Issues in Education: Socioeconomics

  This gender gap defies platitudes
Editorial, Rocky Mountain News, May 28, 2006

Nearly everyone involved with education is troubled by the large and persistent gaps in academic performance among racial and ethnic groups. Now the similarly large gap between boys and girls is beginning to get the serious attention it deserves as well.

But it's when you look at both factors simultaneously that the real puzzlement begins. A News report last week of the graduating class of 2005 in Denver Public Schools found that girls in any ethnic group are more likely to graduate from high school than boys in the same group. And the gaps are so large that black, white and Asian girls all graduate at higher rates than white boys.

We are probably on safe grounds ruling out any intention on the district's part to discriminate against white boys, so what else is going on? And not only in Denver, but in other big-city districts that have similar patterns?

Smaller Classes Don't Close Learning Gap, Study Finds
Article by Jay Mathews, Washington Post, March 10, 2008

For 20 years, a large study of class size in Tennessee, known as Project STAR, has raised hopes that reducing the number of children in inner-city classrooms to 17 or fewer would yield significant increases in achievement. It was by far the most authoritative finding in favor of reducing class size and was generally considered one of the most important educational studies of its time.

But a Northwestern University researcher, looking closely at the same data on thousands of students from kindergarten through third grade in 79 schools, has concluded that high achievers benefited more from the small classes than low achievers. Since low-income students in urban neighborhoods have lower achievement, on average, than students from more affluent families, the finding in the March issue of Elementary School Journal contradicts assumptions that class size reduction might have a significant effect on the gap between rich and poor students.

"While decreasing class size may increase achievement on average for all types of students, it does not appear to reduce the achievement gap within a class," Spyros Konstantopoulos, assistant professor at Northwestern's School of Education and Social Policy, said in a statement released by the university.

A New Majority: Low Income Students in the South's Public Schools
Research Report from the Southern Education Foundation, 2007

The South is the only region in the nation where low income children constitute a majority of public school students — 54 percent. Be sure to compare this chart with the ones further down this page about high school graduation rates and life prospects.

To Read or Not To Read
A Question of National Consequence
Research Report #47 from the National Endowment for the Arts, November, 2007

To Read or Not To Read gathers and collates the best national data available to provide a reliable and comprehensive overview of American reading today. While it incorporates some statistics from the National Endowment for the Arts’ 2004 report, Reading at Risk, this new study contains vastly more data from numerous sources. Although most of this information is publicly available, it has never been assembled and analyzed as a whole. To our knowledge, To Read or Not To Read is the most complete and up-to-date report of the nation’s reading trends and—perhaps most important—their considerable consequences....

The story the data tell is simple, consistent, and alarming. Although there has been measurable progress in recent years in reading ability at the elementary school level, all progress appears to halt as children enter their teenage years. There is a general decline in reading among teenage and adult Americans. Most alarming, both reading ability and the habit of regular reading have greatly declined among college graduates.

These negative trends have more than literary importance. As this report makes clear, the declines have demonstrable social, economic, cultural, and civic implications.

How does one summarize this disturbing story? As Americans, especially younger Americans, read less, they read less well. Because they read less well, they have lower levels of academic achievement. (The shameful fact that nearly one-third of American teenagers drop out of school is deeply connected to declining literacy and reading comprehension.) With lower levels of reading and writing ability, people do less well in the job market. Poor reading skills correlate heavily with lack of employment, lower wages, and fewer opportunities for advancement. Significantly worse reading skills are found among prisoners than in the general adult population. And deficient readers are less likely to become active in civic and cultural life, most notably in volunteerism and voting.

A New Majority
Low Income Students in the South's Public Schools
Southern Education Foundation, November, 2007

For the first time in more than 40 years, the South is the only region in the nation where low income children constitute a majority of public school students — 54 percent. This report chronicles the growth over time in the number of low income students, long-standing patterns of underinvestment in public education, and the consequences of that underinvestment.

The message in the report is simply stated: poverty and lack of a good education beget poverty and inequality. The South is in the throes of a self-perpetuating vicious cycle.

Already home to 40 percent of the nation’s poor people, most of whom lack the skills to earn livable wages in the emergent technology- and information-driven global economy, the South urgently needs not only to improve but also to transform its public education systems. No one can seriously believe that the future will be bright when public school students, as a group, are dropping out in record numbers, failing to achieve to high standards, lacking in counseling, health and other services, going to college in small numbers, and failing disproportionately to graduate from college....

Beginning in the 2004-2005 school year, for the first time, 10 states showed a majority of low income students in the public schools. Nine of these 10 states were in the South: Mississippi (65 percent), Louisiana (63 percent), Texas (54 percent), Florida (54 percent), Oklahoma (54 percent), South Carolina (52 percent), Alabama (52 percent), West Virginia (51 percent), and Arkansas (50 percent). 

The only non-Southern state in 2004 was New Mexico, ranked third in the nation with 59 percent of low income students. In the following school year, 12 Southern states had low income students as a majority of public school children with the addition of Georgia, Kentucky, and Tennessee, each with 50 percent. The only other state with a majority of low income students was New Mexico, with 61 percent.

In the 2006-2007 academic year (the latest reported year), when the region’s low income student population climbed to a record-high of 54 percent, 11 states in the South had a majority of low income students. Other states outside the South also developed a majority of low income students. California had a majority of low income students — 51 percent — for the first time in the state’s modern history. Also, Oregon reported for the first time a majority of public school students eligible for free and reduced lunch. New Mexico showed a continued increase. Sixty-two percent of its public school students were from low income households in the 2006-2007 school year.

Study Shows Reducing Class Size May Be More Cost-Effective
than Most Medical Interventions
Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, October 16, 2007

Reducing the number of students per classroom in U.S. primary schools may be more cost-effective than most public health and medical interventions, according to a study by researchers at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and the Virginia Commonwealth University. The study indicates that class-size reductions would generate more quality-adjusted life-year gains per dollar invested than the majority of medical interventions. The findings will be published in the November issue of the American Journal of Public Health.

The researchers estimated the health and economic effects of reducing class sizes from 22–25 students to 13–17 students in kindergarten through grade 3 nationwide, based on an intervention tested in Project STAR (Student Teacher Achievement Ratio), a large multi-school randomized trial that began in 1985. Project STAR is considered the highest quality long-term experiment to date in the field of education.

The study shows that a student graduating from high school after attending smaller-sized classes gains an average of 1.7 quality-adjusted life-years and generates a net $168,431 in lifetime revenue. “Higher earnings and better job quality enhance access to health insurance coverage, reduce exposure to hazardous work conditions, and provide individuals and families with the necessary resources to move out of unfavorable neighborhoods and to purchase goods and services,” says Peter A. Muennig, MD, MPH, assistant professor of Health Policy and Management at the Mailman School. “Regardless of class size, the net effect of graduating from high school is roughly equivalent to taking 20 years of bad health off of your life."

When targeted to low-income students, the estimated savings would increase to $196,000 per additional graduate. “This is because low-income students seem to benefit more from the additional attention afforded by small classes,” noted Dr. Muennig. “Because we focused on a relatively expensive intervention and examined outcomes over a range of values, our results should provide a conservative framework for evaluating this and other interventions as long-term data on educational interventions become more plentiful,” he commented.

The performance of students in the U.S. has been declining relative to the performance of students in other countries. With health costs soaring and student performance falling, the United States is in jeopardy of losing its economic dominance.

The findings not only raise issues of whether investments in social determinants of health can be more cost-effective than investments in conventional medical care, “but more intriguing still, also bring up the idea that each dollar invested in education could also potentially produce other long-term returns,” observes Dr. Muennig. He notes that further analysis will refine models and produce more-precise estimates, but “these findings do point to the importance of looking more broadly at the options available for improving health outcomes—including those outside the boundaries of clinical medicine.”

School Integration Efforts Face Renewed Opposition
Supreme Court Ruling Sways Milton Battle; Off to Private School
Article by Joseph Pereira, Wall Street Journal online, October 11, 2007

Last spring, town officials in this affluent Boston suburb changed the elementary-school assignments for 38 streets -- and sparked outrage. Some white families had been reassigned to Tucker, a mostly black school which has historically had Milton's lowest test scores.

Among those reassigned is Kevin Keating, a white parent who is talking to lawyers about going to court to reverse the plan. I "just don't feel good putting [my son] in an inferior school," he says. His ammunition: the U.S. Supreme Court's June ruling that consideration of race in school assignments is unconstitutional. Without the backing of the Supreme Court, Mr. Keating says his effort wouldn't have "much of a standing."

Five decades ago, federal courts began forcing reluctant districts to use race-based assignments to integrate schools. But in June, a bitterly divided Supreme Court reversed course, concluding that two race-based enrollment plans in Louisville, Ky., and Seattle were unconstitutional. "The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race," Chief Justice John Roberts declared.

Now, in an era when schools nationwide are becoming increasingly segregated, the ruling is affecting local school districts in ways large and small. Some districts are sidestepping the ruling by replacing measurements of race with household income. But many others, such as Milton, are adjusting their programs in the face of opposition that's been emboldened by the Supreme Court decision.

"Jena Six": Case Study in Racial Tensions
Article by Lesli Maxwell, Education Week, October 3, 2007

On Aug. 31, 2006, school leaders in Jena, La., arrived to find two nooses hanging from an oak tree on the campus of Jena High School—and boarded a racially charged roller coaster that has yet to stop moving.

The events since that incident—including the beating of a white student and resulting criminal charges against six black schoolmates that have drawn international attention—offer tough lessons for principals and other administrators who must grapple with racial tensions in their schools.

Report: Segregation in U.S. Schools is increasing
Article by Matthew Bigg, Washington Post/Reuters, August 29, 2007

Public schools in the United States are becoming more racially segregated and the trend is likely to accelerate because of a Supreme Court decision in June, according to report published Wednesday.

The rise in segregation threatens the quality of education received by non-white students, who now make up 43 percent of the total U.S. student body, said the report by the Civil Rights Project of the University of California in Los Angeles.

Superintendent Works to End Segregation in Boulder Valley School District

Speaking the language of globalization
Commentary by John Castellani, The Cincinnati Enquirer, June 17, 2007

Throughout most of the 20th century, the United States had the best-educated workforce in the world - but this is simply no longer the case. As the developing world's workforce grows younger and better educated, the U.S. workforce is becoming smaller and older, more diverse but less well-educated. It's well known that American students are falling behind their counterparts in other countries, especially in math and science. Little known is the alarming fact that the number of American students studying a foreign language has declined sharply.

Though educators have long understood the value of learning a foreign language, for most of us, studying one in school was an "extra." Taking Spanish, French, or German was a pleasant diversion from English and math, and we thought we might use what we learned one day when we traveled.

Times - and the world - have changed. Globalization has blurred our borders and expanded our horizons. In today's global economy, foreign language skills have become vital to our children's future as members of the workforce and to our nation's future success in the world.

The nation, not schools, takes lousy care of our children
Commentary by Julia Steiny, Providence (RI) Journal, June 3, 2007

Designed to teach girls, our schools promote failure for boys
Commentary by Michelle Easton, Chicago Sun-Times, February 13, 2007

With dwindling numbers of educated men in the pool of potential sweethearts each year, Cupid's likely to disappoint a lot of educated women looking for candy, flowers, love and marriage. "A new world has opened up for girls," notes Business Week's Michelle Conlin, "but unless a symmetrical effort is made to help boys find their footing, it may turn out that it's a lonely place to be."

A declining breed
Efforts being made to rev up numbers of trained employees in VA
Article by John Reid Blackwell, Times-Dispatch (Richmond, VA), February 5, 2007

Josh Trainham, a 20-year-old apprentice at Jewett Machine Co. in Richmond, is learning to make the small but vital pieces of machinery that keep the modern world running.

He's among the youngest of the company's 68 skilled tradesmen who make precision parts that go into such complex equipment as CAT scan machines, submarines and industrial machinery.

Trainham was mostly interested in automotive mechanics when he started working at Jewett at age 19.

"All I wanted to do was work on cars," he said. "Then I saw how much more I could do with this career. I could almost become an engineer, building on what I learn here."

Trainham is learning on the job and attending community college for the four years he'll need to earn skills that can bring wages above $40,000 a year. Despite the opportunities that presents, he said he knows few other men his age who are even aware of skilled trade work as a career path...

Children's Chances for Success Vary Dramatically by State, Report Warns
Released online by Education Week/Editorial Projects in Education Research Center
January 3, 2007

"A child born in Virginia is significantly more likely to experience success throughout life than the average child born in the United States, while a child born in New Mexico is likely to face an accumulating series of hurdles both educationally and economically, according to an analysis published in Education Week..."

                                                                                                                Source: Education Week

Please notice the pattern in the 2 charts above: higher "life prospects" and higher graduation rates across the northern half of the United States; lower "life prospects" and lower graduation rates in some western states and across the southern half of the United States....and boys, on average, have an 8% lower graduation rate than girls. Compare these charts with the one below, showing that low income students are a majority in the public schools of the South.

The "life prospects" charts available in the Education Week study are based on 13 variables: family income, parent's education, parental employment, linguistic integration, preschool enrollment, kindergarten enrollment, elementary reading, middle school math, high school graduation, postsecondary participation, adult educational attainment, annual income and steady employment.

On the Education Week website, be sure to check the links available under "web extras" on the left side of the page. The state links have statistics for each state.

A New Majority: Low Income Students in the South's Public Schools
Research Report from the Southern Education Foundation, 2007

Report from the National Center for Education Statistics

Variation in the Relationship Between Nonschool Factors and Student Achievement on International Assessments

"This report considers six nonschool factors that are related to student achievement. These are the highest level of education attained by either of the students' parents; the highest occupational status of either of the students' parents; the number of books that students have access to in the home; whether students speak the native language of the country at home; students' immigrant status; and students' family structure..."

Report from the Partnership for 21st Century Skills

Results That Matter: 21st Century Skills and High School Reform