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The blame game is unhealthy. As long as our public discourse is about blaming parents, blaming teachers, or blaming anybody, we won't strike at the root of the

The blame game is unhealthy. As long as our public discourse is about blaming parents, blaming teachers, or blaming anybody, we won't strike at the root of the problem, which is poverty. Kids living in poverty simply won't do well in school in statistically significant numbers. If we solve that, then we'll solve our achievement gap.

tom-lord 12y ago
How do you fix education? By fixing the poverty. How do you fix poverty? By fixing the education. Oh wait, hang on...
- kethinov 12y ago
  How do you fix poverty? By having a safety net not full of holes like swiss cheese.
- spacemanmatt 12y ago
  You don't fix a vicious cycle by addressing only one aspect. So yes, we have to fix both. Then it will become a mutually reinforcing cycle like it used to be.
tomjen3 12y ago
Reading through here I see a lot of assertions and very little evidence. Could you back up your claim?
- kethinov 12y ago
  This program did an excellent deep dive and the panelists have written books on the subject if you're looking for more depth: http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2015-02-18/rethinking_standardized_testing http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2015-02-18/rethinking_stan...
spacemanmatt 12y ago
Seconded. I'm amazed that people are still so willfully blind that they need to see the proof. My take is, if you can't perform your own validation here, your eyes are not open. Poverty is written all over America but we keep misreading it.
- happyscrappy 12y ago
  There are plenty of poor in Asian communities that do well in school. Presumably because their parents instill the value of education and discipline.
- Lorento 12y ago
  That's only a correlation. It doesn't show that poverty _causes_ poor education. It very, I think probably is, the opposite with poorly educated parents passing those self-limiting habits on to their children.
Lorento 12y ago
Do you really mean poverty, or other qualities that correlate with poverty? Do you think sufficiently high welfare payments would solve poor children's school problems? Somehow children in other countries seem to succeed very well despite even greater poverty than Americans. I think there's a distinction between forced poverty and chosen poverty. Are the poor people you're talking about actively trying to become wealthier? If not, then poverty isn't the real problem.
- kaitai 12y ago
  Actually, Yes! and it's been studied! A group of Cherokee Indians in North Carolina got some money from opening a casino. They decided to share profits, giving $6000 a year to each person in 2001 for instance. It's more or less a basic guaranteed income. So what happened to these people who'd lived in poverty before and now got a bit more money? Children who were moved out of poverty saw behavioral problems declined 40%, crime declined, and high school graduation rates increased. Like magic! See [1] for more. Main takeaway -- money increased parenting quality; parenting is key to success. Money can solve a lot of problems. Do you know how regular people try to actively become wealthier? They work more hours a week at minimum-wage jobs (ok -- add a second 20-hr/week part time job to your 40 hrs and you make less than 550 extra a month after taxes, and you are working 60 hrs/week so can't care for your own children that well). Or they become real-estate agents. That's a waste of time. If actively becoming wealthier were so easy these scrappy hard-working people would have done it. [1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2891175/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2891175/
dba7dba 12y ago
I didn't mean to start a blame game but just wanted to point out one very important factor (parents) that's missing in the article. And actually, pointing finger has to start SOMEWHERE to find out what's wrong and figure out how to fix it. I disagree with poverty being the root of the issue. It's one of them, but not the primary one. There are many examples a society was desperately poor but they escaped it with education. Look at some Asian countries. Good example is S Korea. They were desperately poor just barely 1-2 generations ago. The cards were really stacked against the country (no natural resource, infra wiped out by vicious 3 year war, uneducated population, requirement for maintaining large army etc) 6 decades ago, and it was pretty much just improving education that got them out of the hole.

tom-lord 12y ago

How do you fix education? By fixing the poverty. How do you fix poverty? By fixing the education. Oh wait, hang on...

kethinov 12y ago
How do you fix poverty? By having a safety net not full of holes like swiss cheese.
spacemanmatt 12y ago
You don't fix a vicious cycle by addressing only one aspect. So yes, we have to fix both. Then it will become a mutually reinforcing cycle like it used to be.

tomjen3 12y ago

Reading through here I see a lot of assertions and very little evidence. Could you back up your claim?

kethinov 12y ago
This program did an excellent deep dive and the panelists have written books on the subject if you're looking for more depth: http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2015-02-18/rethinking_standardized_testing http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2015-02-18/rethinking_stan...

spacemanmatt 12y ago

Seconded. I'm amazed that people are still so willfully blind that they need to see the proof. My take is, if you can't perform your own validation here, your eyes are not open. Poverty is written all over America but we keep misreading it.

happyscrappy 12y ago
There are plenty of poor in Asian communities that do well in school. Presumably because their parents instill the value of education and discipline.
Lorento 12y ago
That's only a correlation. It doesn't show that poverty _causes_ poor education. It very, I think probably is, the opposite with poorly educated parents passing those self-limiting habits on to their children.

Lorento 12y ago

Do you really mean poverty, or other qualities that correlate with poverty? Do you think sufficiently high welfare payments would solve poor children's school problems? Somehow children in other countries seem to succeed very well despite even greater poverty than Americans. I think there's a distinction between forced poverty and chosen poverty. Are the poor people you're talking about actively trying to become wealthier? If not, then poverty isn't the real problem.

kaitai 12y ago
Actually, Yes! and it's been studied! A group of Cherokee Indians in North Carolina got some money from opening a casino. They decided to share profits, giving $6000 a year to each person in 2001 for instance. It's more or less a basic guaranteed income. So what happened to these people who'd lived in poverty before and now got a bit more money? Children who were moved out of poverty saw behavioral problems declined 40%, crime declined, and high school graduation rates increased. Like magic! See [1] for more. Main takeaway -- money increased parenting quality; parenting is key to success. Money can solve a lot of problems. Do you know how regular people try to actively become wealthier? They work more hours a week at minimum-wage jobs (ok -- add a second 20-hr/week part time job to your 40 hrs and you make less than 550 extra a month after taxes, and you are working 60 hrs/week so can't care for your own children that well). Or they become real-estate agents. That's a waste of time. If actively becoming wealthier were so easy these scrappy hard-working people would have done it. [1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2891175/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2891175/

dba7dba 12y ago

I didn't mean to start a blame game but just wanted to point out one very important factor (parents) that's missing in the article. And actually, pointing finger has to start SOMEWHERE to find out what's wrong and figure out how to fix it. I disagree with poverty being the root of the issue. It's one of them, but not the primary one. There are many examples a society was desperately poor but they escaped it with education. Look at some Asian countries. Good example is S Korea. They were desperately poor just barely 1-2 generations ago. The cards were really stacked against the country (no natural resource, infra wiped out by vicious 3 year war, uneducated population, requirement for maintaining large army etc) 6 decades ago, and it was pretty much just improving education that got them out of the hole.