Here’s a good oped on the relationships among social class, dropouts and school reform by Hans G. Despain, a professor in the Department of Economics at Nichols College. As Despain points out, most of the time folks get the logic backwards when it comes to poverty, dropouts, and school reform—” Dropouts don’t cause poverty, unemployment and crime.”
As Jean Anyon has illustrated in her research, ”attempting to fix inner-city schools without fixing the city in which they are embedded is like trying to clean the air on one side of a screen door.”
Or as Despain puts it:
The dropout problem and educational “crisis” is a socio-economic problem. More testing and measure, the creation of charter schools, school choice, and magnet schools, the reorganization and re-staffing of schools with low-test scores is to only move around furniture on the Titanic. It is not addressing socio-economic causes. It will not change dropout rates, or adequately increase test scores in low-income areas…
Cutting dropout rates for the poor
by Hans G. Despain, Daily Hampshire Gazette
Our children will be returning to school at the end of the month. In nine high schools in the Pioneer Valley, students are returning to “dropout factories.” Across the nation one in 10 high schools are dubbed “dropout factories.” In Springfield and Holyoke it is 100 percent of public/charter high schools.
High school dropouts, much like teen pregnancy, are a serious social problem. Dropouts increase our unemployment numbers and poverty rates, especially in urban areas such as Holyoke and Springfield. Dropouts lower human capital skills, and hence diminish our economic competitiveness.
Dropouts are more likely to participate in drug distribution, crime, and violence. If principals and teachers, superintendents and schools boards would solve the Pioneer Valley dropout problem, this would go a long way toward solving the economic and social problems of our local communities.
Of course we all know this. The problem is that the logic is backwards – cause and effect have been inverted. Dropouts don’t cause poverty, unemployment and crime. To believe otherwise is a failure to understand the depth of the dropout problem, and its place in a larger political and economic context. Dropouts are not merely an educational problem. Principals, teachers, superintendents and school boards can contribute very little toward a solution. This is not to suggest good teachers and administrators are incidental. Indeed, they matter greatly.
However, Holyoke and Springfield already have good teachers and administrators. If we already have good teachers and administrators in our “dropout factories,” then viewing the solution of dropouts as merely an educational phenomenon is not only mistaken, but in fact contributing to the problem.
The greatest contribution to the problem has been the narrowing of curriculum in an attempt to increase test scores in math and reading. Less time and effort are geared to history, social studies, art, music, physical education, social interaction, character development, and selfhood awareness. These neglects have been most pronounced in low-income areas such as Holyoke and Springfield where a broader curriculum is most needed.
The response to low-test scores has been a narrowing of curriculum, while the real problem is the socio-economics of poverty. Children from low-income families receive worse medical and dental care, increasing the likelihood of school absences. Low-income children are more prone to asthma and have lower birth weights. They are more likely to suffer lead poisoning and poor nutrition, lowering their cognitive development and ability.
Low-income families move more often, leading to incongruity of instruction. Jobs of low-income parents are less stable, increasing family stress. Low-income parents also have less benefits and typically lack caregiving leave, decreasing involvement with their children’s education.
Low-income children often have single-parent households, decreasing their interaction with adults. They are read to less often, travel to fewer places, exposed to fewer words, less likely to visit museums, and have diminished participation in art, dance, music and sports. Consequently low-income high school students tend to have a diminished cultural, political, and selfhood awareness.
Too often low-income or poverty-enduring child will tend to view educational institutions as lacking relevance to their and their family’s hardships. Partly this is due to a lack cultural, political and selfhood context. Partly it is good sense – a type of tacit or existential socio-economic sense.
Income distribution in this country has been radically skewed toward the wealthiest 10 percent of Americans for 35 years. Incomes for the bottom 70 percent of American households have not increased when adjusted for inflation, while national income has increased over 300 percent. According to 2006 census data, 42 percent of full-time American jobs pay $25,000 per year or less for all workers over the age of 25. That is 82 million full-time jobs performed by adult Americans that pay $25,000 or less. The vast majority of these jobs are held by high school graduates.
The effects of low-income and poverty make academic success extremely difficult. The dynamics of the American economy and the lack of wage protections and labor rights mean that education does not necessarily lead to a livable wage, let alone a good income.
The dropout problem and educational “crisis” is a socio-economic problem. More testing and measure, the creation of charter schools, school choice, and magnet schools, the reorganization and re-staffing of schools with low-test scores is to only move around furniture on the Titanic. It is not addressing socio-economic causes. It will not change dropout rates, or adequately increase test scores in low-income areas such as Holyoke and Springfield.
No Child Left Behind legislation of 2002 created a lack of seriousness toward the dropout problem in particular and the educational “crisis” more generally. The commitment to increased testing and measure does nothing to address the effects on academic attainment for children in households and communities characterized by low-income and poverty. It also does nothing to address the sorry condition of the American job markets, and the country’s mal-distribution of wealth. The real cause of school dropouts are family unfriendly jobs and the anti-community distribution of wealth.
– Hans G. Despain, a resident of Holyoke, is a professor in the Department of Economics at Nichols College.
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