Kristof Gets Education Mostly Right, Slights Importance of Poverty
I thought yesterday’s Nicholas Kristof column hit almost all the right notes on the issues afflicting American education. He flagged the critical research by Claudia Golden and Lawrence Katz on the importance of improved performance from the school system to our future prosperity and the prospects for a decent mount of equality. And he rightly tags investments in early childhood education and using better methods of assessing and rewarding teacher effectiveness as keys to improvement.
But this part I didn’t like:
Perhaps we should have fought the “war on poverty” with schools — or, as we’ll see in a moment, with teachers.
For one thing, the war on poverty did a lot to improve education. If you don’t like how our current K-12 system is serving the disadvantaged, just ponder what it would look like without any Title I or IDEA. Our Johnson-era policy initiatives had their shortcomings, just as our school system has its shortcomings, but real improvements were made in this period that have made a lot of people better off.
But more importantly, it’s just incredibly frustrating to see this kind of effort to frame the country as facing a zero-sum choice between improving the performance of the school system and directly targeting poverty and related issues. Clearly, though, these are synergistic concerns. You can’t wait to make the schools better until we’ve gotten poverty down to Nordic levels. But when kids are hungry, that makes it harder for them to learn in school. When kids are sick, that makes it harder for them to learn in school. When kids live in violence neighborhoods, that makes it harder for them to learn in school. When kids’ mental development is being impaired by lead poisoning, that makes it harder for them to learn in school. When mom’s too exhausted after working two shifts to make ends meet to help her kids with their homework, that makes it harder for them to learn in school. This stuff isn’t brain surgery. And there’s ultimately no substitute for directly tackling these problems.
36 Responses to “Kristof Gets Education Mostly Right, Slights Importance of Poverty”
Register
RSSLogin
Topic Cloud
ArchivesBlog RollAbout Matt YglesiasContact Me
Donate
February 16th, 2009 at 11:48 am
The way to attack poverty is to give money to poor people.
The focus on education is a diversion – that a lot of progressives fall for.
February 16th, 2009 at 11:54 am
This stuff really frustrates me.
Increasing the pool of education, past a certain point that we’re most certainly past*, does next to nothing to change the needed labor in a society, and thusly does next to nothing to change economic patterns on a macro basis….
Except potentially in a negative way. More competition for those education required jobs means lower wages. Mind you, I think the social positives of an educated society outweigh the economic negatives, but that’s neither here nor there.
The whole thing is another angle on the supply-side fallacy, that there is basically infinite demand and we’re always limited on the supply side. Which is so unrealistic its not even funny.
*That point, is of course the point where business has enough of a supply of educated people to do what they want to do. There may be some specific fields where this is not the case, but as a whole, it’s true.
It’s similar to the supply-side outlook on investment. It’s possible that there’s a situation where more investment is needed to move the economy ahead, and you should cut taxes to spur that investment. It seems to me that the money is always there..or at least has been until 6 months ago…irregardless of tax policy.
February 16th, 2009 at 12:03 pm
For one thing, the war on poverty did a lot to improve education.
Why? The child poverty rate in the mid sixties was less than 15%. And while it was historically higher it had been dropping consistently up until the 1970s. I don’t necessarily buy into the whole “welfare killed the family” excuse for rising child poverty but I don’t see how you can believe LBJ’s great society was a success either.
February 16th, 2009 at 12:10 pm
I’m fine now but poverty had a direct impact on my underperformance through high school. Everyday problems like being hungry, not having clean clothes, being tired and late because my single parent had to arrange my sleep and transportation to school around her need to work … and of course the erroneous but understandable misperpeception that I wouldn’t be able to afford college (so what’s the point?) … all contributed to a conscious sense of hopelessness and lack of motivation that very good public schools couldn’t touch.
It would’ve been worse if I had crappy teachers and schools or if I was surrounded by fellow students as poor as me.
Poverty matters.
February 16th, 2009 at 12:11 pm
Well, the war on poverty *took place* up until the 1970s.
February 16th, 2009 at 12:15 pm
“…just ponder what it would look like without any Title I or IDEA”
…or Head Start (and Even Start).
Thanks for making this point, Matt!
February 16th, 2009 at 12:59 pm
Click through the Los Angeles Times article and you get to the Hamilton project, which says, in effect, defy the teachers unions and fire bad teachers.
Yet, click through the original article and it says keep all the teachers hired, whether good or bad.
Mr. Yglesias has to make up his mind, because I am pretty sure that the Obama program includes the continued practice of tenuring bad teachers, for their poverty sake, you know.
February 16th, 2009 at 1:00 pm
ron:
There’s a very simple reason why “progressives” often fall for education as a panacea: it’s intellectually safe. A mono-focus on education allows you to continue to profess a belief in individual opportunity and America as a society of upward mobility; it also allows you to try to enact social reform without actually challenging the current social structure, which upsets powerful people and gets you labeled as a scary socialist.
Focusing on poverty usually forces you to take a hard look at American society, and realize that there is such a thing as class inequality, that in order to fix problems you need to redistribute wealth, expand public goods, and empower the poor and working classes. This is rather politically dangerous. The exception to this is also something that liberals have often been seduced by – culture of poverty. In this interpretation, it’s not the American social system that’s the problem, it’s the culture of poor people, so you only need to fix the pathological poor people (often through education!), and everything will be better.
February 16th, 2009 at 1:42 pm
StevenAttewell:
So that makes at least two of us.
Now to convince the rest.
February 16th, 2009 at 1:46 pm
I’m with Steve.
February 16th, 2009 at 3:21 pm
A focus on education also allows one to ignore issues like IQ or even more importantly, the fact that much education is a positional good in which more of it only improves your prospects if others do not also pursue more education…
February 16th, 2009 at 3:36 pm
I’m a broken record on this topic, but here goes again:
The low-hanging fruit in educational reform isn’t teacher quality, it’s student motivation.
The reason why middle-class Chinese and Indian students are likely out-performing Americans is motivation. The reason why early 20th Century public schooling succeeded was motivation. The opportunity cost of passing up education in these present and past societies is great: living in rural poverty vs. modern welfare.
-Today’s students need to be given the option to skip high school for hands-on technical training in skilled labor.
-Those who have their sites set on college or see the value of a well-rounded education need to be educated in an environment of their aspirational peers and be given the opportunity to fail by having increased rigor to their courses.
-Those who neither participate in a broad-based, college-prep education nor apply themselves toward a technical skill that serves themselves and society need to be put to work maintaining our impoverished commons: cleaning parks, picking up trash, painting over grafitti. The era of taxpayers paying for teenagers to come to school and do nothing but disrupt others’ education must come to an end.
February 16th, 2009 at 3:47 pm
I think the left is entrenched in academics. You don’t have to be trained in abstraction to be intelligent and sociable. A really solid education would also insure that children who find academic work to be easy, would also have the experience of doing something that doesn’t come so easily to them.
February 16th, 2009 at 5:49 pm
“When mom’s too exhausted after working two shifts to make ends meet to help her kids with their homework, that makes it harder for them to learn in school.”
This is why the children of welfare mothers who don’t work are such high academic performers, because mom is well-rested and has plenty of time to help them with their homework. I love it when Matt wields Occam’s Butterknife whenever the subject touches on average differences in IQ — must not think critically! Might come to politically-incorrect conclusions!
February 16th, 2009 at 5:59 pm
Let’s start with the stuff we might really be able to accomplish, like universal healthcare. It would allow poor people (and everyone else) to seek better work in better places to live because they wouldn’t have to worry about losing whatever meager healthcare they’ve got, it would mean parents are in better physical shape and would be better able to work and provide, it would keep kids in better shape physically and mentally, etc. Let’s set up a funding system for schools that isn’t tied to local property taxes so that resources are allocated more fairly. Let’s pay for stuff that helps kids learn but isn’t directly tied to the schools: universal broadband access, great libraries, access to free online remedial help, etc. Let’s guarantee the right, through scholarships and loans, to everyone who wants a post-high school education of whatever sort. There’s a lot we can do without trashing the entire system we have and starting over.
February 16th, 2009 at 6:05 pm
Fred: The myth that IQ tests actually measure anything accurately has been totally debunked endlessly. Sure, there may be inherent differences in intelligence, but IQ tests have proven to be a poor indicator of student performance and the ability to succeed in life. Numerous studies show that differences in measured IQ can be overcome by different training, etc.
February 16th, 2009 at 6:07 pm
Allow me to introduce some statistics, or what you all think of in your neo-Newspeak as “hatefacts.”
According to Nobel Laureate James Heckman, the high school dropout rate in the U.S. bottomed out in 1969-1970 at about 20% and the rose to 25% by the beginning of this decade.
The majority of that worsening is due to changing demographics: blacks and Hispanics drop out at twice the rate of whites, which hasn’t changed since 1972, and they now make up a much larger fraction of school age children.
February 16th, 2009 at 6:09 pm
“Fred: The myth that IQ tests actually measure anything accurately has been totally debunked endlessly.”
You are full of crap.
February 16th, 2009 at 6:09 pm
Steve Sailer,
Perhaps we can learn from the Swedish approach to educating black and Hispanic students.
February 16th, 2009 at 6:16 pm
Sorry Fred, you’re wrong, but I’m sure you will never admit it. Environment, including poverty, plays a huge roll in what we call”IQ,” which is really a cultural test.
February 16th, 2009 at 6:26 pm
Help me out, zyxw,
First you say that IQ tests don’t measure anything accurately, and now you say they are cultural tests. Which is it? And how can Raven’s Progressive Matrices be considered in any sense a cultural test? Get googling…
February 16th, 2009 at 7:45 pm
Also, Matt, to say that “Kristof gets education mostly right” just shows that you are almost as ignorant about education as Kristof is.
February 16th, 2009 at 8:15 pm
RPM have been shown to be highly correlated with cultural differences. Endless studies show that things like nutrition, general home environment, language spoken, etc. have a huge influence on how people score on IQ tests. All of that stuff can be changed and/or taught. IQ tests do measure something, but we don’t know what it is.
February 16th, 2009 at 8:29 pm
“RPM have been shown to be highly correlated with cultural differences.”
Who has shown this? Any support for this claim?
“All of that stuff can be changed and/or taught.”
But heredity can’t be taught, and heredity helps determine IQ.
“IQ tests do measure something”
So far so good on the backtrack…
“but we don’t know what it is.”
Sure we do. They measure intelligence.
March 1st, 2009 at 6:12 pm
cialis
Excellent site. It was pleasant to me.
March 11th, 2009 at 4:30 am
Great site. Good info
March 14th, 2009 at 5:09 am
Incredible site!
xanax
March 22nd, 2009 at 6:06 am
tramadol
If you have to do it, you might as well do it right
March 22nd, 2009 at 10:24 am
buy viagra online
It is the coolest site,keep so!
April 2nd, 2009 at 5:10 am
Excellent site. It was pleasant to me.
buy cheap viagra
April 3rd, 2009 at 4:07 am
Great site. Good info
cheap brand pfizer viagra
April 9th, 2009 at 5:23 am
Excellent site, It was pleasant to me. viagra