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What accounts for the differences in academic achievement between inner-city poverty area schools and high-income public schools? We’ve all heard of the dreadful schools in cities like Chicago and Baltimore with no children in the entire school able to achieve even baseline levels of competence in math or verbal skills and many other schools with a third (at most) achieving at grade level.
Many would assume funding is the major determinant but the facts don’t back that up. American public schools have traditionally been funded by local property taxes, which provide a clear advantage to the wealthy. But that was then. Today, education funding is complex, with federal funding for special programs, equalization formulas and other inputs making it difficult for even experts to determine the bottom line.
A recent study from the Urban Institute confirmed other research showing that “when considering federal, state and local funding,” all states but three “allocate more per student funding to poor kids than to non-poor kids.” Moreover, researchers from Harvard and Stanford found that each extra $1000 per pupil spending is associated with an annual gain in achievement of 1/10 of one percent of a standard deviation. In other words, more spending and more learning are essentially unrelated.
If more spending did produce more achievement, we would be morally obligated to provide it. As it is, we must look for other reasons to explain the achievement gap, examining how well the allocated funds are used. Education researcher Jay Greene observes that “wasteful schools tend to hire more non-instructional staff while raising the pay and benefits for all staff regardless of their contribution to student outcomes.”
Effective schools, by contrast, prioritize the learning interests of students, eschewing the fads and misconceptions that plague the public school establishment. When a Stanford education professor helpfully developed an “equity-based” curriculum proposal, gullible California educators issued guidance against students taking algebra courses before high school.
After decades of the promotion of “context-based” reading instruction, it became obvious that the old-fashioned phonics instruction produced better readers. The Columbia University center that pushed context-based instruction was finally closed in 2023.
The devastating Covid closures demanded by the teachers’ unions disproportionately affected low-income public school students. The closures lasted longer and caused more learning loss for poor students than for those in private schools and more upscale districts.
The different, more “lenient” treatment afforded to low-income kids is evident also in the cellphone bans proliferating in the schools. Educators are suddenly realizing after 20 years or so, that daily staring at a small screen bearing social media messages is not healthy for the developing brain.
According to advisories from the Surgeon General, UNESCO and others, adolescent cell phone usage impairs academic achievement by distracting students' attention from classroom instruction. Chronic cell phone overuse is also isolating and interferes with normal social development. Widespread cell phone use is associated with higher rates of teenage depression and suicide.
Eight states and many school districts have imposed cell phone bans, and others, including Arizona, are considering legislation. But there are objections. Parents feel the need to “keep in touch” with their children. Phones are also needed to locate friends in the lunch room (yes, really). More seriously, parents worry about not having contact during a school shooting, even though the chances of any student encountering even one during their entire school life is vanishingly small.
The bigger problem is that legislative cell phone bans are typically so loose and riddled with exceptions that they are practically useless. California, with great fanfare from Governor Gavin Newsom, passed a bill that only required schools to “adopt a policy limiting or prohibiting smartphones by July 2026.” Any school with even an insignificant modification in cell phone usage would be legally in compliance, and enforcement would be a snap. Helicopter parents would still be in business. Florida’s ban is limited to classroom time only.
Private schools and high-end public schools pushed ahead with their own rules which typically are more comprehensive and tightly written. Strict, uniform restrictions are easier for both teachers and students to understand. Meanwhile, poor students once again are saddled with misdirected compassion and low expectations.
Discussion (16)
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Well, part of it might be the inherent IQ potential of the demographic groups involved. My own suspicion is that this explains 50-80% of the difference, based on The Bell Curve and some more recent studies.
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There was a study indicting that ONE disruptive student in a class had a significant long-run negative impact on the future earnings of other students in the class.
The methodology used in the study could be criticized, still, it's indicative.
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Twenty years ago, I remember a discussion on the local San Francisco progressive radio station where this one woman was railing against the fact that parents in the very impoverished and crime ridden areas of SF did not bother to go to parent-teacher conferences.
The other woman who was on the program was indignant in her response. "What are you talking about? Your focus is strange. I mean the problem is not simply whether a child's parent does or doesn't go to the parent-teacher conferences. The problem is that in Hunter's Point and in Oakland, the kids are raising themselves. Mom is a druggie and dad is in prison. Sometimes the kids are lucky enough to have a grandparent or aunt or uncle who participates in their lives, but many of these kids don't have any adults overseeing their care."
That seemed to be a much more aware observation than the first woman had made. Kids have to have parents involved in their lives. Sure there are kids in the suburbs who may be latch key kids, but they often buddy up with someone who has a parent or two at home. In the ghetto, that method of having adult involvement is also a slim possibility.
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My entire teacher career was spent in schools with in excess of 60% of the student body on free or reduced lunches. My ballywick was Special Education, Emotionally/Behaviorally Disabled (EBD). I did that for more than 40 years.
I had attended high priced private schools my whole life. I was fortunate in having some great teachers. When I worked with the students assigned to my throughout my career I stressed the basics, make sure the kids knew their number facts, could do the basic algorithms with whole numbers and fractions, phonics in reading so they had word attack skills, and spelling so that they could write. In my classroom there was no moving on until you had mastered the necessary skills. The consequence was that most of my students made it into general education classes by the time they left my classroom and entered high school. They had, generally, greater skills than their classmates who had been "educated" in the general education program in middle school.
My view was that if a kid could do math and read with reasonable competency he/she would be able to fill in the gaps in the none basic skills areas like history, science, and other inessential areas. Without those skills they would be forever lost. I never quit on a kid. If one approach didn't work I would try another and another until sometime stuck. There were no social promotions.
What happened in the general ed program was that kids got promoted whether they could meet the requirements for that grade or not. A percentage were write-offs who left school, if they made it to graduation from high school with skills what would embarrass a fourth grader. However, they were well schooled in leftist propaganda about gender and white privilege and you name it.
The teachers I had in school did for me what I did for my students. The majority of people graduating from schools of education do not have that kind of background or training. They do not understand their responsibilities, nor do they have any guidance from administrators, only pressure to move through a particular curriculum on schedule. It is an idiotic system based on a production line, not on teaching kids. You may be able to build cars that way, but every child is different and each needs an individual approach to learning new skills. It isn't an easy job, but in the end it is very satisfying at the end of a day when you know that you have touched a life and moved it forward.
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That was entirely my experience as a student. The kids with two stable parents went to honors and band whereas kids without a dad did drugs.
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