How Does Poverty Affect Academic Performance? Part 2: Theory

Today I continue the series examining the ways in which poverty influences academic performance.  Part 1 explored the achievement gap and some trends and causes and future parts will discuss social factors and environmental conditions experienced by families living in poverty that may also impact academic performance.  In other words, what, exactly, is it about living in poverty that results in dramatically lower achievement and attainment?

Before we can answer that, we need to first understand why poverty would matter.  Below, I briefly discuss some theory and literature that points us toward some possibilities.

Neighborhood Effects
Though a wide array of social conditions influence children’s academic performance, researchers and policymakers have focused more on the links between housing and neighborhoods and educational outcomes; from the Gautreaux decision to the MTO experiment and beyond. The results of this strand of policy and research have run a wide gamut. A recent review of the literature [1] concludes that:

Housing programs have successfully helped poor parents move to safer and less disadvantaged communities and, in some cases, less segregated neighborhoods . . . Despite the ability for some of these programs to bring about context changes, it appears much more difficult to improve the educational outcomes of children. Early Gautreaux results suggested large benefits for children moving to the suburbs, but . . . more recent MTO research concludes that neighborhood change is not enough to substantially improve schooling quality or educational outcomes (p. 478).

In short, while there may be sufficient reason to believe that housing policy can positively and significantly impact the academic performance of some of the poorest Americans, there is as of yet no conclusive evidence that we know how to do this on a consistent basis.

One reason behind the contradicting findings may be the lack of a clear consensus on a theoretical framework outlining the relationships between potential levers of housing policy and academic performance. In their introduction to the Neighborhood Poverty series, Gephart and Brooks-Gunn [2] write that

Multiple theoretical perspectives, fragmented by discipline and often by method, provide partial, potentially complementary (but sometimes conflicting) guidance about the characteristics of neighborhoods that may affect the development of children, youth, and families, and about the mechanisms through which such characteristics affect families and individuals. (p. xvii)

Although the field has come a long way in the 17 years since, the problem they identify has never been fully resolved. Why would these policies have led to changes in children’s educational performance? While the theory supporting such a relationship has been well-developed in some areas, it remains highly fragmented – particularly across different disciplines. In other words, while theoretical models regarding parts of the story abound, we do not yet have an all-encompassing theoretical framework. Jencks and Mayer [3] divide theories relating neighborhoods to child development into three groups: epidemic models, collective socialization models, and institutional models.

Epidemic models
Epidemic models theorize that neighborhood characteristics spread much like disease spreads – from person to person. For example, one person decides to use drugs, then another, then another, and so forth (or, perhaps, read Shakespeare). In this way, peer norms are the main driver of individual behavior; those raised in neighborhoods where going to college is the norm are more likely to attend college, and those raised in neighborhoods where dropping out of high school is the norm are more likely to drop out.

Collective socialization models
Collective socialization models hold that values are derived from adults who live in the neighborhood. Adults both serve as examples to which children should aspire and enforce rules within the neighborhood. These models would theorize that people who grow up in neighborhoods where drug dealers are idolized would be more likely to deal drugs when they come of age while those who grow up in neighborhoods full of shopkeepers would be more likely to open their own store and people who grow up around college graduates would be more likely to attend college themselves.

Institutional Models
Institutional models underline the importance of adults from outside of the neighborhood; particularly those in positions of authority (teachers, police, etc.). Theories under this umbrella posit that children from poorer neighborhoods interact with different outside authority figures and/or are treated differently by outside authority figures. Children treated with more respect and concern by these authority figures would then stand a better chance of graduating from high school or avoiding jail.

Discussion
Theories under all these umbrellas overlap with one another and often predict similar outcomes (for example, that students in poorer neighborhoods will be less likely to graduate). Both because of that fact and because they all have empirical backing, we should consider all three when predicting and studying how social policy might impact academic performance. That those in lower classes live in worse housing is not seriously questioned. Indeed, the local home values seem to explain differences in school-wide achievement that other background variables do not [4]. This may be due in part to those with means opting to move into neighborhoods zoned for better schools, but is also likely the result of a more complicated relationship between homes and neighborhoods and various behaviors and actions. For example, it has been theorized that perception of disorder in one’s surroundings leads to other negative behaviors [5, 6]. Hastings [7] posits that neighborhood effects are compounded by a vicious cycle wherein poorer neighborhoods need more services and the situation is exacerbated when government officials fail to recognize, and subsequently act on, this condition.

Stress Theory
Based on developmental research, Shonkoff and Phillips [8] add stress theory as a fourth group of neighborhood effects theories, though it is more often cited by health researchers. Stress Theory posits that stressors more common in poorer neighborhoods (which might range from crime to lead paint) have deleterious effects on children. These negative effects add up to create stress and inhibit development. A recent advance in the study of stress was the creation of the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) survey [9], which measures accumulated stress through exposure to various stressors in childhood and strongly predicts later health and academic outcomes. Stress theory would predict that children exposed to more negative experiences would be more distracted, less focused, more stressed, and lower achieving in school.

Ecological Systems Theory
Widely used by those who research both neighborhoods and family/home conditions and their effect on child development, ecological systems theory [10] and the bioecological model [11] theorize that children are affected by people and institutions in five different nested levels: immediate friends, family and surroundings (the microsystem); the relationships between these immediate surroundings (the mesosystem); the outside experiences of immediate friends and family (the exosystem); the cultural context in which one lives (the macrosystem); and the historical context in which one lives (the chronosystem). Each system influences each child differently and to different extents depending on both the degree of exposure to, and context of, each. Students who experience problems in their immediate surroundings (e.g. family conflict), relationships between these different groups (e.g. a poor relationship between their church and parents), extended social systems (e.g. a parent working in a stressful job), cultural context (e.g. high rates of poverty and unemployment), and/or historical context (e.g. racial discrimination) would be expected to perform worse in school.

Resources
Resources likely matter both directly and indirectly. In the most direct sense, more money enables families to purchase more goods to aid their children’s learning. For example, a recent study using two national databases found that families who earn more money or begin earning more money spend more on physical items like books and toys in addition to enrichment activities like sports and art classes [12]. More indirectly, economists and psychologists argue that a lack of resources diverts attention away from other tasks. For example, focusing attention on finding adequate food or water decreases the amount of attention a parent can focus on their child’s physical health or the homework due the next day [13]. The former predicts that a child with more stimulation at home and more activities outside the home will perform better in school because he/she had more learning experiences; the latter predicts that a child whose parents have to spend less time and energy ensuring basic needs are met will perform better in school because he/she received more attention and care.

Non-Cognitive Factors
Recent writings have focused the attention of researchers [14] and the public [15] on the non-cognitive skills of students, with some evidence that they may be stronger predictors of school success than cognitive skills [see, for example: 16]. Some researchers group self-control together with attention as psychological effects of poverty [17] since the stresses encountered by those living in poverty can deplete both over time [18], but I instead include self-control with non-cognitive factors. Tough lists grit, self-control, zest, social intelligence, gratitude, optimism, and curiosity as the seven factors “especially likely to predict life satisfaction and high achievement” (p. 76). Students whose environments foster development of these skills and traits would be more likely to earn higher grades, score higher on tests, and graduate from high school and college.

Culture of Poverty
Popularized by Oscar Lewis [19] and “The Moynihan Report” [20], the “culture of poverty” theory essentially argued that people living in poverty had developed a destructive culture that perpetuated the cycle of poverty. Lewis later clarified [21] that he believed that:

The people in the culture of poverty have a strong feeling of marginality, of helplessness, of dependency, of not belonging. They are like aliens in their own country, convinced that the existing institutions do not serve their interests and needs. Along with this feeling of powerlessness is a widespread feeling of inferiority, of personal unworthiness . . . People with a culture of poverty have very little sense of history. They are a marginal people who know only their own troubles, their own local conditions, their own neighborhood, their own way of life. Usually, they have neither the knowledge, the vision nor the ideology to see the similarities between their problems and those of others like themselves else in the world (p. 21).

Lewis continues on to argue that although he believes those living in poverty had changed their culture, that these changes were not all negative. He argues, for example, that a focus on the more immediate present rather than long-term planning could lead to a more joyful and carefree life.

Though largely discredited and ignored in recent decades [22], the “culture of poverty” hypothesis has made a recent comeback among scholars [23] – but this time with a different meaning. Rather than focusing on the shortcomings of those living in poverty, the focus has shifted to examining how living in poverty affects the culture of families and neighborhoods. In this sense, Lewis may have been right that those living in poverty often feel outcast, isolated, and hopeless – but scholars now see these as an outcome rather than cause of poverty. Scholars investigating the relationship between culture and poverty would expect students who are more isolated, feel less hope for the future, and engage in less long-run planning to perform worse in school.

Conclusion
The theories discussed above all influence the research that I'll discuss in future posts and make appearances in a wide range of articles and topics. Indeed, researchers from different fields and disciplines often cite different theories in order to support similar arguments. Collectively, they predict that children with more stress, fewer resources, strained relationships, more chaotic surroundings, and worse role models will earn lower grades, perform worse on tests, drop out more frequently, and earn fewer degrees.  The next posts will explore some more specific and tangible ways in which students living in poverty experience these types of factors and conditions and how those experiences subsequently affect academic performance.



References

1. DeLuca, S. and E. Dayton, Switching Social Contexts: The Effects of Housing Mobility and School Choice Programs on Youth Outcomes. Annual Review of Sociology, 2009. 35(1): p. 457-491.
2. Gephart, M.A. and J. Brooks-Gunn, Introduction, in Neighborhood Poverty: Context and Consequences for Children, J. Brooks-Gunn, G.J. Duncan, and J.L. Aber, Editors. 1997, Russell Sage: New York. p. xiii-xxii.
3. Jencks, C. and S.E. Mayer, The Social Consequences of Growing Up in a Poor Neighborhood, in Inner-City Poverty in the United States, Committee on National Urban Policy and National Research Council, Editors. 1990, National Academies Press: Washington, DC.
4. Kane, T.J., D.O. Staiger, and G. Samms, School Accountability Ratings and Housing Values. Brookings-Wharton Papers on Urban Affairs, 2003(4): p. 83-137.
5. Franzini, L., et al., Perceptions of disorder: Contributions of neighborhood characteristics to subjective perceptions of disorder. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 2008. 28(1): p. 83-93
6. Sampson, R.J. and S.W. Raudenbush, Seeing Disorder: Neighborhood Stigma and the Social Construction of "Broken Windows". Social Psychology Quarterly, 2004. 67(4): p. 319-342.
7. Hastings, A., Neighbourhood Environmental Services and Neighbourhood 'Effects': Exploring the Role of Urban Services in Intensifying Neighbourhood Problems. Housing Studies, 2009. 24(4): p. 503-524.
8. Shonkoff, J.P. and D.A. Phillips, From Neurons to Neighborhoods: The Science of Early Childhood Development. 2000, Washington, DC: National Academy Press.
9. Felitti, V.J., The relationship of adverse childhood experiences to adult health: Turning gold into lead. Zeitschrift fur Psychosomatische Medizin und Psychotherapie, 2002. 48(4): p. 359-369.
10. Bronfenbrenner, U., The ecology of human development: Experiments by nature and design. 1979: Harvard Univ Press.
11. Bronfenbrenner, U. and P.A. Morris, The ecology of developmental processes, in Handbook of Child Psychology: Volume 1: Theoretical Models of Human Development, R.M. Lerner, Editor. 1998, John Wiley & Sons Inc: Hoboken, NJ. p. 993-1028.
12. Kaushal, N., K. Magnuson, and J. Waldfogel, How Is Family Income Related to Investments in Children's Learning?, in Whither Opportunity? Rising Inequality, Schools, and Children's Life Chances, G.J. Duncan and R.J. Murnane, Editors. 2011, Russell Sage Foundation: New York. p. 187-205.
13. Banerjee, A.V. and S. Mullainathan, Limited Attention and Income Distribution. The American Economic Review, 2008. 98(2): p. 489-493.
14. Heckman, J.J., Policies to foster human capital. Research in Economics, 2000. 54(1): p. 3-56.
15. Tough, P., How children succeed: Grit, curiosity, and the hidden power of character. 2012, Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
16. Duckworth, A.L. and M.E. Seligman, Self-discipline outdoes IQ in predicting academic performance of adolescents. Psychological Science, 2005. 16(12): p. 939-944.
17. Mullainathan, S., The Psychology of Poverty. Focus, 2011. 28(1): p. 19-22.
18. Spears, D., Economic Decision-Making in Poverty Depletes Behavioral Control. The BE Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, 2011. 11(1).
19. Lewis, O., The culture of poverty. Scientific American, 1966. 215(4): p. 19 - 25.
20. Office of Policy Planning and Research, The Negro family: The case for national action. 1965, United States Department of Labor: Washington, DC.
21. Lewis, O., The culture of poverty, in Poor Americans: How The White Poor Live, M. Pilisuk and P. Pilisuk, Editors. 1971, Transaction, Inc.: New York. p. 20-26.
22. Small, M.L., D.J. Harding, and M. Lamont, Reconsidering Culture and Poverty. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 2010. 629(1): p. 6-27.
23. Cohen, P., ‘Culture of Poverty’ Makes a Comeback, in New York Times. 2010.

Friday Notes

A few thoughts that occurred to me this week:

-Here's an interesting piece on Teaching students how to combat traumas of poverty on the yoga mat (h/t: Alexander Russo) by PBS earlier this week that relates to my research on stress, poverty, and academics.  I'm certainly not going to stand here and insist that every student learn yoga, but the piece raises a whole lot of interesting questions and important issues.

-Really interesting move by TFA to pilot two programs in which corps members are trained for a year prior to graduation and, separately, supported during years 3-5 of teaching.  I'm not surprised by the move to support current corps members for longer, since they've always been touchy about the attrition rate, but I'm very surprised by the move to train future corps members for longer.  It will be interesting to see whether the additional training improves performance, but perhaps more interesting to see if it improves retention.  I could see it going either way -- teachers feeling like they need to serve longer because they put forth more effort up front to gain the position, or teachers feeling more burnt out after two years (which would now be three) because they've put in more time and effort at that point.

-One misconception I've seen in a few posts lately is that if we start focusing on non-cognitive skills it will mean we can teach fewer cognitive skills and, therefore, math and reading achievement (etc.) will suffer.  This seems shortsighted to me since a large part of the reason non-cognitive skills are so compelling is that they lead directly to better academic performance.   One of the first studies to draw attention to this notion, for example, found that "grit" had a stronger effect on GPA than did IQ (more on "grit" here).  Now, a rigorous new 3-year randomized controlled trial finds that teaching social and emotional skills resulted in students posting larger gains in reading and math achievement than those in the control group.  So, I think that's a pretty clear "no" in response to the theory that teaching more non-cognitive skills will harm achievement.

-I doubt we'll ever stop debating the merits of pre-school, and here's some pushback against Russ Whitehurst's recent skeptical review of the evidence.  I don't think there's any question that the evidence here is mixed, but what I find compelling is that more than a couple studies have found large effects decades past the intervention.  The vast majority of interventions in education yield small effects that fade out quickly, so even if it's only a few of the very best pre-school programs that are having these effects it seems worth trying again.

-Starting Monday, I'll be running a multi-part series on how poverty impacts academic performance.  I'm looking forward to some great dialogue around the series . . .

Education and the Declining Median Class

A column a while back by David Brooks and numerous other reviews of Charles Murray's new book raise an issue I've been meaning to write about: the growing gulf between different classes (or "social tribes," as Brooks labels them) in the U.S. -- not just in earnings, which we hear a lot about, but in both achievement and a number of behaviors related to achievement.  As Brooks writes about the White population Murray discusses:

There are vast behavioral gaps between the educated upper tribe (20 percent of the country) and the lower tribe (30 percent of the country) . . . Roughly 7 percent of the white kids in the upper tribe are born out of wedlock, compared with roughly 45 percent of the kids in the lower tribe. In the upper tribe, nearly every man aged 30 to 49 is in the labor force. In the lower tribe, men in their prime working ages have been steadily dropping out of the labor force, in good times and bad. People in the lower tribe are much less likely to get married, less likely to go to church, less likely to be active in their communities, more likely to watch TV excessively, more likely to be obese.

The NY Times followed up with a story about the achievement gap growing between rich and poor students in the United States.  The article was based largely on two chapters from a book that was released last fall by the Russell Sage Foundation (which, as I've previously mentioned, I highly recommend).

In one chapter, Sean Reardon from Stanford finds that "the achievement gap between children from high- and low-income families is roughly 30 to 40 percent larger among children born in 2001 than among those born twenty-five years earlier" and that the gap between students from families in the 90th and 10th percentiles of income is now "nearly twice as large" as the gap between blacks and whites (the opposite was true 50 years ago).

Since I've spent my entire post-college life either trying to teach low-income students or researching low-income students, the chapter jumped out at me when I first saw a preview of it last summer.  The fact that the achievement gap between rich and poor was actually growing (while the black-white achievement gap has essentially plateaued the past 20 years), jibed with what I've read about, and seen in, both our schools and our society.

But then, when I was preparing to discuss the chapter with my students last fall, I took a closer look at the trends.  And this is what I discovered: the real growth in the gap between rich and poor isn't actually between the richest and the poorest, it's between the richest and those in the middle.

I've pasted one chart from the Reardon chapter to show what I mean.  The gap between those at the 50th percentile and those at the 10th percentile -- the middle-poor gap, if you will (represented by the dashed line) has been fairly steady.  The gap between those at the 90th percentile and those at the 10th percentile, meanwhile -- the rich-middle gap, if you will (represented by the solid line) -- has grown rapidly, from under a quarter of a standard deviation for children born in the 1940's to almost three-quarters of a standard deviation for children born in the 21st century.

I actually missed that point when I first skimmed the chapter, but to me it's maybe the most pressing policy issue of the next few decades: how will middle-income Americans work and live?

As somebody who studies the effects of poverty, I'm pre-disposed to believe that poverty, and the low performance of children living in poverty, poses the largest educational problem.  And there's no doubt that that problem is large.  Even if the poorest kids aren't falling further behind the middle-income students, they're still far behind where they ought to be and farther behind the wealthiest kids than before.

But if the middle of the income distribution falls far behind as well, that could leave us in really serious trouble.  This chart of wage growth that EPI offered in response to Brooks' op-ed is one way of looking at the issue.  The wages of the working poor are awful, but it's the hourly wages of the middle-income folks that have seen the lowest growth in the last 20 years.  Indeed, the median household made only slightly more in 2010 than it did in 1978 ($49K vs. $46K -- Table H-6) when adjusting for inflation.

As the table below indicates, from 1991-2010, median income by education level declined considerably for the nearly 60% of the population with a high school diploma, some college, or an associates degree, held steady for the 20% or so with a bachelor's degree and increased for the 10% or so with a master's or professional degree (to reduce visual clutter, I leave off the 13% or so of Americans who did not reach, or did graduate from, high school and the 1% who earned a doctorate degree*).  Now, education levels increased a bit during the time -- so part of the explanation may be that there were more people in each of the higher groups -- but not by enough to change the fact that Americans with median levels of education are earning less now than they were 20 years ago.

Median income by education level.  Source: US Census, Table H-13

It's hard to imagine a burgeoning economy in any country that sees no real income growth for those at the middle of the income distribution.  But Murray, Brooks, and others (including liberals as well) also note other worrying trends concerning health, marriage, childbirth, etc.

Indeed, another recent NY Times article reported that the majority of babies born to women under 30 are now born out of wedlock.  But more important are the different rates by social class: "About 92 percent of college-educated women are married when they give birth, compared with 62 percent of women with some post-secondary schooling and 43 percent of women with a high school diploma or less".  And while the number of babies born out of wedlock has risen for all three groups, it's the middle group that's seen the starkest increase: in 1990 only 11% of children born to women in their 20's with some college were born out of wedlock, but by 2009 that number had more than tripled to 34%.

Again, the problem is more pervasive among the least-educated women (the comparable number is 51%), but the largest change is in the middle of the income distribution.

Now, you may have noticed that I titled the post "Median Class" instead of "Middle Class," and that's because what a lot of people define as "middle class" isn't actually comprised of people in the middle of the income distribution.  People often talk about college-educated adults belonging to the middle class, but fewer than 30% of adults have a 4-year degree.  Depending on which model of social class one uses, those in the middle of the income distribution (those who fall right around median) are usually classified as lower-middle-class or working class.  And I want to be clear that I'm talking about those who fall right around the median of the income distribution.

It seems to me that a large part of the challenge is economic.  Jobs that pay high wages to employees without high levels of educational attainment are fast disappearing (one could write "high wage/low skill" jobs as shorthand, but I don't possess the skills for most of these jobs so that seems inaccurate to me).  We still have a not-insignificant number of jobs in construction, trucking, the trades, manufacturing, and so forth that pay fairly well, but the number of those types of jobs has declined dramatically -- largely due to globalization and/or technology -- in recent decades.  And it seems unlikely that this trend will dramatically reverse.  In other words, it seems unrealistic to expect anywhere near 70% of the population to find stable employment with decent wages without a 4-year degree.

The result, it seems to me, is that instability and low wages are no longer the domain of only the poorest Americans.  And it seems reasonable to assume that the growth in the rich-middle achievement gap is due, at least in part, to the spread of this job instability to the median earners.

In short, it seems like there's a growing bulge in the middle of the income and education distributions that is lost.  Fewer and fewer can make a good living without a college degree.  They're falling further behind the wealthy academically.  And to make matters worse (to be intentionally and melodramatically blunt), recent reports say they're increasingly divorced, fat, and lazy as well.

That's worrying.  But what really worries me is that I don't see an easy solution. Brooks' integration idea may be a small step in the right direction, and improving our educational system would certainly be another. But neither seems likely to prevent the problem from getting worse in the next 20 or so years.  It seems unlikely we can do any, yet alone all, of the following in a short period of time:

1.) dramatically increase the number of stable, high-paying jobs for those without college degrees
2.) dramatically** increase the number of college-educated adults while also increasing the number of stable, well-paying jobs for those with degrees accordingly
3.) reverse social trends and encourage more two-parent households, more civic engagement, less obesity, etc.

But I hope I'm wrong.  I hope 20 years from now I'm writing about the resurgence of the median class and not about the spread of poverty to children of middle-income households.  Either way, I think recent data indicate we need to adjust our focus when we discuss ways to boost performance of the lowest achievers.  If we want to focus research and policy on those lagging behind, we need to broaden our scope beyond just the 10 or 20% lowest-income Americans.  Those in the middle aren't doing that much better.



*median income increased slightly from 1991-2010 for those with less than a 9th grade education --  from $20,640 to $21,254, decreased from $27,375 to $24,787 for those who attended, but did not graduate from, high school, and also slightly decreased for those with a doctorate as well -- from $121,693 to $119,825.


**"dramatically," in this case, does not mean the 10 percentage point increase we've seen over the past 25 years for adults over age 25 and especially does not the 10 percentage point increase we've seen over the past 35 years for those aged 25-29

Evaluating the Evidence on Non-School Interventions

I've been meaning to finish writing this piece for six weeks, and now I finally have.  Enjoy.

One of the most e-mailed articles in the NY Times shortly before Christmas was this piece by Helen Ladd and Edward Fiske on social class and educational achievement, in which the authors call for more non-school interventions ("education policy makers should try to provide poor students with the social support and experiences that middle-class students enjoy as a matter of course"). Overall, I thought it was a pretty good piece, but two things in particular struck me.

1.) That they build an argument for focusing on what happens outside of schools and then their first recommendation is to expand pre-schools.

2.) The recommendations after the pre-school discussion are fairly vague.

While the first is interesting, I'm more intrigued by the second -- and I wonder to what extent it's because they want to recommend that we change 30 things they can't possibly list in the limited space and to what extent it's because they're not sure exactly what to address.

Which begs the question: what do we know about which non-school programs will make a difference?  One particularly promising young scholar has argued that we don't yet know enough (you'll get the joke if you click on the link) to draw many conclusions on the topic.

The authors are certainly right that "Large bodies of research have shown how poor health and nutrition inhibit child development and learning" and they could've included numerous other factors at the family and neighborhood level.  Since we know that these social factors and environmental conditions are causally related to academic performance, trying to ameliorate their impact on low-income children makes all the sense in the world.  But, at the same time, I have yet to find (after extensive searching) a whole lot of evidence that we've been able to successfully do this in ways that rigorous research has found subsequently improved academic performance.  And Russ Whitehurst argues the point even more strongly, writing in a recent report that "There is no compelling evidence that investments in parenting classes, health services, nutritional programs, and community improvement in general have appreciable effects on student achievement in schools in the U.S."

Let's take a look at the few programs they do mention in the piece.  When I search Google Scholar for research on the programs they name, this is about all I can find on the East Durham Children's Initiative, Syracuse's Say Yes to Education program, Omaha's Building Bright Futures, and Boston's Citizen Schools.  Only the last one links the program to any educational outcomes, and it appears to be an internal report.  If there's evidence in peer-reviewed academic journals that these programs have improved students' academic performance, I've yet to see it (note: this is not to say that any of these four aren't working, just that we don't yet have really good evidence that they are).

At this point, some of you may be saying "you forgot about the Harlem Chidren's Zone!".  That's certainly the most-cited example of social policy impacting academics.  But there's a funny thing about that.  As far as I can tell, only one study has linked HCZ to academic outcomes.  And one thing that recently caught me eye is a chapter by Roland Fryer and others in the new Duncan/Murnane book on inequality and schools (highly recommended, btw).  In particular, I find it interesting how they've changed their tune on HCZ the past couple years.

In 2009, Fryer put out an NBER working paper with PhD student Will Dobbie arguing that the HCZ had effectively closed the black-white achievement gap.  The paper got all sorts of play in the press, with David Brooks claiming it proved once and for all that the "no excuses" schools were all that we needed and some of the Broader, Bolder folks replying that, no, it proved once and for all that community resources made the difference.

Shortly thereafter, I asked Geoffrey Canada which it was when he visited Vanderbilt -- he said that we needed both and that it was a "terrible, phony debate" to try and separate them.  Nor could Dobbie and Fryer definitively separate them; in the introduction, they write (emphasis theirs) "We cannot, however, disentangle whether communities coupled with high-quality schools drive our results, or whether the high-quality schools alone are enough to do the trick." (p. 4)

But now they've updated the paper and, according to Fryer's Harvard info page, it's been accepted at the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics. This is from the abstract: "We conclude with evidence that suggests high-quality schools are enough to significantly increase academic achievement among the poor. Community programs appear neither necessary nor sufficient."

This would go nicely with the new book chapter (here's a slightly different version) in which they write, on the first page:

The evaluation of the Harlem Children's Zone allows us to conclude that a high-quality school coupled with community-based interventions does not produce better results than a high-quality school alone, offering further evidence that school investments offer higher social returns than community-based interventions.

That seems like a rather sweeping statement to make based on one preliminary estimate of one program's effects but, nonetheless, their findings do put the burden of proof back on those supporting the Broader, Bolder position.

The closest thing I've seen to a collection research citations indicating that we do have evidence that community-based interventions can work is David Kirp's recent book, but even that involved a good deal of cherry-picking and mostly discussed small programs not explicitly linked with local schools.

So, where does this leave us?  As I wrote above, we have plenty of evidence that a wide range of experiences associated with living in poverty negatively impact kids' academic performance.  And we have plenty of reason to believe that altering these experiences could, potentially, improve kids' academic performance.  But I, and others, would argue that we have precious little empirical evidence that social policy has (or will) alter kids' lives in ways that will subsequently improve their grades, test scores, graduation rate, attainment, etc.  So I find it a bit odd that Ladd and Fiske conclude by writing

But let’s not pretend that family background does not matter and can be overlooked. Let’s agree that we know a lot about how to address the ways in which poverty undermines student learning. Whether we choose to face up to that reality is ultimately a moral question.

I'd make a different pitch if I were they.  I'd write something more along the lines of this: Let's not pretend that family background and living conditions don't matter and can or should be overlooked.  Let's agree that we know a lot about how poverty undermines student learning and how large this impact is.  And let's agree that we urgently need more research on ways to address the links between poverty and education.  The Promise Neighborhoods and other initiatives deserve our full attention and support in the short-run and can potentially provide that will help us better address the problem in the long run.

Of course, twice as many words with half the certainty is a really bad formula for an op-ed.  And there's no quicker way to frustrate policymakers than to write "more research is needed."

But, at the same time, I'm not sure it's helping their cause to claim that we know how to solve the problem.  If I'm in charge of a new Promise Neighborhood, my immediate reaction would be "We do? Great!"  Quickly followed by asking "which factors should I aim to address and which programs do we know are best to address these?"  I don't know the answer to that, and I've yet to hear from anyone who does.

So, in the end, I'd say there's about as much empirical evidence that social policy will close the achievement gap as there is that charter schools, merit pay, and vouchers will close the gap.  That is, very little.  So if we insist on arguing for an either/or approach, this leaves us at a standstill.  Both sides can yell that the other side's evidence is weak.  Which doesn't seem particularly productive to me.

As a researcher, this seems like an excellent argument to conduct a lot more research on the links between social policy and academic performance (as well as on in-school interventions).  Were I a policymaker, I'd want to avoid putting all my eggs in one basket.  We know the status quo doesn't work, but we can't really say for sure what else would be better.  That seems like a golden opportunity for policymakers and researchers to work together and experiment (literally) with a wide variety of reforms -- the former would get to hedge their bets and look prudent and open-minded while the latter would get to conduct groundbreaking research on a crucial issue.

In sum: Do we have conclusive evidence that a particular set of non-school interventions will close the achievement gap?  No, we don't.  So let's not claim we do.  But, let's also vow to keep searching for it.

Can a School Transform a Neighborhood?

Mike Petrilli had an interesting post over at Flypaper yesterday, in which he writes that Arne Duncan's argument that "the only way you change communities is by having great public schools in those communities" is preposterous.

I say "interesting" for two main reasons:

1.) I'm not really that surprised, since Mike Petrilli is probably the most contrarian writer over there, but it's still somewhat surprising to see somebody from Fordham -- a group that has labeled Richard Rothstein and Charles Murray "defeatists" for doubting the efficacy of schools -- arguing that there's something schools can't do.

2.) I think it's a generally interesting question.  Can a school, or a group of schools, transform a neighborhood?  There's no question that the effects of poverty and the performance of students and schools are heavily intertwined, but it's yet to be seen exactly how much changing one can change the other.

The debate on the links between neighborhoods and schooling has generally been focused more on the reverse hypothesis: i.e. can fixing a neighborhood fix its schools (or, at the societal level, can eradicating poverty close the achievement gap)?

Petrilli quotes colleague Jamie O'Leary saying that "schools need to improve despite the neighborhoods; improving poor neighborhoods is beyond the capacity (or purpose) of public schools."  That's an interesting take.  I can see why, in the short run, the last thing somebody running a school would be worried about was whether their school was transforming a neighborhood.  But, in the long run, if good schools can't improve neighborhoods then what's the point of good schools?  If closing the achievement gap didn't reduce poverty, then what, exactly, would be the point of closing the achievement gap?

Sure, helping kids succeed academically is nice.  But if it doesn't translate into a better job and higher standard of living, doesn't it ring kind of hollow?  If there was no achievement gap in this country, but just as much poverty; just as much crime; just as much despair; and just as much suffering, would it really be a significant better place to live?

Petrilli challenges readers to name a single community that has been transformed as the result of the performance of the local school.  Off the top of my head, I cannot name such a community (which doesn't mean it hasn't happened), but I can offer some thoughts on how, hypothetically, such an outcome would occur:

First, Superman shows up and turns the local schools in a down and out neighborhood into the best schools in the area.  As a result, two things happen: 1.)kids learn more; and 2.) homes in that neighborhood become more desirable.  As kids learn more, they become more likely to do their homework and less likely to loiter around or otherwise terrorize the neighborhood after school.  As word spreads that the neighborhood has good schools and docile teenagers, interest in the neighborhood increases and gentrification begins.  Homes previously in disrepair are renovated, abandoned factories are turned into hip lofts, and vacant lots are filled with fancy new townhomes.  Home prices (and rents) increase.  Stable families with more money and higher achieving kids move in.  Unstable families with less money and lower achieving kids move out.  The parents in the neighborhood take pride in their local schools and band together with the new arrivals to form a community association.  This association bands together to clean up the neighborhood, raise money for community center, ballfields, and community garden, and demand more amenities from their local politicians.  With all the kids now attending school during the day and attending tutoring or playing on the newly constructed athletic fields after school, crime continues to drop and housing prices continue to rise.  The kids in the neighborhood go on to attend college and get high-paying jobs.  Some move back to their still-improving neighborhood, raising the average income and education levels of the neighborhood even further, and join the community association.  Their kids attend the local schools and are excellent students who stay out of trouble, do their homework, and volunteer in the community.  By this point, the neighborhood is a happy, healthy place to raise children.

Which isn't to say that all is right with the world: some of the former residents who were forced out by price increases caused by the gentrification are no better off.  Other neighborhoods still have problems.  But not this one.  This one's been fixed as a result of the prowess of all the local schools.  And all thanks to Superman, who decided to leave Lex Luther alone and make them the talk of the town.

Ok, so that's obviously the dream scenario.  But the general gist is plausible.  If nothing else, better schools could certainly help spur gentrification.  Whether or not that really improves a neighborhood (since so many of the residents would be forced out) is up for debate.  But, in the long run, better educated children returning to a neighborhood to raise their children would certainly have a positive impact on both a neighborhood and its local schools.  On the other hand, one could argue that in this scenario that it's really the improving neighborhood that sustains the quality of the schools over time.  And, at the same time, that it would've been more efficient to simply improve the neighborhood and watch the local schools soar (instead of waiting for Superman to turn them around).

I've been involved in more than one discussion of whether fixing schools or fixing neighborhoods is the more effective way to reduce poverty.  Before I started teaching, and before I started grad school, I had that debate in my head.  I decided to enter education, and then decided to study education policy, because I sided with the former position: that fixing schools was the most realistic and efficient way to improve the lives of low-income children -- and subsequently improve our nation.  After spending some time studying the effects of poverty on academic performance, I now find myself sitting on the fence.  I'm not convinced we really know the answer to the question.  I have little doubt that, when taken to the extremes, both are true.  If we were able to actually transform a neighborhood (which likely would require extraordinary amounts of time, effort, and money), the local schools would certainly be better -- and I think if we were able to fix our school system (again, requiring a lot of time, effort, and money) then it would go a long way toward improving our worst neighborhoods.  On the one hand, fixing a school (though certainly not easy), has to be easier than fixing a neighborhood, but fixing a neighborhood (if possible) has to have larger effects.  I suspect that some combination of reforms have to be undertaken at both levels in order to fix both, but I digress . . .

The fixing neighborhoods versus fixing schools debate can be another post (or a hundred posts) for another time (maybe then I'll use language less simplistic than "fixing"), but I'll end by asking a different set of questions:

1.) Can the local schools become, and remain, excellent without first improving the neighborhood?

2.) If so, can the local schools become, and remain, excellent without subsequently altering the neighborhood in which they're located?

3.) Can anybody point to one example where a poor, crime-ridden, and disorderly neighborhood housed and sustained excellent neighborhood schools for multiple decades with no significant changes to the community before, during, or after this time period?

Oh Meyer Goodness! What was he Thinking?

Peter Meyer's baffling post last night continues to astound me.  The post begins by criticizing Pedro Noguera for arguing that there are two sides to the issue of addressing the achievement gap (at which point I was ready to agree with him), and finishes by arguing that Noguera's side is really wrong and Meyer's side is right (at which point I became baffled).

The post continues to re-hash the idea that we have only two options in combating the achievement gap: fix schools and ignore everything else, or fix everything else and ignore schools.  I've written in the past that this is a "false distinction" and agreed with Geoffrey Canada's assessment that this is "a terrible, phony debate".  We we need to choose option 'c' -- "all of the above".

I've already written a long description of this debate and what research actually says about the influence of non-school factors vs. in-school factors, in addition to a long explanation of how this played out on the ground at my school -- neither of which will be fully re-hashed here except to repeat this: If there's anything upon which education researchers agree it's that student achievement is influenced more by non-school factors than in-school factors -- and the evidence is overwhelming.

Meyer's piece goes downhill with the following paragraph when he asserts that the argument that "poverty causes low academic achievement" is "wrong."  Why is it wrong?  I'm not quite sure.  This is what he writes:

"What some of us have long known is that public schools were started mainly to educate the poor.  And the only reason poverty is a predictor of bad academic achievement results is that educators like Noguera have made it so.  Instead of schools as tools of liberation, we have made them into great houses of mirrors, reflecting back on students the environment they come from."

I'm genuinely unsure of exactly what this means or how, precisely, Pedro Noguera ensures that students from poor families perform worse in school.  But from what I can gather I assume he's arguing that high-poverty schools continue to perform poorly mostly because we expect them to . . . or something like that?

Where I sort of agree with Meyer is where he takes exception to Noguera's statement that "schools alone – not even the very best schools – cannot erase the effects of poverty".  Meyer is right to assert that there's growing evidence that a few select schools have achieved outstanding results virtually by themselves (which, let it be noted, is very different from arguing that we are able to replicate these isolated successes or that we should expect all schools (or at least all high-poverty schools) to work miracles).  But I only sort of agree with Meyer on this point because while I might have preferred that Noguera use slightly different wording, he's likely still technically correct -- and I say that because he specifically differentiates poverty from test scores in the next sentence.  The "effects of poverty" go far beyond just lower test scores, but we conclude that the KIPPs of the world have worked miracles almost solely because they have high test scores.  I, personally, haven't seen (not saying that none exists) research linking attendance at these miracle schools to broader outcomes (e.g. health, college graduation, occupational prestige, incarceration, etc.), and I'd have to guess that while one school can do a lot of good, it can't completely transform every single aspect of every single student's life.  Lastly, I find it odd that Meyer first argues that poverty doesn't cause low achievement and then that schools can, in fact, erase the effects of poverty.

But where Meyer completely loses me is with his assertion that "until we recognize that education is education and that poverty is poverty, we’re not going to fix our schools or enrich our population."  Here he couldn't be more wrong.  The truth is that poverty and education are deeply intertwined -- in both directions (i.e. living in poverty negatively affects students' educational outcomes, and students' educational outcomes affect their life outcomes and the odds they'll live in poverty).  And this is true regardless of whether or not Meyer's proposed reforms will work or not.  While we have plenty of evidence that social conditions and environmental factors experienced disproportionately by those living in poverty influence academic performance, we have precious little evidence that we can consistently change these conditions and factors in ways that will subsequently yield large gains in performance.

In other words, it might be the case that non-school factors are more powerful predictors of student performance but that in-school factors are much easier to change.  In which case, Meyer's call for school reform before community perform could, in the end, be the right way to go.  But even still, I find his utter disavowal of the relationship between poverty and academic performance to be more than a little disturbing (even despite his more conciliatory tone today).  And it leaves me with two sets questions for Mr. Meyer:

1.) What evidence, exactly, do we have that poverty does not influence students' academic performance?  If poverty doesn't cause worse performance, why do students from low-income families perform so much worse?  Is it solely because schools in low-income neighborhoods are worse?  If so, why do high-income students in low-performing schools outperform low-income students in high-performing schools?  And, even if it is only the school influencing achievement, is it not possible that neighborhood poverty is influencing school quality?

2.) Why must a disavowal of the relationship between poverty and academic performance be a prerequisite for the support of school reform?  Can it not be the case that poverty causes lower achievement but that schools can overcome some of these effects?  To argue that poverty is important and that schools are important are not mutually exclusive.


update: I originally misspelled Mr. Meyer's name as "Mayer" in this post.  My apologies; no matter how much I disagree with him on this issue he still deserves to have his name spelled correctly.

Income Inequality vs. Wealth Inequality

When we discuss the achievement gap in education, income inequality often serves as one explanation.  But racial differences persist even when controlling for differences in income.  One reason?  Wealth may be a better indicator of household resources than income -- and wealth inequality is far larger than income inequality.

An advocacy group released this report on income inequality yesterday. The article I noticed on the topic focused on one statistic: the wealth of White vs. Black single women aged 36-49.  The average wealth for Whites is $42,600.  The average wealth for Blacks is $5.

While that statistic is striking, different people stay single for different reasons.  What I find more notable is this: the median wealth for both Black and Hispanic single mothers with children under 18 is $0.  Yes, that means that 50% of  Black and Hispanic single parents have less than zero in assets to tap in times of need.  And before you scoff at the small sub-category this represents, keep in mind that nationwide over 2/3 of African-American children are born to single mothers.  Single White mothers, on the other hand, have a median wealth of only $7,970 -- a fairly paltry sum, but infinitely more than Black or Hispanic single mothers.

If we look at all the stats for 18-64 year-olds, it's readily apparent that inequalities in wealth are far larger than inequalities in earnings.  Blacks and Hispanics make, on average, about 2/3 of what same-gendered Whites make.  But they usually possess less than 1/5 of the assets as same-status Whites (see two tables below (note: sorry for the lack of readibility, for some reason blogger still hasn't made it easy to insert tables)).

This isn't to say that wealth or income inequality explain all of the achievement gap, of course.  For one thing, in the stats below you'll notice that Hispanics often do worse than Blacks -- but we know that, nationwide, Hispanics outscore Blacks on standardized tests.

		Wealth	% of white
Married or Cohabiting	White	$162,500
	Black	$31,500	19.4%
	Hispanic	$18,000	11.1%
Single Male	White	$43,800
	Black	$7,900	18.0%
	Hispanic	$9,730	22.2%
Single Female	White	$17,500
	Black	$100	0.6%
	Hispanic	$120	0.7%

		Earnings	% of White
Male	White	$50,139
	Black	$35,652	71.1%
	Hispanic	$29,239	58.3%
Female	White	$36,398
	Black	$31,035	85.3%
	Hispanic	$25,454	69.9%

Sunday Commentary: Should We Educate Poor Kids Differently?

Most people agree that the achievement gap is a major -- many would argue the largest -- problem in American education today.  And the question of how to educate disadvantaged students has hovered over American politics for decades.  Much of that time has been spent trying to equalize resources or integrate schools across the country.  But the latest trend seems to take different tack: educating poor kids differently than we do other kids.  While most middle- and upper-class students attend comprehensive neighborhood schools, increasing numbers of children from lower-class urban households are attending charter and specialized schools.  Many charter supporters laud the "no excuses" mentality at these schools (see, for example, David Whitman).  Meanwhile, charter leaders like Geoffrey Canada send their own children to suburban schools to avoid this type of management.

Which leads to an uncomfortable question: should we educate poor kids differently?  Few seem to acknowledge that we are essentially arguing that we should when we support different pedagogy or school structures or various ways of enhancing (e.g. lower class sizes or bonuses for teaching in high-needs schools) schools in low-income neighborhoods.  Most would say that we should treat all kids the same, but most would also acknowledge that kids have disparate experiences at home.  A compelling argument can be made that students who hail from different environments need to learn different things.  And a compelling argument can be made that segregation will never solve the problem.

Here's what a couple people in the field had to say:

No
by Stephen Lentz

Fundamentally, I do not believe that we should educate poor kids differently.  However, I do so with one giant stipulation: I believe that our entire national obsession with everyone 'going to college' is completely counterproductive to the current and future welfare of our country.

A generation ago, being poor and a minority largely meant that no matter how smart you were, college was supposed to be unattainable.  This was a mirror of the outrageous racism that hung over our country, and it needed to be changed.  However, today's policy makers have gone from one extreme to the other.  Today, poor students of color are expected to go to college regardless of their IQs.

While this is an improvement in one sense because it allows top performers to compete on more equal footing with their suburban peers, it sets others up for a lifetime of feeling stupid because they didn't make it to college in a "no excuses" environment.  Or worse yet, we end up moving towards a society where everyone goes to college, thereby negating the economic advantage of going in the first place.

This is an important failing of reform ideology, because it forgets that while the race-based bell curve was totally inaccurate and offensive, the normal distribution curve for academic achievement is very real within individual subgroups.  Indeed, there can only be so many academically "smart kids."

Traditionally, comprehensive suburban schools have not been as bad about this.  There, students go to schools that focus on both the advancement and well-being of individual students, rather than what's good for their communities as a whole, as students in poor neighborhoods are often expected to do.  Because of this lack of academic missionary zeal in the schools, students' individual talents are better tapped, thus making them happier students with more developed skills for a variety of post-graduation jobs.

Indeed, the adult pursuit of a chosen career or trade is the ultimate barometer of societal health and happiness, and schools that make this more likely to happen simple cannot be considered 'failing.'

I must add, however, that No Child Left Behind negatively changed this climate in suburban schools to focus on academic achievement above all things.  Thriving vocational programs were once at the heart of this focus on producing competent adults who were qualified to do a variety of jobs.  But because the law now mandates that all children succeed academically at high levels, we are forcing a lot of kids to do things they simply cannot master for careers that, for them, do not exist.

I think this is a shame, and rather than increasing student achievement, NCLB is plaguing all public schools nationwide with the same problems that haunt schools in impoverished communities.  That is, forcing kids into a model of "you will succeed academically and go to college, or else."

This is an extremely dangerous way to educate children.  It makes way too many of them feel like dumb and worthless children, which of course makes it exponentially more likely they'll grow up feeling like dumb and worthless adults in a society that purports to, but doesn't actually, recognize the value and dignity of all work.

So if this is the model that "reformers" are actively working to impose upon children merely because they hail from poor communities, then I'd just as soon stick with the pre-NCLB suburban standard and treat all children as unique and talented individuals.  Our country requires citizen workers with a broad array of skills that are not all, or even mostly, academically oriented.  It is simply foolish of us to force children into a false mold for a working world that simply doesn't exist.

Absolutely
by Bronx Teacherlady

When I go to the doctor, I want care tailored to my medical needs, not generic care for people my age.  Education should be every bit as tailored to individual needs as medicine.  Clearly, it’s not realistic to expect every public school student will have an IEP.  But in the absence of truly individualized educational tailoring, we can, and should, craft education to meet as many needs as we can reasonably anticipate.

If my doctor doesn’t have time to assess my personal needs, I’d rather he give me treatment that usually helps people my age who are at least medically somewhat like me, say, new mothers with digestive problems.  We know that poor kids have, in general, different challenges at school than wealthy kids, so we should educate them differently.  It is important to note, however, that much like medicine, the “different” education of poor kids needs to address fundamental differences that bring kids to the schoolhouse door with varied levels of preparation.

Continuing the medical analogy, imagine two 4-year-olds, Rita, a wealthy girl, and Paul, a poor boy, who go to the doctor for an iron check.  Rita’s iron level is fine, so the doctor congratulates her parents, telling them to keep doing whatever they’re doing – it’s working – and to add a multivitamin to make her even healthier.  This is what school does for wealthy kids.

Paul, on the other hand, turns out to be anemic.  The doctor frowns and prescribes an iron supplement.  Paul comes back for a re-check in a few months, but his iron is still low.  The doctor gives Paul’s parents a stern lecture and prescribes more of the same supplement.  Another few months pass, and Paul’s iron still does not go up.  The doctor throws up his hands and says, “it’s clearly in Paul’s genetics or his home environment, I can’t do anything.” Meanwhile, Paul gets weaker and weaker from iron deficiency.  This is the way schools treat poor kids.

Played out as a medical scenario, this seems an absurd, even immoral, way to treat children. It is just as absurd and wrong when our education is delivered this way.  “No-excuses” charter schools, lengthened school days, and high-stakes testing environments are the equivalent of raising the dose of a medication that never worked in the first place.

So when I say we should educate poor kids differently, I mean we should try compensatory education that actually compensates for what is missing.  Rather than giving Paul a pill that Rita’s never taken, in hopes it will make his iron level like hers, the doctor might be wise to find out more about Rita.  Maybe she eats a lot of spinach, and maybe that iron is more absorbable by the body than iron in pill form.  We would expect the doctor to explore why Rita is getting enough iron, and then try to give those things, not something Rita’s never had, to Paul.  Compensatory education should give poor kids the things we know they don’t get at home – one-on-one time with educated adults; enjoyable, no-pressure cognitive stimulation and linguistic practice; time and space to explore and develop interests and skills and become educated and educable people.  Wealthy kids don’t come to school more ready to absorb because they have “no excuses” homes where they study in silence all day and are told that their worth is measured by how well they fill in the bubbles on a piece of paper – how would we think giving this to poor kids could possibly be the answer?

________________________________________________________
Stephen Lentz graduated from Syracuse Law in 2002 but decided to pursue another calling, immediately joining the NYC Teaching Fellows.  He's since moved to Tennessee and is now in his eighth year in the classroom.  He occasionally posts on his own blog, Notes of a Former Teaching Fellow.


Bronx Teacherlady worked at a South Bronx elementary school and a charter school in another city before throwing her hands up and retreating to academia to try to fix the problem from another angle.

Today's Random Thoughts

-Very clever piece in the Miller-McCune magazine (hat tip: idea of the day blog) about evaluating schools based on how the boys' bathrooms look, along with other qualitative measures. The author says he relies mostly on test scores to judge schools, but it seems to me that he can learn more about them from the measures he mentions. In addition to looking at bathrooms, he looks for these indicators (and a number of others):

• Classroom windows and/or the vertical slits on school doors are covered over with dark construction paper. Trust me, it's seldom for purely decorative purposes.
• Students continually ask, "Will this be on the test?" (The unstated premise: "If not, we'll just ignore it.")
• Adults frequently YELL belittling language. Or: Like a restaurant with bad acoustics, the school's overall sound quality —whether too loud or too quiet — is just downright unpalatable.
• Administrators are unwilling to let credentialed visitors roam. Instead, they insist on "giving a tour" of the usual, safe suspects.

My school would have failed all of these miserably. We actually kept the bathrooms locked -- students had to ask a teacher for a key to get access (or wait by the door for another kid to come out). And only a handful of teachers had keys. Even so, they were a disaster. The janitor was constantly pulling all sorts of things out of the toilets.

-I noticed this piece in the NY Times Science section last week on how the brain deals with stress. There's new research that finds that "chronically stressed rats lost their elastic rat cunning and instead fell back on familiar routines and rote responses, like compulsively pressing a bar for food pellets they had no intention of eating." There's already research showing that living in poverty creates stress that has multiple negative implications for people. Maybe this is another reason that kids from low SES background perform so poorly in school. "Robert Sapolsky, a neurobiologist who studies stress at Stanford University School of Medicine, said, 'This is a great model for understanding why we end up in a rut, and then dig ourselves deeper and deeper into that rut.'"

-Among other things that the Race to the top funds don't take into account are what types of punishments states allow. In case you weren't aware, 20 states still allow corporal punishment. I have to say that I didn't find the idea of corporal punishment nearly as distasteful while I was teaching as I did before I started, but my sense is that it's neither appropriate nor conducive to a good school environment. Though, of course, an out of control school isn't helping anybody either.

Attempts to Change HOPE VI Residents' Aspirations and Behaviors

A little bit on the research I presented today at ASA:

HOPE VI (Housing for People Everywhere) is a federal housing program signed into law in 1992, following the report of the Commission on Severely Distressed Public Housing. In short, the program razes dilapidated housing projects and replaces them with new mixed-income housing. But not only is the quality of the housing higher, the rules are also stricter. In order to reside in a publicly subsidized unit, a resident usually must prove that they have a job, a good rental history, and undergo a criminal background check. In this way, to put it crudely, the program aims to improve neighborhoods and improve people. But virtually all of the research I've seen has been on the former (my explanation: the latter is politically incorrect to discuss).

Please note that I'm not advocating a particular course of action or taking a position on whether or not public housing residents should change the way they lead their lives. I'm simply observing that a number of people are implementing a course of action with this as their goal and exploring how residents are reacting to this.

My study is a qualitative analysis of 24 interviews with residents of one HOPE VI development and explores how they react to attempts to change their behaviors and aspirations.

One of the problems with qualitative research is that it's quite difficult to summarize. The synopsis I passed out is here, full of tables and figures to help explain what I'm saying (Blogger is great, but for some reason they have yet to make it easy to insert tables or copy pictures into posts).

Anyway, here are the basics on what I found:

-The rules that are in place appear to indicate an attempt to enforce upper middle-class social norms on residents (for example, residents reported that they weren't allowed to own pit bulls, grill in their front yard, or fix their car in the street). And the rules are zealously enforced. Management frequently patrols the neighborhood with camera in hand. Small infractions (e.g. leaving a trash can curbside past the day of collection or having visible clutter outside one's house) are dealt with by immediately notifying the resident that they've been fined $25 and placing a photo and summary in their mailbox.

-Management is actively attempting to change residents' behaviors and aspirations -- and most residents are aware of this. Residents must take part in a home ownership class before taking up residence in the neighborhood and they also report meeting with counselors to set goals -- which are discussed in follow-up phone class. When residents purchase their own homes, it's publicized in the community newsletter. As one resident puts it, the development "was built for you to know to be self sufficient, gen on your feet and then move along."

-While some of the residents bristle at the strict rules ("they hold our hand to the fire" says one), complaining about "big brother," most of the residents interviewed had more positive responses. A number of residents reported that their neighborhood was clean, quite a bit better than their old neighborhood, that neighbors were responsible, and that they felt peer pressure to keep things neat and orderly. As one resident puts it, "this is not the projects anymore . . . it's homes, you know?"

-There was limited evidence that, to some extent, the rules and processes in place were leading to desired changes in residents' behaviors and aspirations. For example, various residents reported: not littering because they would be fined for it, saving money for a house after their home ownership class, and becoming better at budgeting since they had to pay their own utility bills.

Research on HOPE VI is decidedly mixed, with the biggest knock being that few of the people living in the neighborhood before redevelopment are allowed to move back in. Accordingly, most of the interviews I analyzed were of people who lived elsewhere before moving. While the evidence was decidedly mixed -- and the sample quite small -- I would say evidence I examined is more positive than negative. The neighborhood seems safer and cleaner than before, rules are routinely enforced, and residents are doing some things that the writers of the legislation would be happy about.

Now, you might be asking yourself what the heck this has to do with education. Well, as we all know by now, if there's anything upon which education researchers agree it's that student achievement is influenced more by non-school factors than in-school factors -- and the evidence is overwhelming. And even though most people don't talk about housing programs as educational interventions, the behaviors the policies seemed designed to elicit are similar to those that an educational intervention might aim for. The neighborhoods appear quieter and more orderly -- both neighborhood characteristics that are positively related to academic performance.

Book Recommendation: Gang Leader for a Day

The last couple weeks have just flown by, and I somehow never found time for a blog post. I did find time, however, to read an excellent book that I picked up a couple months ago: Gang Leader for a Day by Sudhir Venkatesh. If you have a few spare hours, and a few spare dollars, I'd recommend picking up a copy.

Venkatesh is a Professor of Sociology at Columbia whose exploits were chronicled in Freakonomics, but this book chronicles his story before he ascended the ranks of academia. Back when he was a frustrated grad student (like me) he strolled into the projects one day trying to pilot some survey questions and impress the faculty. He accidentally walked in on a gathering of gang members who immediately became suspicious of him. The gang's leader eventually decides that Venkatesh isn't a bad guy and offers to show him how the gang works. The bulk of the book chronicles the six years he spends observing a crack gang, wandering through the projects, and learning first-hand about the lives of the people there.

The living conditions inside the projects are appalling, but not particularly surprising. What I thought was more surprising was the level of complicitness between the gang, the building leader, the housing authority, and the police. The gang helps out the community in a lot of ways and, in exchange, the community looks the other way. Indeed, there seems to be more enmity for the police and the government than for the gang.

Perhaps the most shocking scene in the book is when a handful of police officers march into a gang party. I assumed that mass arrests were going to take place but, instead, the officers demanded that the gang leaders put all of their cash and jewelry into bags that the officers passed around and then left with the loot.

When people hear "gang" or "projects" they assume the worst. But, in the end, it's clear that there was a functioning community behind these. The people he chronicles are poor and they struggle, but they have relationships and they help each other out -- just like any other sector of society. The gang is not simply "evil" and the projects are not simply "bad." The people and their situation is complex, as life always seems to be.

For once in my life, I don't really have any pointed criticism for the book. That's partially b/c it's more of a narrative than anything else -- it reads like a novel -- and partially b/c I really have no idea what he saw and how accurately he describes it. In the end, Venkatesh is mostly content to describe and leave judgment to the reader. My main lament is that he didn't include more stories and observations -- the book is less than 300 pages and I'd have to imagine that he has thousands of pages of field notes.

In addition to being interesting and informative the book is a quick read. It leaves me wishing that more academics could write in such an engaging fashion. And that more academics could write such illuminating pieces on such important topics.