Re: "Poverty Is No Excuse" Is No Excuse

[aburke5054@aol.com]

No one believes that the choice is either improving schools or 
improving children's lives outside school.  Why do you continue with 
this schematized nonsense that no is actually saying and that no one 
believes?

Art


-----Original Message-----
From: Peter Campbell <campbellp@mail.montclair.edu>
To: ARN State <ARN-state@yahoogroups.com>; ARN-L List 
<arn-l@interversity.org>; arn2-strategy <arn2-strategy@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Fri, 23 Jun 2006 14:11:16 -0500
Subject: [arn-l] "Poverty Is No Excuse" Is No Excuse

  "THE PROBLEM" with education is not really education. It's social and 
economic injustice, largely manifested as poverty, segregation, racism, 
and classism. As my post on John McWhorter shows, 
(http://transformeducation.blogspot.com/2006/06/bill-cosby-john-mcwhorter
-and-new.html) there are a large number of blacks entering the middle 
class who are now turning their backs on low-income blacks in ways that 
are savage and disturbing. It shows the extent to which money, power, 
and privilege can be horribly corrupting forces.

 "THE PROBLEM" with education is symptomatic -- literally -- of the 
disease of social and economic injustice. But the climate in this 
country is overtly hostile to this idea. It's very easy to see why: 
social and economic injustice gets distorted into the conversation 
called "Poverty Is No Excuse." It then gets further distorted by 
saccharine anecdotes of "the little black kid that could," the kid who 
-- despite the odds -- managed to graduate suma cum laude from Harvard. 
If you counted these little bromides up, they'd probably number in the 
dozens. So there exist in the public discourse on education several 
dozen uplifting stories about poor kids with crack-addicted mothers 
that made it. The moral? If they could do it, any person could. The 
same Horatio Alger story is applied to schools, e.g., KIPP. It goes 
like this: KIPP schools can take poor black kids, raise their test 
scores, and get them into elite prep schools. Moral of the story? If 
they could do it, any school could.

 What's wrong with this logic? This is -- IMHO -- the most important 
argument to make right now RE: "THE PROBLEM" with education.

 As I have been trying to argue, successfully or not, the logic behind 
these feel-good stories is faulty. On the individual level, the logic 
is faulty because NOT everyone can grow up with a crack-addicted mother 
and graduate suma cum laude from Harvard. If they could, these kinds of 
stories would never be told. We don't tell stories about the little kid 
who drank orange juice and then played baseball. Why not? Because every 
little kid can drink orange juice and play baseball. This is an 
UNREMARKABLE story -- a banal, commonplace, everyday event. But the 
reason we tell stories about poor kids with crack-addicted mothers that 
make it is because they are so incredibly rare. We say, "Wow! Did you 
hear that strory about the poor kid with the crack-addicted mother that 
became the president of General Motors??"

 Yet, for some extraordinary reason, our brains freeze up when we hear 
these stories. Somehow, we are simultaneously -- and paradoxically -- 
aware that (1) this is very rare and yet (2) if he could do it, anyone 
can. This makes absolutely zero sense logically. But we are inherently 
sentimental beasts, we Americans. So we eat this shit up because we are 
addicted to stories of inspiration. All we really want to do is feel 
good. Believing that this extraordinarily remarkable event is somehow 
reproducible may not make sense logically, but it makes us feel good to 
think that it might be possible.

 But feeling good is not the foundation on which public policy should 
be placed.

 The same exact logic applies to "the little KIPP school that could." 
We see the story and say, "Wow! These black kids can do it. That must 
mean that every school and every poor black kid can do it!" But what 
does "do it" mean? In most cases of these feel-good stories, "do it" 
means higher test scores. In other words, the school is successful 
because it has raised test scores. This is the evidence that is 
presented as proof that it is successful. But higher test scores 
certainly does NOT mean better-educated kids. The Center on Education 
Policy released a report 
(http://www.cep-dc.org/nclb/Year4/Press/CEPNewsRelease24March2006.pdf) 
showing that non-tested subjects like art, music, and social studies 
are not being taught any more so schools -- including the little 
schools that could -- can focus exclusively on the subjects that are 
tested, i.e., reading and math. Translation? "Successful" schools are 
turning into test-prep factories.

 KIPP counters this by showing that they offer a broad range of 
subjects -- including art, music, social studies -- and that their 
students are given opportunities to sing in the choir, play in the 
orchestra, etc. One would certainly expect that if kids spend from 7:30 
a.m. until 5:00 p.m. during the week, four hours on Saturdays, and a 
month during the summer that they would be able to be exposed to a 
broad range of subjects. KIPP students put in roughly 70% more time in 
class than typical public school students.

So we say, "Hurray! Every school should be like KIPP!"

 But as I've argued again and again, KIPP can't scale. Right now, there 
are 45 KIPP schools with 400 teachers serving over 9,000 students in 15 
states and the District of Columbia. 9,000 students out of the total 
population of 54,593,000 students in all of public K-12 schools means 
that KIPP serves 0.00016486% of the population. And yet, 0.00016486% of 
students makes us stand up and say, "This should work for the remaining 
99.999835% of students!"

 The average KIPP teacher is in his/her early 20's, is single, and has 
no kids. They are clearly very dedicated young people who are not only 
willing to work longer hours and on Saturdays, but who are ABLE to work 
longer hours and on Saturdays. Teachers with families simply can't do 
this. They have to go home, fix dinner, do the dishes, walk the dog, 
and help with their kids' homework.

 Moreover, the "success" of KIPP is tarnished when you consider where 
the students come from. Interviews with KIPP teachers indicate that 
they refer mostly already high-achieving students to KIPP who come from 
intact families and whose parents are unusually involved in the school 
(Carnoy, M., Jacobsen, R., Mishel, L., & Rothstein, R. (2005). The 
charter school dust-up: Examining evidence on enrollment and 
achievement. Washington, DC: Economic Policy Institute and New York: 
Teachers College Press., p. 58).

 So again - a TOTALLY remarkable, unique, unreproducible model is held 
up as the hope for all.

 To achieve the tipping point, we have to trash the logic that 
underlies the "Poverty Is No Excuse" crap. Certainly some kids can pull 
themselves up out of the inner-city despite the tremendous odds. 
Certainly some great schools have formed and will continue to form in 
poor neighborhoods and attract motivated teachers, students, and 
parents to work together to improve the educational outcomes of poor 
kids. KIPP is a good example of this. But the dozens of examples of 
personal success pale in comparison to the hundreds of thousands of 
personal failures. The 45 KIPP schools make up a tiny fraction of the 
thousands and thousands of schools where children are ground up and 
spat out. So why do so many poor kids fail? Why are so many poor 
children chewed up and spat out?

 We obviously need to craft both short and long-term stategies. TFA, 
KIPP, etc. are short-term strategies. But we have to get at the source 
of the problem through long-term strategies if we are serious about 
leaving no child behind.

--
 Posted by Peter Campbell to Transform Education - 
http://transformeducation.blogspot.com/2006/06/poverty-is-no-excuse-is-no
-excuse.html


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