Re: Fw: parenst, schools and poverty

[aburke5054@aol.com]

When you talk about "poverty," the "culture of poverty," and the 
"ecology of poverty," you're just playing word games .  As for Tyler 
Heights, maybe they're doing exactly what they need to do to build the 
foiundation that will help TH kids reach the same standards as the 
Crofton kids in later grades.  Maybe those TH kids are a lot better off 
now than they would have been without NCLB.

Art

-----Original Message-----
From: GERALD BRACEY <gbracey1@verizon.net>
To: arn-l@interversity.org
Sent: Mon, 20 Aug 2007 7:38 am
Subject: [arn-l] Fw: parenst, schools and poverty


----- Original Message -----
From: GERALD BRACEY
To: LiteracyForAll@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Monday, August 20, 2007 10:36 AM
Subject: parents, schools and poverty


What follows is something I just sent over to the Huffington Post.  
It's my
attempt to summarize a book in 950 words.  It relates to Pete's 
comments on the
Union Tribune editorial.

A few years back several books denied that there was a "culture of 
poverty"
which had been a popular concept since the '60's.  It was more an 
ecology of
poverty in which aspects of poverty had "negative synergy" (my invented 
phrase)
with the school and other institutions of life.  As with other 
ecosystems, the
situation is complex and when sometime happens at one place, it might 
have
surprising consequences somewhere else.

I think Linda's book gets at this negative synergy--and contrasts it 
with the
synergy of an affluent school--quite nicely.

Jerry


-------------------------

When people have said "poverty is no excuse," my response has been, 
"Yes, you're
right.  Poverty is not an excuse.  It's a condition.  It's like 
gravity.
Gravity affects everything you do on the planet.  So does poverty."

Obviously, poverty, per se, does not cause school failure.  It sets up 
the
conditions and a dynamic that make it tough for poor kids to succeed.  
Perhaps
the quickest way to understand that dynamic in the concrete is to read 
passages
in Linda Pearlstein's new book, Tested: One American School Struggles 
to Make
the Grade.  Former Washington Post education reporter Perlstein spent a 
year in
Tyler Heights, a poor school in a rich county (Anne Arundel, MD).

The kids get off to a bad start physically: they get sugar water or 
Oodles of
Noodles as infants, Froot Loops as toddlers and show up at school 
overweight,
undernourished, their teeth rotting.

Their academic beginnings aren't healthy, either.  A segment from 
Chapter 3:

"Mrs. Facchine felt no small measure of distress when she asked what 
adding an
's' does to a noun and every face in her class went blank.  Mill 
Milhoan was
mortified when she handed out Post-it notes for questions about 
friendship and
got back, "Ho do friend go yon" and "The kestos is the kmblso." One 
girl doesn't
know what a paragraph is; one boy asked the character trait that 
describes him
said, "Word."  Another, asked how much is between seventeen and 
eighteen
answered, Four."

I hear complaints about teachers treating kids as passive vessels.  
Given the
school-oriented knowledge deficits these kids have and the behaviors 
that
actively prevent learning, more progress could be made if they were 
passive
vessels for a while.  One teacher was baffled by a boy who farted all 
day and
announced, "I smell like salad."  There was the boy who, complimented 
on his new
sneakers and said "Thanks! My mom stole them!"  During sharing time, 
one girl
spoke of speaking to her father through the glass using a phone.  One 
girl,
asked the meaning of "stray," said "Like a homeless person."  "Is Mars 
a
lifetime?" One boy wanted to know.  On multiple choice tests, kids 
answered the
questions without reading the stems and quit early, beaming to be done 
even
though segments of the test were unfinished.  And we haven't even 
talked about
kids who don't know English.

Passive would be good for a while.  A third grader, denied a request to 
see the
nurse (again), "put her face in her teacher's and said, "Excuse me.  My 
rash
hurts.  What if I die?'" Then she swung her book in front of the 
screen,
blocking a math problem, hopped to the side of the room, ran the faucet 
and
created so much tension that all the other children were distracted.  
"I'll have
to remove you," her teacher said.  "I'll have someone remove you too!" 
said the
girl.  Comments Perlstein at one point, "The amount of individual 
attention that
goes into soothing the truly dysfunctional children and keeping them in 
class is
extraordinary" (p. 110).  Occasionally, physical restraint or a police 
officer's
visit was necessary (remember, we're talking mostly about 
kindergartners to
third graders here), but mostly through conversation which some 
children
required daily.

In Chapter 11, Perlstein contrasts Tyler Heights with Crofton 
Elementary in an
affluent development I used to admire each summer as I drove from 
Virginia to
the jazz joints in Manhattan, although, I wondered then why the gates 
were shut,
a knowledge shortcoming from my own cultural upbringing.  Crofton is no 
longer a
gated community, but its third graders "created fairy tales on the 
computer,
posted staff biographies on the school's website, and wrote ten 
persuasive
letters.  They sat in circles, discussed what they read and proofread 
one
another's work."

Fifth graders studied the political positions of candidates and ran a 
bank and
managed savings accounts.  Fourth graders gave speeches on Olympic 
sports (some
of them had been to the Winter Games in Turin).  Despite the presence 
of NCLB
and its obsession with reading and math, they get 45 minutes a day of 
science or
social studies which included maintaining a compost pile, making 
tortilla tepees
and sugar cube igloos, creating picture stories about Native Americans 
and
composing pictograph stories on faux animal hides.

Perlstein observes that NCLB and the standards movement, designed to 
reduce the
disparities between rich and poor has actually increased it.  "The 
practice of
focusing on the tested subjects of reading and math at the expense of a
well-rounded curriculum is far more prevalent where children are poor 
and
minority" (p. 136) (I discussed this also in "Revenge of the Liberal 
Arts?"
August 15, and "Growing an Achievement Gap", July 15).  Says Perlstein,
"President Bush, in introducing NCLB, vowed to banish the 'soft bigotry 
of low
expectations' for the nation's disadvantaged children.  To condemn them 
to a
rudimentary education in the name of improvement is bigotry too."

Crofton kids arrive as kindergartners knowing their numbers and 
letters.  Many
can read.  "Middle class students see every day how schooling relates 
positively
to the riches of everyday life.  They see this through their parents' 
jobs.
They see this through travel and cultural exposure that extends beyond 
the Chuck
E. Cheese's-shopping mall-television circuit that narrowly bounds the
experiences of many children at Tyler Heights.  This exposure fuels 
motivation."
(p. 137).  Kids at Tyler Heights get many, many external rewards for 
doing what
they are supposed to.  Crofton kids don't get any.  Crofton doesn't 
even have an
honor roll.  Tyler Heights is about prepping for the state test (even 
though the
teachers hate to).  Crofton is about knowledge.

These are only brief snap shots of life at Tyler Heights where 
Perlstein paints
the teachers and, especially the principal, as pretty damn heroic.  You 
might
want to show them to the next person who tells you "poverty is no 
excuse."

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