A Headline so obvious, we shouldn’t need to see it

by David Safier

Growing Gaps Bring Focus on Poverty’s Role in Schooling

It should be obvious, right? Children growing up in poverty do worse than children who have more affluent parents. Schools can only do so much to bridge the gap. Yet conservatives want you to believe it’s all about “great teachers.”

The article (Education Week, subscription only) mentions a book, Whither Opportunity? Rising Inequality, Schools, and Children’s Life Chances.

The book illuminates, in multiple ways, how widening gaps in economic and social resources between rich and poor children over the past few decades have eroded public schools’ ability to overcome those disadvantages.

Here’s a stat that moves race to a secondary position: “The achievement gap . . . between rich and poor students . . . is now twice that of the gap between black and white students.” The chart at right shows the change.

As poverty and income gaps increase, schools will still have a significant effect on student learning, but they won’t be able to overcome the growing social and economic inequalities. Some students will excel despite their circumstances, and some schools will manage to move their students’ achievement a little higher than similar students in other schools. But it will never be enough.

Let’s do the math on the “great teacher” concept. We have something like one teacher for every twenty school aged children in the U.S. That comes to about 3.5 million teachers. What are the chances that all, or half, or even a quarter of them will be “great”? Do we have a million “great” athletes, or “great” musicians, or “great” rocket scientists?

We can raise the level of teacher competence. We can improve teacher training. But creating a million, or two million, or three million “great” teachers? That’s conservative hyperbole aimed at pushing an agenda forward by making the impossible sound plausible — kind of like saying we can cut taxes and raise government revenue at the same time, or when the rich get richer, everyone benefits.

Education will not solve our social and economic problems. But improving our social and economic situations will go a long way toward improving children’s educations.