of students eligible for free or reduced lunch programs).  IN EVERY CASE,  the US students came in FIRST when compared to countries in the same poverty range (in many cases, the other countries has MUCH lower poverty rates, but at least fell into a comparable range).

So, for American kids who went to school in relatively rich schools (defined as schools where less than 10% of students had incomes low enough to qualify for lunch programs)....well, they kicked the butts of the top-ranked Finnish students (with a mere 3.4% of poverty level) by scoring 551 to the Finnish 536:

Country	Poverty Rate	PISA Score
United States	<10%	551
Finland	3.4%	536
Netherlands	9.0%	508
Belgium	6.7%	506
Norway	3.6%	503
Switzerland	6.8%	501
France	7.3%	496
Denmark	2.4%	495
Czech Republic	7.2%	478

OK, so that include all those Ivy League feeder prep schools and such... but what about just those middle/upper middle class schools, where, say, 10-24.9% of students qualify for lunch program?

Country Poverty Rate PISA Score United States 10%-24.9% 527 Canada 13.6% 524 New Zealand 16.3% 521 Japan 14.3% 520 Australia 11.6% 515 Poland 14.5% 500 Germany 10.9% 497 Ireland 15.7% 496 Hungary 13.1% 494 United Kingdom 16.2% 494 Portugal 15.6% 489 Italy 15.7% 486 Greece 12.4% 483

Source for all figures:  NASSP

OK, well, how about our poor schools and our REALLY poor schools?  Even compared to the OECD countries that have a higher than 50% poverty rate (Austria, Turkey, Chile, and Mexico), the US students still did better.   So, when you compared apples to apples, the US students always came up on top, no matter how sweet or sour the apple selection was.

So according to the data, US education is doing an exemplary job at all levels--high income through low income student populations.  Why, then, is "school reform" so fixated on blaming bad teachers and their "gang," the EVIL teachers' unions, for all of our educational woes?

My answer?  It's back to my educational days as an existentialist.  Existentialism argues that people will do anything to avoid facing up to their own responsibility.  It is so much easier to blame uncaring and inadequate teachers, and one-sided teachers unions, and regulation-bound public school administrators, than to ask ourselves:  How is it, that in a country that has so much, and so many live such abundant lives, that somewhere between one-fifth and one-quarter of our children live in poverty?

Hey, rather than admit that I'm part of the systemic poverty problem, I would rather blame those uncaring teachers and inflexible administrators myself.  The thing is, I don't actually know any educators like that....

Study Casts Doubt on the Ability of Highly Competitive High Schools to Raise Test Scores

While more and more applicants try to get into the country's most competitive high schools, a new study suggests that all that effort may not be worth it.  The study, entitled "The Elite Illusion," by economists from MIT and Duke University, compared the students who gained entry to some of the nation's top examination schools (public school that students must apply and take entrance exams in order to attend) to their peers who didn't quite make the cut.  They found that, three or four years, there were virtually no difference in test scores, including state standardized tests, SAT and ACT tests, and AP exams, between the two populations.

This obviously is a narrow study, and applies only to the top tier of students.  Plus, of course, it conflates educational value and achievement with test scores, which readers of this blog know I find a dubious proposition.

However, it should alleviate some of the pressure on students to get into these top schools.  It demonstrates that smart, hard working students can attain equivalent test scores without having to attend the one "magic" school set up for the top achievers.  It also disputes one of the main arguments about these schools--that being around other top students will drive high achievers to superior performance.  This study found that their test performance was no better than the top students left to pursue their education with a traditional school filled with "average" students.

If this is true, it may even behoove students NOT to attend such schools if they are planning on applying to the most competitive colleges.  The thing is, the colleges all have a cap on how many students they will take from any one high school.  For example, if Bill Gates could prove that he had rounded up the 1,000 most brilliant students in the country for an advanced Bill Gates High School, Harvard wouldn't accept all 1,000 of them, no matter how much smarter they might be.  They would only take a small percentage--25 or 50 students maybe?--because they want a diverse, but still high achieving student body.  A student with a 2200 SAT score who is number 1 in an average school that doesn't have a lot of Harvard applicants may stand a better chance than a student with a 2300 SAT score from an elite school that has dozens of other applicants also trying to get in.

It's just something to consider....

This is particularly interesting for homeschoolers to consider.  Many families decide to have their homeschooled children go to school for their high school years for a whole variety of reasons.  But certainly an important consideration is preparation for college and trying to make the students more competitive by having them in school with other high achieving students.  But this study implies that elite peer relationships don't result in higher test scores.

For example, in our area, most of the homeschoolers I know who are going to school for high school want to get into Raleigh Charter High School, which was the Number 1 school in North Carolina in the Washington Post annual High School Challenge that ranks the best high schools in the country (although it was only 55th best on the national list).  But it is not that much more likely to get into Raleigh Charter, which I think accepts 11% of eligible applicants through a lottery system, than to get into Harvard, which accepts about 7% of applicants.

Anyway, this study is reassuring for those other 89% that don't get into Raleigh Charter that by taking the right classes and doing the hard work, they can earn equally impressive test scores even at a "normal" school.

Are Middle Schools Hotbeds of Stress and Violence?

Are middle schools hotbeds of stress and violence?  The grant makers at the Institute of Educational Studies seems to think so.  They have just completed one study on trying to reduce violence in middle schools, and are starting two new studies examining middle school stress and the impact on student achievement.

In explaining the first study, IES gives statistics that say that more violence and bullying take place in middle schools than any other segment of education.  In the latest year of data (2006-07 school year), when 4.3% of secondary students reported being victims of a crime at school, the rate of nonfatal violent crimes for students 12-14 was 67 incidents per 1,000 students, compared to 49 incidents per 1,000 students aged 15-18.   There were also 41 incidents per 1,000 middle school students of experiencing a violent event, compared to high school (22 per 1,000) and elementary school (26 per 1,000).

Even scarier were the numbers related to school bullying.  A daunting 44% of middle schools reported at least weekly, if not more frequent, incidents of bullying.  That figure is double the statistics for both high schools (22%) and elementary (21%).  

These are issues that just don't come up in homeschooling, or else occur rarely and are quickly dealt with by the parents.  So maybe I'm naive, but it seems incredible to me that close to half of our middle schools are dealing with bullying on a weekly (or more) basis, and that isn't particularly a big topic for debate in educational policy.

Unfortunately, it doesn't look like things will be improving soon, at least according to the IES study.  The grant was testing the effectiveness of two different approaches to reducing school violence and bullying--addressing the issues through curriculum and through a whole school atmosphere approach--but neither technique produced significantly different results in violence and bullying statistics compared to the control schools.

The two new IES grants are four-year programs to record the incidences of stress--one among the teachers, and one among the students.   The student one is targeted to a new intervention program for middle school students experiencing trauma--I guess all those students who are victimized, as well as students with bad life events outside of school.  The goal is to help them deal with these issues and thus perform better in school, as well in general life skills such as self confidence, dealing with depression, etc.  The teacher study seeks to document the generally-posited idea that teaching in middle schools is the most stressful educational occupation.  This study will follow teachers for three years to see if teacher stress results in worse student behavior and test scores.

So the main things these studies tell me is that I'm glad that neither my son nor I are dealing with an institutionalized middle school education.  However, I hope they come up with some valuable data about the effects on students' educational scores of life factors that teachers can't control, and help loosen the reliance on test scores as the sole determination of educational quality.  I also really hope they come up with some better coping skills for these poor bullied and stressed-out students and teachers.

Traditional Study Skills Advice is All Wrong

Another fascinating article this week, this time from The New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/07/health/views/07mind.html), says that research shows that most of the conventional wisdom about "good study skills" is just plain wrong.  The traditional advice given to parents by "experts" include having a quiet, clear designated study space with specific time or achievement goals on a set schedule.  In addition, many traditional curricula drill students on one skill until they master it, then move onto the next, etc.

But the scientific studies show that such technique not only do not improve student performance--they actually diminish it!  For example, in one study where students were given material to study in two separate areas (one closed and cluttered, the other with a window to the outside), they did significantly better in remembering the information than those who had the same two study periods, but both in the same room.  Likewise, studies show that when study time is broken up, such as half an hour this week, then half an hour next week, rather than one hour at a time, students retain much more of the information.  Finally, studies show that mixing together different types of problems together, rather than studying them sequentially (for example, doing a sheet where addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division problems are all mixed up, rather then doing 10 problems on addition, then 10 on subtraction, etc.) produces dramatically better results.  One study cited by the article involved fourth-graders working on four separate equations measuring different dimensions of a prism.  The students who worked mixed problem sets, where they were solving problems with all four equations grouped together, achieved an average score of 77% when tested on the material; the students who studied each equation separately only had an average score of only 36%.  That is, the mixed set students did TWICE as well as the isolated problem set students.  And those kinds of differences between results have been demonstrated among many different age groups, from primary school students through adults.

So what should parents be doing, at least according to these studies?  Mix it up.  Instead of long marathon study sessions, break the work into several smaller subsets, and do those subsets at different times and different places.  Don't work solely on multiple long division problems, or identifying only nouns, or studying only Picasso.  Mix in some related concepts, like identifying works by other artists of the same time period such as Matisse or Braque, or cover all the parts of speech at once.  And don't feel confined to "the study area"; move your working time around to the kitchen table, the library, the outside.