
Poverty, segregation persist in U.S. schools, report says - mtberatwork
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/education/poverty-segregation-persist-in-u-s-schools-report-says
======
danans
> For instance, he said, simply increasing the salaries of all teachers in a
> high-need school district won’t have as much of an impact as identifying
> high-performing teachers and increasing their salaries.

Teachers in high-needs schools are dealing much more frequently with students
who have severe issues stemming from poverty, trauma, and lack of support in
their families and communities. Those factors are equal to or greater than
variation in teacher quality, which no doubt exists.

Arguments about the mechanism of teacher pay distribution distracts from the
reality that many teachers in poor districts are functioning as social workers
for the effects of poverty, neglect, and violence borne by the children before
they arrive in the classroom.

Teaching in such environments will always be a lot harder than it is in stable
middle class and higher income communities.

If poor schools are expected to bear the costs of the social dysfunction
created by the larger society, then either the teachers should be paid for
providing those services, or we should invest in other capacities, inside and
outside the school, to mitigate the needs for these services in the classroom,
freeing up teachers for actual teaching.

But until those things are addressed, it's just a convenient distraction to
frame the fundamental issue as a problem of how to use teacher pay as a
carrot.

~~~
solatic
I think your viewpoint invites wider questions on how the problems in such
environments ought to be solved and what such environments ought to look like.

In a word, what's lacking from these communities is, in a couple of words,
stability and security. Some children have parents who are either homeless or
constantly on the verge of homelessness; some children have parents who have
difficulty putting food on the table; some children come from households with
absent or abusive parents.

How, exactly, would hiring more social workers for schools solve this problem?
Ought social workers be able to go into childrens' homes and intervene in some
way? Put food on the table, pay the parents' past-due bills, catch abusers
red-handed and put a stop to them? I'm not so sure this is the answer, because
apart from the fact that doing so falls somewhere on the spectrum between
absurd and enablement, in extreme cases, society already removes children from
abusive homes to put them in foster care. And it doesn't seem to me like the
numbers and research bear out about outcomes for fostered children being on
par with children from more privileged backgrounds.

Instead, funding needs to be directed towards stabilizing the parents'
environment. That means more public works projects (for stable employment),
more affordable apartments (for stable housing), longer school days with
funding for post-schoolday extracurriculars and funding for free daycare for
younger children (so that parents can stay at work while their children are
looked after), exchanging prosecution for funded treatment for drug addicts.
When the parents have a stable environment, then the child has a stable
environment.

~~~
danans
I tend to agree that addressing the problems at the roots is better than
dealing with them when they manifest in the classroom. Most of the proposals
you put forward, however, boil down to a transfer of resources to high-needs
communities, which is (so far) politically untenable in many places.

------
dwater
In my opinion this article, and the related report[0] bury the lede, which is
that segregation is the bigger problem than funding. I only read the executive
summary of the report but the first 3 paragraphs address funding inequalities,
and the last addresses segregation. This American Life did an excellent
episode on this in 2015[1] that reflected my experience teaching in the public
schools in Washington DC. DCPS has a high per-pupil funding[2] but not
correspondingly high outcomes. And part of that is because DC, like most
minority communities, is old with infrastructure suffering from decades of
deferred maintenance. But I also worked in a minority school in a segregated
suburban district[3], that was not old, did not have deferred maintenance, and
was working with essentially the same resources as the majority white schools
across the county; and students in that school were remarkably similar to
those I worked with in DC.

[0] [http://www.usccr.gov/pubs/2018-01-10-Education-
Inequity.pdf](http://www.usccr.gov/pubs/2018-01-10-Education-Inequity.pdf) [1]
[https://www.thisamericanlife.org/562/the-problem-we-all-
live...](https://www.thisamericanlife.org/562/the-problem-we-all-live-with-
part-one) [2]
[https://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/finance_in...](https://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/finance_insurance_real_estate/cb12-113.html)
[3] [http://www.nbc12.com/story/28265605/ucla-study-singles-
out-h...](http://www.nbc12.com/story/28265605/ucla-study-singles-out-henrico-
schools-for-segregation)

~~~
baldfat
My city the segergation is increased through Private and Charter Schools. One
charter school has 93% Latino population. Another Private School near me has
over 90% Caucasian population.

It really is frustarting to see the US fall further behind.

Talking further about teachers it is super one sided. Minorities are not
joining the ranks of teachers and instead the diversity of teachers is getting
more and more white.

[https://www2.ed.gov/rschstat/eval/highered/racial-
diversity/...](https://www2.ed.gov/rschstat/eval/highered/racial-
diversity/state-racial-diversity-workforce.pdf)

~~~
_rpd
> Minorities are not joining the ranks of teachers and instead the diversity
> of teachers is getting more and more white.

The link you cited seems to contradict this statement ...

> Figure 2 shows that the population of public school teachers has gradually
> become more diverse over time.

~~~
baldfat
Well, sure number show more Hispanic and African descent (From 13% to 15%, but
the student population has changed much more than the teacher population. 51%
of students are Caucasian now but only 15% of teachers are minorities so the
ratios are actually higher. Caucasian teachers educate more minority students
now than ever. That is why I said the diversity of teachers is getting worse.

------
rayiner
The report has some very misleading assertions about school funding. It
asserts:

> On average, school districts spend around $11,000 per student each year, but
> the highest-poverty districts receive an average of $1,200 less per child
> than the least-poor districts, while districts serving the largest numbers
> of minority students get about $2,000 less than those serving the fewest
> students of color, according the study.

The source of that statistics is this report: [https://edtrust.org/wp-
content/uploads/2014/09/FundingGaps20...](https://edtrust.org/wp-
content/uploads/2014/09/FundingGaps2015_TheEducationTrust1.pdf) (Figure 1).
But that ignores federal funding, which is specifically targeted to the
highest poverty districts. For example, Figure 1 shows Maryland, Pennsylvania,
New York, and Illinois as states with the biggest (double digit) gaps. But
accounting for federal funds, the gap disappears in New York, Maryland, and
Illinois:
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2015/03/12/in-2...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2015/03/12/in-23-states-
richer-school-districts-get-more-local-funding-than-poorer-
districts/?utm_term=.2cfe0ec5d6f9) (change the drop down to state, local, and
federal funding).

In Maryland, for example, Baltimore City has much higher spending per student
than wealthy (and much more expensive) suburbs like Montgomery County:
[https://www.google.com/amp/s/conduitstreet.mdcounties.org/20...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/conduitstreet.mdcounties.org/2016/04/26/chart-
shows-marylands-school-funding-per-student/amp).

~~~
jp_rider
Since Baltimore City is getting more money per student, why aren't they able
to properly maintain their buildings [1]? Poor management? Corruption? Lack of
heating and working bathrooms is inexcusable.

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/04/us/baltimore-schools-
wint...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/04/us/baltimore-schools-winter-
heating.html)

~~~
panzagl
Older infrastructure requiring more maintenance, plus higher expenses/labor
costs of city vs suburbs.

~~~
zip1234
How expensive would it be to put space heaters in every classroom? Even window
heaters are only $500. Surely a school district that spends $17m a year on
maintenance can come up with that. My guess is bureaucracy/mismanagement is
the real problem. The larger a school district is, the more bureaucracy.

~~~
zip1234
Ok--[http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/education/bs-md-
ci...](http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/education/bs-md-ci-schools-
money-returned-20180104-story.html) The money is there apparently.

------
dsfyu404ed
>crumbling walls, old textbooks and unqualified teachers

From what I understand having worked with educators the 3rd is the only
problem that really impacts results. You don't need a new textbook to study
anything about physics math or history below the college level (with the
possible exception of certain history topics but even that can be a lesson
about history if you want it to be one). They also complained about how
administrative decisions made for political reasons (e.g. "We need to be seen
using our money on something quantifiable so you're getting new desks" or "We
need to look up to date, force technology into your lessons, I don't care
how") forced good teachers to perform at a lower level.

Which the article does get around to in the last sentence:

"Increasing the salaries of all teachers in a high-need school district won’t
have as much of an impact as identifying high-performing teachers and
increasing their salaries."

Good teachers teaching in bad schools get some experience on their resume and
jump ship to somewhere better. Wash rinse repeat. If you're good at your job
of course you work your way up to some rich district where resources aren't a
problem.

~~~
indubitable
> _You don 't need a new textbook to study anything about physics math or
> history below the college level_

In general this is true, but there are some major exceptions. Math is now
taught vastly differently than when I learned it. The interesting thing is I
did not learn it how it was taught, but internalized it differently and ended
up competing in Math Olympiads / number sense and all that fun stuff very
successfully. The very cool thing is that math textbooks now teach it in a way
closely resembling to how I internalized it.

For instance adding by powers of ten and the nearest ten. What is 29 + 77? You
can just change that to 30 + 77 (remembering you now 'owe' one) which can then
be changed to 30 + 70 + 7. So we end up with 107 - 1 which is 106. Lots of
words, but it's a process that lets you solve most any problem more or less
instantly, in your head. It also helps for understanding.

Similarly for multiplication. What's 17 x 19? We can borrow 17 and change that
to 17 x 20 which can be recognized as 17 x 2 x 10 which is clearly 340. Since
we borrowed 17 we subtract it again using a basic strategy of 340 - 10 - 7 =
323. These sort of thought processes I think also help make math more fun
since it's more of a puzzle that a grind. And the logical but abstract
thinking involved in figuring out the quickest way to solve the problems also
mirrors more the much more advanced mathematics that they will get into in
college.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
While I agree to some extent the "old methods" of teaching still work. They
may be slightly less efficient or effective but they do work. IMO having the
same approach for every grade matters more than the approach itself. It's
perfectly possible for a school to teach new math with old books. Books are
just a source for example problems. There's no reason you can't skip around to
fit your curriculum.

What's your describing is having a good understanding of how to play tricks
with numbers to make problems line up with your strengths and preferences.
Teaching students that notation and "how" you attack a problem is arbitrary
and they can do whatever they want with the numbers as long as they can clean
up the mess and get the right answer is far more teacher dependent than
curriculum structure dependent.

------
kelukelugames
>For instance, he said, simply increasing the salaries of all teachers in a
high-need school district won’t have as much of an impact as identifying high-
performing teachers and increasing their salaries.

Are there studies about this? What attracts more talent:

a) Pay increase for everyone in an industry. b) Larger pay increases, but
limited to the best performers.

~~~
rayiner
To solve the problem of inner city poverty, we need to take public money and
give more of it to some privileged college-educated person who likely doesn’t
even live in the neighborhoods plagued by poverty? We’re going to address the
economic disadvantages faced by black and Hispanic children, by giving more
money to teachers (80%+ of whom are white)?

Trevor Noah makes a really good point in his autobiography. He recounts the
story of someone giving him a CD writer, which enabled him to go into the
bootlegging business in post apartheid South Africa. He explains that what
poor people need is capital, like that CD writer. You can teach a man to fish,
he explains, but if you don’t give him a fishing rod you haven’t done him any
good.

~~~
ythn
> To solve the problem of inner city poverty, we need to take public money and
> give more of it to some privileged college-educated person who likely
> doesn’t even live in the neighborhoods plagued by poverty?

On the flip side, though, straight up wealth distribution to the poor has a
huge waste factor, though. I work with poor people at my church, and a lot of
times they have no idea where their money is even going. They see a predatory
letter with scary red letters and they send money to it, even though it's not
even a bill! The bills they are getting are for services they aren't even
using (expensive cable plan, etc.). Yes, the poor need more money, but they
also desperately need mentors and education.

~~~
alphabettsy
It’s true that the poor are sometimes or even often poor managers of money,
but that is true throughout society. Most households actually have poor
control of their money, but they might have higher incomes so the impact isn’t
so noticeable. Personal financial literacy is low overall.

------
rdtsc
> The commission said inequities are caused by the fact that schools are most
> funded with state and local tax dollars.

That has always baffled me living in America - how poor districts end up being
doubly punished because their children also get less funds, and less
resources. If anything, shouldn't it be the opposite, if poverty is prevalent,
wouldn't that school get more funds? A wealthy district can probably manage
and do well for its kids even with less funds because it probably can have
less teacher, less time addressing and manages trauma and behavior stemming
from growing up poor and everything associated with.

There is an interesting phenomenon at play, I have heard more about "think of
the children first" in this country yet when it comes to actions they point in
the opposite - "think of children last, think of profits first" basically.

> “How much is spent on schools is not as important as how the money is
> spent.” For instance, he said, simply increasing the salaries of all
> teachers in a high-need school district won’t have as much of an impact as
> identifying high-performing teachers and increasing their salaries.

Throwing wild ideas around -- I think it has something to do with teachers
already being burnt out and used to certain patterns of behavior, most likely
in response to lack of support, funding, some because classes are too large,
regulations, etc. Giving them a raise might not break that pattern and make
any difference. I think they'd need to bring in fresh teachers and give them
higher salaries to start with.

Fresh doesn't have to be new graduates, could also mean teachers from out of
town. Wonder if it makes sense - to provide incentives for teachers to move to
other schools. Say if they move they get a higher salary, it would be
federally sponsored, and include, generous bonuses and all paid relocation
etc.

Thinking about the above, try to remember if you knew a burnt out coworker, or
yourself if you were burnt out - would getting a salary bump make that go
away? I have not seen it yet. The same is true for other professions I
imagine.

------
indubitable
Why is the assumption that throwing money at the problem can fix it? The US
already spends more than almost any other nation else on education. And the
few places that spend more than us, Austria/Luxembourg/Norway/Switzerland
aren't the ones rocking amazing educational outputs.

This [1] page offers a raw table with PISA, a standardized educational
performance test, results across nations. We're now losing to places like
Vietnam in Math/Science. This article mentions we spend about $11,000 per
student on education. The per capita GDP of Vietnam is $2,305. Their per child
spending is, in turn, going to likely be some fraction of that.

It's getting quite silly. This [2] is an interactive page allowing you to
compare nations' performance based on OECD PISA scores across the world using
a wide array of metrics - click on a country to get details and the ability to
compare that country to others. The US problem is not with how much money
schools get. It's not even with how much money teachers' get. You can find
data on that here [3]. The problem is not money.

So what is the problem? I think that's why people like to just blame money, or
the lack thereof. It's easy. Trying to figure out what the actual problem is
is going to be extremely difficult. And as political correctness is such a hot
trend in the US, some factors cannot even be considered which isn't exactly
productive for trying to figure out the most effective solution.

[1] - [http://www.businessinsider.com/pisa-worldwide-ranking-of-
mat...](http://www.businessinsider.com/pisa-worldwide-ranking-of-math-science-
reading-skills-2016-12)

[2] - [https://www.oecd.org/pisa/](https://www.oecd.org/pisa/)

[3] - [https://data.oecd.org/eduresource/teachers-
salaries.htm](https://data.oecd.org/eduresource/teachers-salaries.htm)

~~~
pnutjam
There's alot of evidence that he disparity between schools and lack of
equality in opportunity are the problem. This article is trying to address
this.
[https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/education-k-12/repor...](https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/education-k-12/reports/2008/06/10/4567/ensuring-
equal-opportunity-in-public-education/)

~~~
indubitable
Where is the evidence? That article again simply seems to have assumed its
conclusion. For fear of just repeating myself, we already spend substantially
more public funds, than nearly everywhere in the world, on our children's
educations. Even the less well funded districts are receiving far more money
per child than the children in numerous nations that are outperforming us.

To be more clear, finding that wealthier school districts perform better than
poorer school districts does not immediately imply that the problem is money.
I've yet to see compelling evidence suggesting that it is, and I think I've
provided reasonably compelling evidence suggesting that it is not. To make
this even clearer, let's use the same logic to make an absurdly false
argument. _' Poor countries tend to do better than rich countries when it
comes to training world class runners. Therefore, the problem for the richer
countries is that they have too much money to train world class runners.'_ The
statement is so illogical it reads nonsensically, yet if the reverse were true
and that richer countries did a better job of producing world class runners,
you might have been inclined to agree with that exact same fallacious logic!

~~~
danans
> Even the less well funded districts are receiving far more money per child
> than the children in numerous nations that are outperforming us.

Without some citable international performance numbers that are adjusted for
1) purchasing power parity, 2) class parity 3) social services and
infrastructure availability and quality (i.e Sweden vs US) 4) education
accessibility, this is a suspect claim,and on it's face it is very
overgeneralized. Countries and their students are not monoliths.

~~~
indubitable
And I've already provided these data. Vietnam being my favorite example as a
nation now pulling far ahead of us. The reason I mention that country is
because I'm quite familiar with it, and even Houdini level mental gymnastics
are not going to spin them ahead of us socially or economically in any way
whatsoever. And they're not cherry picked. We rank 40th internationally in
math now, far below even the OECD average. There are plenty of other examples
to demonstrate that our problem is not money.

~~~
danans
Thanks for pointing out those links. Per the data available there, compared to
other developed countries, the US is middle of the road in terms of % of
public spending that goes toward public spending on education:
[https://data.oecd.org/chart/537O](https://data.oecd.org/chart/537O)

I'm not advocating that putting more money in the education system alone is a
solution, but considering that nations that spend more and those that spend
less as a % of GDP get both better and worse results suggests it's not as
simple as suggesting that more money won't help.

If a lot more money is going to spent, it ought to be spent to address the
root issues in poor communities (unemployment, lack of security, healthcare),
whose effects ultimately manifest themselves in the classroom. What's unlikely
to help educational outcomes in poor communities in the US is continued
divestment and chalking the problem up to "cultural" issues in those
communities.

However, as I pointed out elsewhere, if we continue to expect (as we currently
do) teachers in poor communities to function as social workers for the
problems created by divestment instead of addressing the socioeconomic issues
at their root, then we should pay teachers more for providing those services
in addition to teaching.

Vietnam is an interesting example, thanks for sharing. Notably, according to
[1] it has a centralized state-run public educational system where public
schools are directly administered by the government. Vietnam is also an
authoritarian, single-party, and nominally communist society. That level of
socialist-style centralization is not feasible (or even desired) in most parts
of the US, where even at the state level, the government stays relatively
removed from the day-to-day administration of the schools.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Vietnam](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Vietnam)

~~~
indubitable
You should try to remove confounding variables. Look at the chart you are
trying to claim meaningful. When the top notions in your list include Costa
Rica, Mexico, Brazil, and Columbia (who have literally some of the worst
education outcomes in the world) - you should know the data does not represent
what you seem to think it might. Some outliers here and there might be okay
but when 80% of the top 5 are some of the literally lowest performing nations
in existence? Yeah, probably safe to say your metric does not have a positive
correlation with educational outcomes.

Vietnam's education system is a complete shit show. Teachers earn scraps
leading to a semi-open practice of education related bribery. Resources are
all but nonexistent and invariably outdated. Native teachers tend to be poorly
educated, whereas foreign teachers are a mix of sexpats and backpackers. And
I'm not entirely sure what you are trying to imply with their government, but
the nation is not communist. It has a single authoritarian party that oversees
a market economy. The only semblances left of communism are an extremely poor
people and the complete lack of any freedom of speech. Schools in many cases
are practically falling down.

Regardless, the nation somehow is producing even more capable students than
the US. When I was young I also went to a incredibly poor urban school. And I
also had numerous Vietnamese individuals in my classes who I remain friends
with to this day. In an interesting coincidence they too, in spite of enormous
adversity of our youth, went on to all do well more than fine. Of course
that's completely anecdotal. In looking for demographic data I was completely
unsurprised to see Vietnamese well above the median in terms of US median
household incomes. [1]

So what's their secret sauce? Whatever it is, it's unlikely to be replicated
by just throwing money at the problem anymore than you would manage to turn
lead to gold with good intentions and lots of dollars.

[1] -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_groups_in_the_U...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_groups_in_the_United_States_by_household_income)

~~~
pnutjam
My original comment was not meant to say we should pay more or pay less to
teachers, the whole argument is a red herring. Teachers should make a
professional salary for their location and they mostly do. There are certainly
some outlier states who do not value teachers and they are having increasing
difficulty retaining teachers. This system is working.

My comment was meant to highlight the disparity between districts. You can pit
the best US students against the best students from any country and get
excellent rankings. Our worst students are far worse then other developed
nations. We need to address the systematic problems in our country that are
causing us to value certain students more, and give them better opportunities.
All children deserve opportunity.

~~~
indubitable
I understood your comment perfectly well I believe. But this is our
fundamental disagreement. If you can think back to even your middle school
class, you would do far better than random at 'guessing' who was going to
'make it.' I didn't really realize how apparent this was until I taught for
some time.

In school I felt I always worked hard, or was somehow more incentivized for
the work than others. The harsh reality, apparent in hindsight, is that I was
lazy and it came to me easily - as it does to many people. In teaching you one
begins to quickly appreciate that inherent differences between children is
absolutely night and day - and these differences emerge even as early as
elementary.

These inherent differences are the giant elephant in the room that nobody
wants to consider. In my opinion ignoring them and pretending that all we need
to do is give more opportunity or money to some schools is doing us all great
a disservice. A near majority of the kids in the classes I taught I could
personally adopt and give them 24/7 attention and education at home and I
suspect they would still fall well below the curve.

What is the solution? I have absolutely none. But at the same time I think
that complete and open honesty and assessment is the first step to resolving
any problem. When we start with false assumption as its more socially
palatable, is it any wonder that we spend all of this money with absolutely
nothing to show for it?

~~~
pnutjam
Yes, there are kids who will make it and kids who won't. Our current system
throws out whole neighborhoods of kids regardless of where they fall on that
spectrum. Creating a level playing field is the least we could do to improve
schools.

