Advances in cognitive science have made it possible to pinpoint how these disadvantages hinder children academically. One-fifth of the middle schoolers in Providence, Rhode Island, for example, entered kindergarten in 2003 suffering from some level of lead poisoning, which disproportionately affects the poor and is associated with intellectual delays and behavioral problems such as ADHD. “It is now understood that there is no safe level of lead in the human body,” writes education researcher David Berliner, “and that lead at any level has an impact on IQ.”
Food insecurity is similarly correlated with cognitive delays, and rising in incidence across the country—more than 17 million American children consistently lack access to healthy, nutritious meals. Here’s how a team of Harvard School of Public Health researchers describe the relationship between hunger and student achievement:
When children attend school inadequately nourished, their bodies conserve the limited food energy that is available. Energy is first reserved for critical organ functions. If sufficient energy remains, it then is allocated for growth. The last priority is for social activity and learning. As a result, undernourished children become more apathetic and have impaired cognitive capacity. Letting schoolchildren go hungry means that the nation’s investments in public education are jeopardized by childhood malnutrition.
Those words are from an essay review of Steven Brill's new book on education, Class Warfare: Inside the Fight to Fix America’s Schools, by Dana Goldstein in Nation. The review is titled Can Teachers Alone Overcome Poverty? Steven Brill Thinks So. I have not yet read the book, about which I will be doing a review. Several people who have read it have offered commentary far more critical than that of Goldstein. That is not why I am posting this.
It has been clear to scholars and researchers for quite some time of the limited impact upon the effects of poverty that teachers can have. That does not mean we should ignore those effects, which may account for as little as 15% of student in performance in schools - we have a moral obligation to give every child the best teaching possible.
But we also know the severe impact of poverty upon school performance, and we know that when a nation like Finland has less than 4% of its students in poverty and we have more than 20%, that fact alone accounts for the difference in overall performance national in comparing the school systems of the two nations.
Let me explore this a bit further.
I chose to focus on the words offered in the block quote at the beginning for a reason. Let's start with lead in the body. Over the past few decades we have gone from most gasonline being leaded to effectively no gasoline being leaded. Part of the reason was that lead in gasoline fouled catalytic converters, installed on cars to cut air pollution. We also know that the fuel in our cars was not always completely burned, and the emissions contained lead, breathing of which was damaging.
We stopped allowing the use of lead-based paint, particularly in residential structures. We know young children tend to put all kinds of things into their mouths, including paint flakes. We know that ingesting lead causes brain damage, more severe while the brain is still developing - and it is worth noting that the judgment portions of the brain continue to develop even beyond the period of life normally spent in school. IF 1/5 of a city's kindergartners are suffering from lead poisoning, that does not bode well for future academic performance.
We made a major effort a few years ago to remove asbestos from public schools. Funds were provided for asbestos abatement, because we understood that breathing in asbestos fibers had a long-term effect upon bodily health. Yet although we understand the impact of lead upon the body, we have not made similar effort for the removal of lead paint from residential buildings in which many more people live, or - as was eventually determined in one case in Massachusetts - from public structures like bridges and viaducts, where the flaking of dried out paint contributes to a wider exposure to lead among young children. Granted, if the paint is in buildings privately held the government has a different responsibility than it would in public housing, but even in the latter we have not systematically identified lead exposure and moved to remediate such situations, even several decades after the problem became known.
That is only one of the problems identified in the paragraphs I quoted from Goldstein. Food security is clearly another. Go back and reread the 2nd and 3rd paragraphs of the block quote that begins this posting. This is a real problem, and one that has increased as the economy still is not producing enough jobs to get people re-employed, and some of the jobs it does provide represent major reductions in income from previous jobs. Yes, we have a free and reduced lunch program. That's lunch, but not breakfast or dinner. It is sufficient to prevent starvation, but insufficient to provide complete nutrition. In the meanwhile other nutrition programs - SNAP, WIC, are under attack as being too expensive - because the number of people who qualify has been expanding. Not all people who need these programs have access to them. States and localities do not have to participate. Undocumented aliens are not eligible for many nutrition programs, even as their children are - at least under current law and court interpretations - guaranteed the right to attend a public school.
There are other issues related to this. A homeless child may have a limited wardrobe, and perhaps even more limited access to facilities for hygiene. I remember one homeless young man I taught who would come to school only 2-3 days a week, because he would not come if he could not bathe or did not have clean underwear. He was not alone. Poor children usually do not get the appropriate medical and dental treatment. Toothaches can keep children from learning, many poor children have their health compromised by poor nutrition. Too many are developing long-term problems from obesity and Type II diabetes.
We will not fully address the problems of poor performance in schools until we address all of the issues of school readiness - these include environmental factors like lead, they certainly include nutrition beginning while the mother is pregnant, and they sure as hell include proper medical and dental care.
The most immediate way to prevent an even greater impact of poverty is to provide more and better paying jobs. Yet we seem obsessed with cutting the deficit rather than addressing our need for jobs. Some of those jobs would come from addressing our infrastructure needs. Yet too many in Washington and too many who write about Washington have decided to obsess about the deficit to the point where what we truly need to be doing becomes nigh impossible. Then we want to test, and prepare for tests, and "raise standards" at the same time as we claim too many of our children our dropping out. There is little point in putting bandages on limbs that are already gangrenous. That is the impact of what we are doing with our approach to public education in isolation from the environmental and family problems that so burden so many of our young people.
One in five children entering kindergarten in Providence RI suffer from some degree of lead poisoning. Not because they have untreated bullet wounds, but because we have a society that has not cared enough about them and their families to remove the poison from the environment in which they live.
Too many in this nation are still hungry, they fill their bellies with cheap food to stop hunger pains, but which does not provide nutrition - that is, if they can afford even that.
Issues like these exist not only in our inner cities, but also in our rural areas. I see the impact of poor nutrition when I volunteer in dental triage in the clinics to which I go in Appalachian Virginia, as I will next on September 30, and as I did last month.
They are increasing even in some of our suburbs, perhaps not as visible, as people have remained unemployed for more than 2 years.
Meanwhile, corporate profits soar, the portion of national income and wealth held by the top of our economic pyramid continues to balloon at the expense of those most in need.
We hear our politicians talk about the middle class. Why are they so afraid of talking about those below the middle class? Is there something so shocking as admitting that we have a higher degree of poverty than just about any industrialized nation, that our level is comparable to that of Mexico, not that of a Finland or a France?
We spend more on health care but get less for our dollar.
In my lifetime the top incremental federal income tax rate has gone from over 90% under Eisenhower to the current low 30s, as even more gets classified under capital gains which is capped at 15%.
Meanwhile payroll taxes continue to increase, now at a rate more than double what is was when I first drew a paycheck in high school some 50 years ago - let me explain. In 1961, when I first worked, OASDI (employer and employee shares combined) was 6.25% on the first $4,000 of wages. There was no Medicare Tax. That means the employee was paying around 3% on those wages until the ceiling was reached. In 2010 the rate for OASDI was 12.4% and for Medicare 2.9% on the first 106,800 (yes, this year there is a 2% cut on OASDI paid for out of general revenues). That is 15.3%, or more than double, and on a much higher income level, even after adjusting for inflation. If you have a job, taxes have gone up on those at the lower level while at the top of the economic ladder they have gone down, which is part of the reason for the increased shifting of wealth and income upward as the gains of first the New Deal and then the Great Society are reversed.
Yet now we have people attacking poor people as they attempt to justify further cutting taxes for the wealthy - they claim poor people don't pay taxes. They may not pay income taxes, but they often pay a higher portion of their income in total taxes than do the very wealthy - Warren Buffett is noted for commenting that his effective tax rate was lower than that of his secretary.
We will not fix our school problems until we are honest about our increasing economic inequality.
We cannot educate our way out of poverty. Dedicated teachers can make only so much of a difference.
If we do not honestly address our current situation and what is happening, our sliding into the economic inequality of the Third World will be accompanied by a similar political inequality. Then riots like those we have been seeing in England could potentially pale alongside of what could happen here.
We need to be honest. Our political dialog is from from honest.
This was not a book review. I cannot review a book I have not yet read.
I glanced at someone else's essay on that book and several things jumped out at me.
I thought they were worth sharing.
Will knowing this make a difference?
At this point I have to wonder . . .