The American Dream -- so long as you're not poor
Debate is healthy, which is why I've calmed down my visceral reaction to this column by Dan Seligman in Forbes asserting quite firmly that the achievement gap cannot be closed and, by implication, we shouldn't even be trying.
Instead, let's eviscerate it logically.
Consider that proposition. If indeed the average dropout has a massively lower IQ than the average graduate, and since we know that a wildly disproportionate number of dropouts are minorities and poor, this leads to the simple syllogism that poor people, hispanic people and black people are born stupid and are going to by and large stay stupid.
Of course, proponents of this line of thinking wont put it in those terms. They'll argue that increased levels of lead in the water, more malnutrition, lower parental education, less vocabulary spoken at home, etc., are all the unfortunate factors of poverty which lead to the lower IQ. And, I will readily concede that many poor and minority students enter kindergarden already grade levels behind their wealthier peers.
But here's the thing: Schools can bridge those differences within a matter of years. Studies have shown, for example, that students who have high-quality teachers three years in a row can rise multiple standard deviations in achievement. Or, you can look at individual schools that serve high-poverty, high-minority populations yet remarkably get achievement rates in the 90%+ region: Dayton's Bluff, M. Hall Stanton, Elmont, City Heights... just in Virginia, nine elementary schools had at least 50% minorities and 75% poor students yet achieved in the top 25% of the state in 5th grade reading. That may not seem like a lot, but 500 elementary schools across the nation tell you in the most concrete terms that poverty and skin color are not shackles attached at birth.
Also, I don't know, perhaps the persistent achievement gap has something to do with the fact that disadvantaged schools get on average worse teachers with less experience, lower expectations and fewer majors in their subjects; buildings which are often crumbling and don't contain adaquate technology or resources such as books; and, on top of all that, recieve on average $1,300 less per-pupil.
After all of that, we can start arguing about the flawed use of IQ as an absolute immutable measure of intelligence, whether with Howard Gardner's contentions regarding multiple intelligences or the many studies that have shown inherent biases against minorities in IQ tets.
Of course poverty brings with it a whole host of challenges. But to suggest that those challenges are insurmountable -- and then, what, we give up? tell the hundreds of thousands of poor children that they better start preparing for a life flipping burgers (if they're lucky) because we're not willing to put in the resources that we know can help them reach an equality of opportunity? That the American Dream has a "poor need not apply" sign hanging outside it's window? -- is dead wrong.
Note that this is Seligman's sole evidence for his sweeping assertion that the gap is a permanent inevitability. Should we point him to Delaware, where the black-white achievement gap has closed 7 percentage points in the past few years? How about Pennsylvania, where it contracted by 8. In Kentucky, the income achievement gap went down 5% between 2002 and 2004. Same in North Carolina. Even the long-term NAEP results bear out that the achievement gap lines are dynamic. If Seligman was right, we should expect little to no movement. I've long been a critic of the current system and I've long said those numbers aren't shifting with nearly enough vigor, but the very fact that they are shifting under the weight of efforts to shift them is powerful testimony against the defeatist equation of poor = dumb.
Again, I also have to come back to what education should be teaching. Seligman offers that "Everyone hits a brick wall at some point. With some students it may not happen until they are exposed to quantum mechanics. With others it happens with long division. Most students are well inside those two extremes, but the fact remains that disadvantaged students hit the wall earlier and learn less." I'm not quite clear what the purpose of schools are if not to provide a helping hand over that wall. Moreover, if instead of trying to teach everyone quantum mechanics we were trying to teach everyone to be efficacious critical thinkers with the skills necessary to have opportunities, well, maybe we could lay a path that would avoid the wall altogether.
I come back to this: A child born into poverty has a 9% chance of recieving a bachelor's degree by age 25. Either that means that the bulk of poor children are morons, the bulk of poor children are screwed, or there's something wrong with the schools.
Considering that I can drive a half hour from my house and go into a school that's graduating 90%, not 9%, of it's poor students, I'm going to keep fighting to give every student a shot at achieving their highest potential.
[More:
Eduwonk here
EdTrust's Weiner on teacher quality here
Cleveland H.S. students on the challenges to education they face in school here]
Instead, let's eviscerate it logically.
The equity theme here has two components. One is that the prime objective of educational policy is to eliminate the "achievement gap"--the gap between what's learned in school by disadvantaged kids and what's learned by middle- and upper-class kids. The other element is the notion that the U.S. would be much better off if only we devoted more resources to the education sector.
Pursuing the latter, Henry M. Levin, a professor of economics and education at Teachers College, argued in an op-ed piece in the New York Times appearing shortly after the symposium that immense gains are to be had from keeping underachievers in school. High school dropouts, he noted, earn $260,000 less over the course of their lives than do high school graduates. But it is wildly unrealistic to assume that the students who drop out would earn as much as those who graduate if only they had hung around for four years--an assumption ignoring tons of evidence that the dropouts are a population with trouble hanging on to jobs and have lower ability levels. The data tell us that the average dropout has an IQ that puts him at around the fifteenth percentile of those who graduate. Not exactly what employers are looking for.
Consider that proposition. If indeed the average dropout has a massively lower IQ than the average graduate, and since we know that a wildly disproportionate number of dropouts are minorities and poor, this leads to the simple syllogism that poor people, hispanic people and black people are born stupid and are going to by and large stay stupid.
Of course, proponents of this line of thinking wont put it in those terms. They'll argue that increased levels of lead in the water, more malnutrition, lower parental education, less vocabulary spoken at home, etc., are all the unfortunate factors of poverty which lead to the lower IQ. And, I will readily concede that many poor and minority students enter kindergarden already grade levels behind their wealthier peers.
But here's the thing: Schools can bridge those differences within a matter of years. Studies have shown, for example, that students who have high-quality teachers three years in a row can rise multiple standard deviations in achievement. Or, you can look at individual schools that serve high-poverty, high-minority populations yet remarkably get achievement rates in the 90%+ region: Dayton's Bluff, M. Hall Stanton, Elmont, City Heights... just in Virginia, nine elementary schools had at least 50% minorities and 75% poor students yet achieved in the top 25% of the state in 5th grade reading. That may not seem like a lot, but 500 elementary schools across the nation tell you in the most concrete terms that poverty and skin color are not shackles attached at birth.
Also, I don't know, perhaps the persistent achievement gap has something to do with the fact that disadvantaged schools get on average worse teachers with less experience, lower expectations and fewer majors in their subjects; buildings which are often crumbling and don't contain adaquate technology or resources such as books; and, on top of all that, recieve on average $1,300 less per-pupil.
After all of that, we can start arguing about the flawed use of IQ as an absolute immutable measure of intelligence, whether with Howard Gardner's contentions regarding multiple intelligences or the many studies that have shown inherent biases against minorities in IQ tets.
Of course poverty brings with it a whole host of challenges. But to suggest that those challenges are insurmountable -- and then, what, we give up? tell the hundreds of thousands of poor children that they better start preparing for a life flipping burgers (if they're lucky) because we're not willing to put in the resources that we know can help them reach an equality of opportunity? That the American Dream has a "poor need not apply" sign hanging outside it's window? -- is dead wrong.
What's so strange about all this? Just one little thing: It is not possible to close the achievement gap. The mission statement is a summons to a fool's errand. The reason that the gap will never be eliminated is that intelligence rises with socioeconomic status. Estimated correlations between social class and IQ range from 0.3 to 0.7 (on a scale where 0 means no connection and 1 describes two variables marching in lockstep). Those figures tell us that the poor and disadvantaged have less cognitive ability than those from higher-status families. Cognitive ability predicts scores on achievement tests.
Note that this is Seligman's sole evidence for his sweeping assertion that the gap is a permanent inevitability. Should we point him to Delaware, where the black-white achievement gap has closed 7 percentage points in the past few years? How about Pennsylvania, where it contracted by 8. In Kentucky, the income achievement gap went down 5% between 2002 and 2004. Same in North Carolina. Even the long-term NAEP results bear out that the achievement gap lines are dynamic. If Seligman was right, we should expect little to no movement. I've long been a critic of the current system and I've long said those numbers aren't shifting with nearly enough vigor, but the very fact that they are shifting under the weight of efforts to shift them is powerful testimony against the defeatist equation of poor = dumb.
Again, I also have to come back to what education should be teaching. Seligman offers that "Everyone hits a brick wall at some point. With some students it may not happen until they are exposed to quantum mechanics. With others it happens with long division. Most students are well inside those two extremes, but the fact remains that disadvantaged students hit the wall earlier and learn less." I'm not quite clear what the purpose of schools are if not to provide a helping hand over that wall. Moreover, if instead of trying to teach everyone quantum mechanics we were trying to teach everyone to be efficacious critical thinkers with the skills necessary to have opportunities, well, maybe we could lay a path that would avoid the wall altogether.
I come back to this: A child born into poverty has a 9% chance of recieving a bachelor's degree by age 25. Either that means that the bulk of poor children are morons, the bulk of poor children are screwed, or there's something wrong with the schools.
Considering that I can drive a half hour from my house and go into a school that's graduating 90%, not 9%, of it's poor students, I'm going to keep fighting to give every student a shot at achieving their highest potential.
[More:
Eduwonk here
EdTrust's Weiner on teacher quality here
Cleveland H.S. students on the challenges to education they face in school here]
This entry was posted
on Tuesday, January 03, 2006 at 9:34 AM.
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