Our Schools are Not Broken: The Problem is Poverty

"Broken" schools?

We have been told repeatedly that our schools are "broken," that our teachers are inadequate, that our schools of education are not doing their job, and that teachers unions are spending all their time protecting bad teachers. The evidence is the fact that American students do not score at the top of the world on international test scores. One observer claimed that American students are "taking a shellacking" on these tests. (1)

The impact of poverty

Not so. Studies show that middle-class American students attending well-funded schools outscore students in nearly all other countries on these tests. (2) Overall scores are unspectacular because over 20% of our students live in poverty, the highest percentage among all industrialized countries. High-scoring Finland, for example, first on the PISA science test in 2006, has less than 4% child poverty. (3)

[The following — Our Schools are Not Broken: The Problem is Poverty — by Stephen Krashen was originally given as the Commencement Speech, Graduate School of Education and Counseling, Lewis and Clark College on June 5, 2011. All footnotes appear at the end].

As of October 2010, after 15 years of mayoral control (during eight of which Arne Duncan was Chief Executive Officer of Chicago's public schools) the public learned that 160 out of 600 Chicago public schools did not have libraries for their children. Virtually all of those schools were in high poverty areas of the city. Duncan's neglect of books came at a time when he had radically increased the amount of testing in Chicago's schools and undertaken a major campaign to blame teachers for the effects of poverty, firing more than 1,000 teachers and principals in the first wave of "turnaround" (now the national policy of the Obama administration) when schools had low test scores. Parents, teachers and students at Chicago's Whittier Elementary School (above) staged a month-long sit-in and risked arrest on several occasions to demand that a small building adjacent to the school house a library. Above, on October 5, the children and adults were logging in books that had been donated to "La Casita" (the "Little House") for the Whittier library. Despite all of the work exposing the scandal surrounding the refusal of Chicago to provide books in schools and communities for poor children, the Chicago Board of Education continued its policy of overtesting and underbooking schools in the city's vast barrios and ghettos. Substance photo by George N. Schmidt.

Reduce poverty to improve education, not vice-versa

The fact that American students who are not living in poverty do very well shows that there is no crisis in teacher quality. The problem is poverty. The US Department of Education insists that improving teaching comes first: With better teaching, we will have more learning (higher test scores, according to the feds), and this will improve the economy. We are always interested in improving teaching, but the best teaching in the world will have little effect when students are hungry, are in poor health because of inadequate diet and inadequate health care, and have low literacy development because of a lack of access to books. (4) Also, studies have failed to find a correlation between improved test scores and subsequent economic progress. (5)

Photo by Tripp

The relationship is the other way around: "We are likely to find that the problems of housing and education, instead of preceding the elimination of poverty, will themselves be affected if poverty is first abolished.” (Martin Luther King, 1967, Final Words of Advice).

Photo by Kevin Bauman

At least: Protect children from the effects of poverty

If poverty is the problem, the solution is full employment and a living wage for honest work. Until this happens, we need to do what we can to protect children from the effects of poverty. This means (1) continue to support and expand free and reduced breakfast and lunch programs ("No child left unfed," as Susan Ohanian puts it). It means (2) make sure all schools have an adequate number of school nurses; there are fewer school nurses per student in high poverty schools than in low poverty schools. (6)

It means (3) make sure all children have access to books.

Access to books => more reading => literacy development

There is very clear evidence that children from high-poverty families have very little access to books at home, at school, and in their communities. (7)

Studies also show when children have access to interesting and comprehensible reading material, they read. (8)

And finally, when children read, they improve in all aspects of literacy, including vocabulary, grammar, spelling, reading and writing ability.9 In fact, I have concluded that reading for pleasure, self-selected reading, is the major cause of literacy development. Making sure that all children have access to books makes literacy development possible. Without it, literacy development is impossible.

The power of libraries

In support of this chain of logic, a number of studies show that school library quality and the presence of credential librarians are related to reading ability. The leader of this research in the United States is Keith Curry Lance, who, with his associates, has reported that school library quality is related to reading achievement in a number of different states. (10)

Related to the poverty issue, the results of some recent studies have suggested that access to books, either at home or at the school library, can mitigate or balance the effect of poverty: The positive impact of access to books on reading achievement is about as large as the negative impact of poverty. (11)

Community breaks police blockade, 'Camp Whittier' gets a third night to demand a library for the children

Part of the crowd that surged down 23rd St. in Chicago shortly after school was dismissed on September 17, 2010. After a five-hour-long siege on the street around the school (the police had blocked off both ends of the street and the alleys, and had refused to allow anyone to walk down the street), parents and students, who had just been dismissed from Whittier, told police that they didn't think the "Police Line" tape could stop them from walking down a street in their own community, and within minutes more than 100 people had joined the protests, bringing pizza, water, and support to the protesters, who were about to be arrested for demanding a library. Substance photo by George N. Schmidt.

Part of the crowd celebrating the departure of Chicago police from the Whittier Elementary School field house at approximately 3:00 p.m. on September 17, 2010. The protesters above had defied a police cordon and swarmed down 23rd St. to the site of the protest just before police were to move in and arrest the mothers who had been occupying the field house for two nights and days. Substance photo by George N. Schmidt. Story

Access can close the gap

A stunning example of the power of books to close the gap between different groups is Fryer and Levitt's (2004) analysis. They reported that white children did better than African-American children on tests administered on entrance to kindergarten. When socio-economic status was added to the analysis, about 2/3 of the gap was closed. When books in the home was added to the analysis in addition to socio-economic status, the entire gap was closed: There was no difference between the groups. (12)

Unfortunately, public and school libraries across the country are suffering tremendous budget cuts, and school librarians' hours are being reduced. (13)

As Isaac Asimov wrote, "When I read about the way in which library funds are being cut and cut, I can only think that American society has found one more way to destroy itself" (from his autobiography, I, Asimov).

Ignoring all of the evidence that shows that books improve the education of poor children and tests don't, members of Chicago's ruling class, including millionaires Robin Steans (above left) and R. Eden Martin (above right) continued their attack on teachers and teacher unions. Steans, head of a group financed by the wealthiest people in Chicago, pushed legislation in the Illinois General Assembly aimed at firing teachers whose classes showed low test scores, while her group, "Advance Illinois", ignored such blatant examples of discrimination as the lack of libraries in Chicago's public schools. One of the co-chairman of Advance Illinois is Bill Daley, the banker brother of former Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley (and currently White House Chief of Staff). Eden Martin, former corporate secretary of Aon Insurance and partner in one of Chicago's biggest corporate law firm, attacked unions and public schools on several fronts at once. Above, the two were featured testifying before a newly created entity called the "Illinois House School Reform Committee" on December 17, 2010. Substance photo by George N. Schmidt.

How to pay for it: Reduce testing

We can easily afford to protect children from many of the effects of poverty. The obvious step is to halt the drive toward increased testing and reduce the amount of testing we are paying for now.

The astonishing increase in testing

It is widely acknowledged that NCLB (No Child Left Behind) required an excessive amount of testing. Not well known is the fact that the US Department of Education is planning to spend billions on a massive new testing program, with far more testing than ever before, all linked to national standards. The new plan will require, as before, tests in reading and math in grades three through eight and once in high school, but it also includes interim testing, and may include pre-testing in the fall to be able to measure growth during the year. In addition, the US Department of Education is encouraging testing in other subjects as well. The tests are to be administered online, which means a huge investment in getting all students connected. (14)

Ron Huberman's "Chief Performance Officer" Sarah Kremsner (above in grey suit), took office in 2009 with no experience, training or certification in education and quickly expanded the so-called "Office of Performance Management" into one of the largest and most controversial departments in the history of Chicago's public schools. Chicago's media ignored the fact that Kremsner's version of "Performance Management" at the Chicago Transit Authority, where she worked under Ron Huberman prior to 2009, was dumped as soon as Huberman and Kremsner were gone because it was largely irrelevant to the public transportation needs of Chicago's people. Substance photo taken in July 2010 at Chicago Vocational High School.

No evidence supporting the increase in testing

There is no evidence supporting the idea that tests to enforce national standards will have a positive impact on student learning. In fact, the evidence we have suggests that it will not: States that use more high-stakes tests do not do better on the national NAEP test than states with fewer, (15) and the use of the standardized SAT does not predict college success over and above high school grades. (16)

Countries that use standardized tests for course examinations did only slightly better on the PISA, a test of reading given to 15 year olds, and the use of such tests to compare schools and to make curricular decisions has a near- zero correlation with PISA scores. (17)

On February 11, 2009, Ginger Reynolds (above facing left, wearing classes) testified that CPS had to close Fulton Elementary School because of "academic failure." Like dozens of other schools during the purges of "Renaissance 2010," Fulton was closed and subjected to the controversial "turnaround" program. Like her successor, Sarah Kremsner, and her predecessor, Dan Buglar, Reynolds served as the Chicago Public Schools chief of testing and accountability despite the fact that she had no professional record in psychometrics, testing, and measurement. Seated beside Reynolds above is Board attorney Joe Moriarity, who regularly provided the show trials aimed at closing schools with the legalese necessary for the actions. Substance photo by George N. Schmidt.

Of course, the administration has argued that these will be new and better tests, more sensitive to growth in learning, able to chart student progress through the year, and able to probe real learning, not just memorization. Before unleashing these "improved" tests on the country, however, there should be rigorous investigation, rigorous studies to show that these measures are worth the investment. Right now, the corporations and politicians insist that we take on faith the claim that these tests are good for students. Such claims exhibit a profound lack of accountability.

By the time he left CPS in July 2007 (above), Dan Bugler had served as chief of "Research Evaluation and Accountability" and provided the texts for the destruction of the first two dozen Chicago public schools under the Board's "Renaissance 2010" program. Bugler, like those who served as the system's "accountability" chiefs before and after 2007, had no experience or record in testing and measurement. When asked in 2007 whether anyone from CPS would be presenting to the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), which was meeting in Chicago, Bugler gave Substance a smirk. No one from the CPS "accountability" office participated in AERA in Chicago that year, because the Chicago versions of "accountability" (as well as research and evaluation by that time) had become so corrupt that they were a national scandal. Substance photo by George N. Schmidt.

Arne Duncan praised Dan Bugler effusively at the July 2007 meeting of the Chicago Board of Education, when Bugler left the Board. Duncan seconded Bugler's comment that both were disappointed that CPS had never won a "Broad" (the Broad Foundation's award for school systems). Neither Duncan nor Bugler had any experience or peer reviewed vetting in testing and evaluation, and used "accountability" as a club to justify the privatization of dozens of Chicago public schools and the purges on hundreds of teachers and principals. Substance photo July 2007 by George N. Schmidt.

In contrast, there is overwhelming evidence that dealing with poverty is an excellent investment, one that will not only improve school achievement but also affect quality of life and personal happiness.

To summarize:

1. American education is not broken. Our less than spectacular international test scores are not because of bad teaching, but are because of our high rate of child poverty.

2. Reducing poverty will improve educational attainment, not vice-versa.

3. A reasonable first step is to protect children from the effects of poverty: No child left unfed, more health care, improve access to books.

4. We can easily pay for much of this by reducing testing.

Notes

1. Bonstell, A. 2011. America's academic meltdown, Orange County Register, May 5, 2011.

2. Payne, K. and Biddle, B. 1999. Poor school funding, child poverty, and mathematics achievement. Educational Researcher 28 (6): 4-13; Bracey, G. 2009. The Bracey Report on the Condition of Public Education. Boulder and Tempe: Education and the Public Interest Center & Education Policy Research Unit. http://epicpolicy.org/... Berliner, D. The Context for Interpreting PISA Results in the USA: Negativism, Chauvinism, Misunderstanding, and the Potential to Distort the Educational Systems of Nations. In Pereyra, M., Kottoff, H-G., and Cowan, R. (Eds.). PISA under examination: Changing knowledge, changing tests, and changing schools. Amsterdam: Sense Publishers. In press.

3. http://www.nationmaster.com/....

4. Berliner, D. 2009. Poverty and Potential: Out-of-School Factors and School Success. Boulder and Tempe: Education and the Public Interest Center & Education Policy Research Unit. http://epicpolicy.org/... Coles, G. 2008/2009. Hunger, academic success, and the hard bigotry of indifference. Rethinking Schools 23 (2); Rothstein, R. (2010). How to fix our schools. Economic Policy Institute, Issue Brief #286. http://www.epi.org/... Coles, G. 2008/2009. Hunger, academic success, and the hard bigotry of indifference. Rethinking Schools 23 (2). http://www.rethinkingschools.org/... Krashen, S. 1997. Bridging inequity with books. Educational Leadership 55(4): 18-22; Martin, M. 2004. A strange ignorance: The role of lead poisoning in “failing schools.” http://www.azsba.org/....

5. Zhao, Y. 2009. Catching Up or Leading the Way? American Education in the Age of Globalization. ASCD: Alexandria, VA.; Baker, K. 2007. Are international tests worth anything? Phi Delta Kappan, 89(2), 101-104.

6. Berliner, D. 2009. op. cit.

7. Di Loreto, C., and Tse, L. 1999. Seeing is believing: Disparity in books in two Los Angeles area public libraries. School Library Quarterly 17(3): 31-36; Duke, N. 2000. For the rich it's richer: Print experiences and environments offered to children in very low and very high-socioeconomic status first-grade classrooms. American Educational Research Journal 37(2): 441-478; Neuman, S.B. and Celano, D. 2001. Access to print in low-income and middle-income communities: An ecological study of four neighborhoods. Reading Research Quarterly, 36, 1, 8-26.

8. Lindsay, J. 2010. Children's Access to Print Material and Education-Related Outcomes: Findings from a Meta-Analytic Review. Naperville, IL: Learning Point Associates. http://bit.ly/...

9. McQuillan, J. 1998. The Literacy Crisis: False Claims and Real Solutions. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann Publishing Company; Krashen, S. 2004. The Power of Reading. Portsmouth: Heinemann and Westport: Libraries Unlimited; Lindsay, J. 2010. op. cit.

10. Lance, K. 2004. The impact of school library media centers on academic achievement. In Carol Kuhlthau (Ed.), School Library Media Annual. 188-197. Westport, CT: Libraries Unlimited. (For access to the many Lance studies done in individual states, as well as studies done by others at the state level, see http://www.davidvl.org/...).

11. Achterman, D. 2008. Haves, Halves, and Have-Nots: School Libraries and Student Achievement in California. PhD dissertation, University of North Texas. http://digital.library.unt.edu/... Evans, M, Kelley, J. Sikora, J. and Treiman,D. 2010. Family scholarly culture and educational success: Books and schooling in 27 nations. Research in Social Stratification and Mobility, 28 (2): 171-197; Krashen, S., Lee, SY, and McQuillan, J. 2010. An analysis of the PIRLS (2006) data: Can the school library reduce the effect of poverty on reading achievement? CSLA (California School Library Association) Journal, 34 (1); 26-28; Schubert, F. and Becker, R. 2010. Social inequality of reading literacy: A longitudinal analysis with cross-sectional data of PIRLS 2001and PISA 2000 utilizing the pair wise matching procedure. Research in Social Stratification and Mobility 29:109-133.

12. Fryer, R. and Levitt, S. 2004. Understanding the black-white test score gap in the first two years of school. The Review of Economics and Statistics 86 (2): 447-464.

13. American Library Association, 2010. The State of America's Libraries. American Libraries (Special Issue).

14. U.S. Department of Education, Office of Planning, Evaluation and Policy Development. (2010) ESEA Blueprint for Reform, Washington, D.C.; Krashen, S. and Ohanian, S. 2011. High tech testing on the way: A 21st century boondoggle? http://blogs.edweek.org/... dialogue/ /2011/04/high_tech_testing_on_the_way_a.html. Apparently even the president of the United States has not been aware of the amount of testing the Department of Education was planning. On March 28, 2011, the President, in response to a question at a townhall meeting, commented that "we have piled on a lot of standardized tests on our kids" and suggested that we "figure out whether we have to do it every year or whether we can do it maybe every several years," as well as use other criteria. http://www.whitehouse.gov/... office/2011/03/28/remarks-president-univision-town-hall

15. Nichols, S., Glass, G., and Berliner, D. 2006. High-stakes testing and student achievement: Does accountability increase student learning? Education Policy Archives 14(1). http://epaa.asu.edu/....

16. Geiser, S. and Santelices, M.V., 2007. Validity of high-school grades in predicting student success beyond the freshman year: High-school record vs. standardized tests as indicators of four-year college outcomes. Research and Occasional Papers Series: CSHE 6.07, University of California, Berkeley. http://cshe.berkeley.ed; Bowen, W., Chingos, M., and McPherson, M. 2009. Crossing the Finish Line: Completing College at America's Universities. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

17. OECD 2011. Lessons from PISA for the United States, Strong Performers and Successful Reformers in Education, OECD Publishing. http://dx.doi.org/...

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Leaders from The Caucus Of Rank and File Educators (CORE) speak to the members of PDA Illinois at the June meeting to discuss the dire state of Chicago Public Schools and what can be done. Norine Gutekanst is a veteran bilingual teacher and CORE member, Norine has been active in union issues including the need for bilingual education and opposition to high-stakes standardized testing.