Beginning with the advent of public education, the U.S. has had a thriving cottage industry of school critics. For one reason or another, our schools are always in crisis—and yet decade after decade of school reform programs never manages to do the trick. Perhaps that’s because schools, while important, are not the major force that affects the quality of a student’s learning.
The latest evidence to show that poverty in the community more strongly determines educational outcomes comes from international test comparisons of 15-year-olds. While the U.S. as a whole ranks a feeble 14th for the combined literacy scale, when U.S. schools are analyzed by the percentage of the student body that is poor, it turns out that schools with little poverty score better than top-scoring OECD countries.
As with all institutions in a democratic society, our public schools will always need clear-eyed critics to help reveal weaknesses and promote improvements. But a narrow-minded focus on schools in and of themselves will be an exercise in frustration. If we want America’s schools and students to thrive in every community, we must address the underlying economic quagmire that saps kids of their hopes and inborn intellectual capacity, and saps teachers of their spirits and compassion.
By Member Economist Jonathan Teller-Elsberg
October 2011
Data Note: “Poor” is defined as being eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, which means having income at or below 185% of the official poverty line.
Source: Howard L. Fleischman; Paul J. Hopstock; Marisa P. Pelczar; and Brooke E. Shelley, “Highlights From PISA 2009: Performance of U.S. 15-Year-Old Students in Reading, Mathematics, and Science Literacy in an International Context,” Table R1, p9 and Table R4, p16, International Center for Education Statistics. http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2011/2011004_1.pdf
