Why Empowering Parents May Often Fail

Last week, certain segments of the education policy community celebrated what was dubbed “National School Choice Week.”  The core underlying theory of the school choice movement is in theory quite noble and good: create more choices for parents as to where they send their children to use the power of the free market to eliminate bad schools and thus improve the entire education system.  To achieve this end, several policies that have limited effectiveness (and that I have lambasted in this blog) are employed:  increase teacher accountability through merit pay, measure school progress transparently using standardized test scores, allow private individuals to develop charter schools to compete with failing public schools, and fund vouchers to parents to choose where to send their children instead of wasting large per pupil expenditures in the public system.   The name of the game is to empower parents, which is good.

My problem with the push for parental choice is that the movement leaves its fundamental assumptions unquestioned:

1.     Parents need empowerment.

2.     Parents, once empowered, will act on their newfound ability to choose.

3.     Parents are able to make good choices about education.

4.     That a child has parents that actively make choices related to their education.

5.     That the locus of blame for poor educational outcomes is the school.

6.     That the locus of blame for poor educational outcomes is unrelated to the parent.

It is my personal belief (a belief supported by many facts) that all of these assumptions sometimes (or often) prove false.  The purpose of this post is not, as you may expect, to say that parent choice needs to be abolished (although I think compelling arguments could be made for this argument).  Rather, I will seek to show that you need to understand the role of parental and family factors to understand which segments of the population parental choice can benefit.  From there, I think it is easier to understand some of the qualms one might have about making parental choice the guiding framework of our education policy.

The Parental Rainbow

The fundamental issue I have with empowering parents is that not all parents are the same, not all need empowerment, and not all those who are empowered will react in the best interests of their children as students (sometimes intentionally, sometimes not).   To better illustrate what I mean, I identify various types of parents and organize them by whether parental choice might benefit their kids:

Students whose parents have the following characteristics will not do better than they do now as a result of parental choice:

·      Enough money to send their kids to a private school

·      Work too many hours to be involved in decisions related to their child’s education

·      Not involved in their child’s life (dead, incarcerated, abandoned their child, etc.)

·      Not aware or unsure how to become aware about the school choices available for their kids.

·      Do not see the value of education and do not support their children’s education

·      Unable to evaluate different options presented and choose the best option for their child.

·      Bad at parenting or simply do not care about their children

·      Afraid/Unwilling to send children outside of neighborhood school

Students whose parents have the following characteristics might do better as a result of parental choice: 

·      Cannot afford private school for their kids

·      Value education for their kids

·      Can on their own or with help make informed decisions about where to send their child

·      Have or make time to make decisions related to their child’s education

·      Are open to and able to provide a means for their child to transit to a new school, if necessary.

·      Are alive and involved in raising their children

Parental wealth, knowledge, and involvement are the three main factors that determine whether parental choice can potentially improve children’s outcomes.  Unfortunately, as you can see above, some of the children who are worst off are most likely to remain unaffected by parental choice: those who have one or fewer parents, those whose parents work too much to be involved (this is not bad parenting, as you need a child to have a home or to eat before they can be educated, right?), those whose parents don’t care or are not involved in their lives.  To put it in plain language, low- to middle-income parents who value education, can be involved in decisions related to their child’s education, and who are willing to send their child to a different school that may be far away are the only group that could potentially benefit from parental choice.

Outside factors that might further limit any benefits of parental choice

Because children spend some 70% of their waking hours outside of school, the parental choice movement’s willingness to discount or ignore factors outside of school that affect learning outcomes is perhaps the largest weakness of the movement.  [update: The Washington Examiner, DC's conservative paper, published an article on January 30, 2012, that there is an even distribution of "effective" or "highly effective" teachers across good and failing schools, which could show the failure of the rating system or could just as easily show that a teacher's ability to make a difference is severely limited by some of the outside factors I list below.]

·      Family Income – One of the strongest predictors of student achievement is their family’s income.  Poor kids tend to perform poorly in school (which makes sense for a variety of reasons: parent is likely to be working and less able to be involved, student may arrive malnourished, student may live in or travel through a violent or difficult neighborhood to get to school, etc.).

·      Parent’s Education Level  - Parents who have had more schooling tend to produce children who do better and are more educated.  This is usually related to a parent understanding the value of education, being better able to make decisions related to their child’s education or help their child make educational decisions, and their having higher incomes to support a child’s education outside of school.

·      Child’s Previous Track Record – A child’s previous educational success or failure is another huge factor in their future success.  Because “tracking,” or assigning kids to different levels (regular, honors, advanced placement/IB, etc.) based on their “intelligence,” is quite common place, many kids who are on a lower track will stay there regardless of their school.  That’s to say, children who were already shafted by the schooling they received have a much lower likelihood of being helped even if their parent is involved and values education.

·       Student motivation – It is hard to place a lot of blame on kids for not getting the right education and parents play a big role in this regard.  If a kid is not guided and supported in making sound choices to do well in school, they will likely do worse even in a great school with great teachers.

·      Impractical or Bad Parental Choice Options – As many pro-charter/voucher movies have shown, there are not enough slots for most kids, so they are subject to a lottery to get into a great new charter.  Competition severely excludes kids with fewer parents with less motivation, so the worst off are still unlikely to be helped at all.  Further, as the Stanford CREDO study showed, many parents believe that charters are better than public schools when in 80% of the cases they are at the same level or worse in terms of student achievement.  That is to say, parents perceive bad options to be good (which belies the assumption that empowering parents leads to better outcomes because they make good choices).  Finally, many vouchers do not cover the full cost of enrollment for kids, so even the most involved and educated parents might not be able to afford the best choice.

·      Extracurricular Learning – The ability and willingness of parents to provide stimulating, educative activities after-school, on weekends, and during vacations is key.  Kids who reinforce learning during gaps in schooling are more likely to succeed.  You’ll recall that children without summer programs lose about 3 months worth of previous learning over the summer compared to those whose parents keep their kids engaged.  This has to do with both parental income and motivation in many instances.

·      Learning Disabilities – It is somewhat unrealistic to expect teachers with students that have learning disabilities and much greater needs to get all their students to the same level as students that lack such challenges and the need for support.

There are indeed some school factors that impact student achievement that parental choice could (but may not) improve, such as teacher quality.  There are other school factors that do not impact kid’s learning much like class size or materials that I don’t include for that very reason.  That said, the willingness to place ALL of the blame for student’s not doing well on teachers or schools without any consideration of the disadvantages children bring into the classroom is quite unfair.  It is also potentially dangerous and could deepen inequality in this country.

The Sinister Implications of Parental Choice

There is an unaddressed tension in the parental choice movement between the belief that teacher quality is the key to all students succeeding and punishing teachers/schools that have low performing students:  poorer students tend to be clustered in undesirable schools.  As the best students from these schools with the most motivated parents are siphoned off by charters, the worst students are left ghettoized in these schools.  This makes the school more of a failure (I mean, come on: take the good students from a bad school and it will “get worse” even if the quality level hasn’t changed).  Further, it makes the school less desirable to teach at, which means that the worst students are not getting access to the best teachers (which is probably necessary, and hence the tension).  These children then get shuffled around and ignored.   Worse, these students are losing the potential peer pressure effect to do well because their peers are doing well, as their successful peers will have gone.

Additionally, it could have sinister implications on teaching quality.  Parental choice policies hinge on standardized tests to measure and rank students.  Students in these environments, however, have no real connection to the facts on these exams.  Further, these students most need the ability to think critically and make tough decisions (as they have much more inertia impeding their success), which they don’t get as teachers are forced by legislation like No Child Left Behind to teach to a test or be potentially fired and see their school closed.  Many states have lowered their standards to comply with the provision that all students be at level on reading and math by 2013: where student achievement has seemed to go up, it actually was the result of state’s lowering the standards they held children to.  That is not progress.

Worst of all, this policy shifts the blame from policy makers and parents to teachers.  It is no longer society’s fault that we have such great social inequality perpetuated by our school system.  It is all in the hands of parents and students whether they sink or swim, even if they start off drowning without a raft.  Further, it makes teachers the scapegoats for social inequality: suddenly teachers are at fault if their students are too poor and hungry to focus or if they come in from the summer 3 months behind their wealthier peers.  LET ME BE CLEAR, there is no excuse for poor children to be written off (I was one!).  That said, the blame lies sometimes with their parents, sometimes with their government, sometimes with society, sometimes with themselves, and sometimes with their teacher and/or school.  To misdirect all blame to one of those is not just and will not empower the vast majority of those kids who could benefit from a great educational experience. 

In short, policies should not center around making kids successful at taking tests, ghettoizing the lowest performers, and punishing teachers for a child’s background.  Improving teaching quality is key, but unless these policy makers will do something that also addresses socioeconomic disadvantages, they will never improve the system. 

Act on it!

So long as parental choice is ascendant, we need to make sure that the poorest parents can make the right choices.  We also need to support those kids whose parents don’t care, are too busy to be involved, or who simply aren’t present. Here’s how:

1.     Serve as a local school council liaison for overwhelmed parents in your community and fight for their kids (their success may save you taxpayer dollars, so you even have an incentive beyond altruism).  Particularly, fight the temptation to segregate students by “intelligence” or test scores, as a child put on a low track is likely one to end up there.  Support school feeding programs three times a day so that kids are fully nourished and ready to learn.

2.     Provide guidance to a working parent you know to help them truly understand the choices they have to advance their child and encourage them to do as well as possible in school.

3.     Serve as a mentor to the poorest or least supported kids in your community so that they don’t get lost in the parental choice struggle for lack of a parent.

4.     Help afterschool or on weekends or in the summer at a school to provide all kids a chance to continue learning during those large hours when they are not receiving instruction in a classroom.

5.     Help register low-income parents and get them to the polls so that they can vote for politicians that support policies that improve public schools rather than letting them atrophy.

6.     Create or support third spaces (libraries, tutoring centers, safe parks, etc.) that allow kids to remain engaged outside of the classroom.

Speak out!

What other categories do you think impact a parent’s ability to be empowered by choice programs and improve their child’s educational achievement?

What policies or volunteer opportunities might help students to succeed if they are not able to benefit from policies like those promoted by the parental choice movement?

Stop Bothering Society, Poor Kid: Help Yourself!

People who know me, know that I am a firm believer in systemic inequalities. Our country has done a lot to reduce the legal barriers that inhibited certain races from realizing their full potential (though much still remains). That said, in a country that was built on slavery and did not fully protect the rights of Blacks in law until the Civil Rights Act of 1964, you have to imagine that the way the country operates is still favorable to Whites. Even if you full equalized everyone in law and you enforced those laws properly, all American institutions and measures of success are largely based upon White measures of success. Specifically, the White middle and upper class. This article may make you uncomfortable if you are squeamish about talking about race and class (or dislike sarcasm), but my philosophy is that you cannot fix a problem by ignoring it and political correctness is the quickest path to inertia.

An article recently published in Forbes Magazine, entitled “If I Were a Poor Black Kid” recently caught my attention. I responded to the article and then to the author’s response in forceful (and recognizable) terms My intent here is not to rehash my response, but to outline the problem with this author’s overly simplistic assessment and to go one step further by showing the math that debunks his “solution.”

Hey Black Kids, Follow the Binary Road!

Anytime someone who has never been poor or Black and who is not a kid decides to write a treatise on what poor, Black children should do…you should be apprehensive. In the article, a man who is a middle class (and always was middle class) technology expert gives advice to poor black children on how they themselves can and should lift themselves out of poverty. This advice includes:

• Getting good grades
• Using all the free sites on the web like Ted Talks, Cliff’s Notes (a real resource for understanding literature), Google Scholar and Project Gutenberg to do well.
• Finding study partners and using Skype to hone your intellect
• Making sure you get into an elite charter school or get a full ride to a private school
• Sucking up to the guidance counselor so that they help you find jobs, college, and other opportunities
• Learning software programming or computers or another "skill."

All of this advice builds to the conclusion that “Technology can help these kids. But only if the kids want to be helped. Yes, there is much inequality. But the opportunity is still there in this country for those that are smart enough to go for it.” (so, you see, poor, Black people are not smart because they aren't trying to not be poor...that is what you are saying, right sir?)

Wait, There Are Holes in This Guy’s Logic!?

Technology was good for this author: rather than giving him a healthy dose of my backhand, he only had to face my comments. As someone who grew up poor in a big city and who ended up going to Stanford, I actually have a lot of relevant experience to comment on this article (which he denied because poor kids, even after going to Stanford, are not smarter than he). A big part of his solution involves poor kids using computers, and he suggests that in the “unlikely event” that they don’t have one, they can just go to one of their wonderful public libraries.

The problem with libraries

As a child, I DID that. I went to the library, and I almost never touched a computer because poor kids (of all races) are competing with retired, unemployed, homeless people and others. Many computers also have a time restriction (in Chicago it was 30 minutes if someone is waiting, which they always were). Further, some of the things he mentions (google scholar, TED) can probably be accessed from a library computer. That said, most do not have the software or hardware for using Skype or for learning how to code. Further, if you don’t live near a library or it is in a sketchy area, the journey there could be dangerous.

Finally, I did a little calculation using Philadelphia to demonstrate the absurdity of his proposal:

According to the most recent census data, approximately 36,000 children in Philadelphia would be considered “poor, Black kids.” (I calculated this by multiplying Philly’s population by the percentage under age 18, multiplied by the percentage of people who are black, multiplied by the percentage of people who are “in poverty,” which probably understates the amount of people who might benefit from his “solutions.”) According to the Philadelphia Public Library Website, there are 68 public libraries. Not all libraries are open right now, no libraries appear to be open on Sundays, so I am again overstating the library’s ability to absorb people. Libraries are open from 9am to 8pm generally 5 days a week and 9 am until 5 pm on Saturdays (not all, but I’ll be generous). That means each library is open 3,285 hours a year. With 68 libraries, the whole system is open 223,380 hours a year. Let’s assume that each has an average of 20 computers (unlikely, but what the heck, we are white and middle class!). Then the system has just under 4.5 million computer hours to offer to poor black kids. That means, each of our 36,000 poor, black kids gets 125 hours with a computer per year if most skipped school for their allotment and if all other library patrons were banned from the computers. This also assumes perfect mobility and that all kids in poor neighborhoods have equal access to equally capacious libraries, which is a stretch.

Now, with about 1,200 of those library hours occurring during school time (40, five-day weeks lasting from 9am until 3pm), each library can realistically only offer 2,085 hours per year, reducing the system’s capacity to 142,000 non-school hours per year, and with 20 computers assumed per library about 2.8 million computer hours. This amounts to 78 hours per “poor, black kid.” How many skills have you mastered by dedicating 78 hours per year? Now if you assume that a kid needs about 30 minutes of homework help for the 200 days that school is in session, that leaves the kid with -22 hours for learning how to code. How many skills have you learned in -22 hours?

As I noted in my article on teachers correcting for systemic inequality, Chicago just moved to close most of its libraries on Mondays. With many cities facing budget shortfalls, the likelihood that public libraries can serve our nation’s poor as much as is needed to escape poverty is decreasing by the day.

Non-logistical problems with the article

Now, aside from the absurd idea that every kid can get the computer access they need to be able to use technology to solve all of their problems, there are many more problems with the author’s arguments:

1. Think back to high school…how was your guidance counselor? I lucked the heck out and I had a great one who helped me apply to colleges, but with a parent that had not gone to college and being in one of the worst public school systems in the nation, the likelihood that this is a sure path is very low.

2. When you are in a single-parent home or have no parents or your parents are working so much that they cannot help you with homework, how do you get good grades? How do you find out about all of these tech resources? How do you know to read interesting middle class guys on Forbes.com to save you from your poverty?

3. The Harvard Business Review recently wrote several articles that note that most people fail to achieve their goals because they are contingent upon things outside of themselves (for example, if I set the goal "get more hits on my blog," that is outside of myself, because you choose to come here, I can't force you...better goals might be: write more posts, leave the link to my blog in other fora, and use social media to attract people to my blog, all of which I can control). Getting good grades depends a lot a teacher’s subjective assessment, having enough food to be able to concentrate on studying/homework, having utilities to be able to see or not shiver to do your homework (or to go online if you are one of the many poor black kids with computers!), or having access to homework help.

4. I noted that the system is probably rigged in subtle ways to favor its creators: higher income whites. Kids are actually quite receptive to this, and kids have to have a lot of willpower to overcome the stigma that being studious often comes with. Many poor black kids get teased or bullied if they try to be studious, often for “acting white.” An educated child also experiences a lot of distance with their less educated family, which can make it tough to keep fighting an uphill battle.

5. The article ignores entirely the severe disadvantages with which most poor kids enter the public school system. The lack of preschool or structured afterschool programming sets them up to be disadvantaged going in. Further, given the amount of tracking (assigning kids to a regular or more accelerated class which usually determines their future trajectory), many kids may already be routed into the “slow lane" of public education.

6. If kids need to fight to get into good schools, then you are admitting that the public school system is failing them in a disproportionate way, which is antithetical to the point of PUBLIC education, as I noted in my article on charters. As the propaganda film “Waiting for Superman” clearly shows, there is not enough supply of charter /private school seats for poor pupils.

7. It is really hard to fight for 78 hours of public library time after school while also getting a job or internship care of your amazing guidance counselor. Further, what if you are an older sibling caring for your younger siblings?

8. Did you skip childhood? Do you know how hard and counterintuitive it is for a child to be that self-disciplined? Part of the advantage that all higher-income kids have is that they are embedded in a web of discipline that is geared toward doing well in school.

9. This article is incredibly paternalistic (I won’t go so far as to say that the author is racist, because I think he believes his ignorant, ill-informed ideas and thinks that they really are a way to help poor kids.). One, it assumes knowledge of something that the author has never experienced. Two, it assumes that poor, black people should work themselves into the ground to be qualified to serve people like him and his business needs.

10. The article completely removes all culpability from the system or from wealthier people. It is rather unfair that his kids, which he notes “have it a lot easier” and not inherently smarter than their lower-income counterparts, do not have to bootstrap their way to the top. I can’t help but wonder if the author were writing in 1840 if the article would blame slaves for not working hard to cozy up to their masters, save up, and buy their freedom. Life is unfair, but let’s not pretend like this is good for our country. We need to attract and keep good teachers. We need for kids to have proper nutrition. We need for kids to have more equal opportunities to succeed or take advantage of an extra-curricular program/job (within the bounds of child labor laws, please!). We need excellent guidance counselors and capacious libraries. We need safe streets. We need to enable working parents to better participate in their kid’s education and put food on the table.

If I Were an Ignorant, Middle-Class Dude

This is my challenge to Gene Marks, the author of this article: put your money where your mouth is. You, as a high-tech employer are probably suffering from a dearth of high-quality talent, so you benefit from having more people to choose from. Further, as a father, it should concern you when kids are unable to escape poverty and realize their full potential. As a taxpayer, you subsidize all the kids’ education that gets wasted when they drop out, their higher incidence of crime (prison is costly!), their higher likelihood to have a teenage pregnancy, and their lower wages that may push them onto the dole. You have a vested interest as a businessman, father, and taxpayer to help poor kids succeed.

I therefore challenge you to go to North and West Philly and take a handful of poor children under your wing. Find them consistent, regular access to a computer and help orient them to all the tools out there. Give them internships. Help them to learn a skill. Give them strategies and structure to help them navigate their school, extracurriculars, and college effectively. Then report back to everyone on all the challenges your article didn’t account for. Report on the amount of resources that it took for you to succeed.

Mr. Marks, my issue with your article was not that the solutions themselves are bad. I used several of them to succeed: I worked my ass off to get good grades and get into magnet schools, I befriended my high school counselor, I went to the library most days of the week, and I taught myself one (and then several) foreign languages. My concern is that it is impractical to expect a kid without any guidance to even think to do all these things, especially when they are logistically improbable. So help some kids to think of these solutions and to carry them out. I want more kids to succeed like me, but I know that my success and theirs is tied to the amount of people who are willing to offer extra guidance and to the ability of the school system and libraries to support and reinforce these kids’ successes.

Act on it!

• Write Mr. Marks or comment on the Forbes article and encourage him to accept my challenge. Write other businessmen and encourage them to offer guidance and cultivate a generation of leaders from the lower-rungs of the socioeconomic ladder of society.
• Take a kid under your wing and offer them access to some of the great tools that Mr. Marks suggests. Consider Big Brothers and Sisters of America or the scores of other organizations working to help kids overcome poverty.
• Fight to keep your local library system open more, give it more resources, and help kids to use them for success.

Speak out!

What other problems do you see with the solutions that Mr. Marks offers? Which of his solutions do you find salient or salvageable?

What do you think it takes for a poor person or someone who suffers from institutional inequality to make it if the system is unable to help them?

-----

For those who are curious, here is what I wrote to the author:

“Sir, as a white kid who grew up on welfare in a single-parent home and went on to graduate from Stanford, you might think that I would support you. Instead, I am so incredibly disappointed in your ignorant “recipe” for success. I got into a magnet school that my mom found out about by sheer accident. I went to the library and read a lot because it was the only place with adequate heat and electricity. The problem? I got evicted more times than I can count. Our utilities got shut off so often. I did not, contrary to your “teacher friends’” assessment, have a computer at home. Had I known about any of these tools (likelihood is that I would not have and that my mother would have been even less likely to as a waitress working 15 hours a day 6 days a week), I still wouldn’t have been able to use them. What library system could accommodate all the poor kids (of any race) to help them to realize this goal? Where would I find the time to use these resources when I started to work at age 15? Where would I get my stamina to study “coding” when we didn’t have enough food to eat dinner that day? It is articles like these that perpetuate the systemic ignorance of the role class and race play on success and prevent us from real solutions. You clearly do not understand what it is like to be poor, and your blindness is a danger because this article will only reach those who are well enough to-do to have an impact on policies that directly affect your mythical “poor black kid.” And those policy makers will make terrible choices that entrench systemic racism and class division even further in our country. Shame on you.”

Here is his response:

“Thanks for your comment. I still stick to what I wrote, and believe that the opportunity is there for everyone if they study hard and get good grades, use technology to help them get good grades, apply to the best schools they can, get help from their guidance counselor, and make sure to learn a good skill.”

You be the judge. Don’t accept inequality of opportunity. Don’t blame the victims. When one person succeeds, we all benefit in concrete ways. Our country’s future depends on everyone being proactive, not washing their hands of blame.

Righting Writing with After-School Tutoring in the Private Sector

Anyone who has read the McSweeny's magazine probably knows that Dave Eggers is amazing. He gave a TED talk (which is well worth watching) on this innovative idea to create a forum in his San Francisco publishing space for tutoring kids that needed help with writing called 826 Valencia. Combining amazing urban planning principles with community service, Eggers took street-front retail property and multi-purposed it into a publishing house, a writing tutoring center, and a pirate goods store. The idea has since spread across the nation, combining insane, fun, welcoming (opposed to places that are out of the way or appear remedial and thus embarrassing to kids) spaces with dedicated and talented writers to create a place where kids feel comfortable to learn in the heart of a business community with many professionals well-positioned to offer the exact help those kids need. I just discovered that I used to live above one of the spin-off 826 Centers (Museum of Unnatural History in Columbia Heights in DC).

For those without the time to watch the whole video, here are the key features of this neat model:

• Make volunteering as easy as possible: Writing professionals can offer tutoring right where they work.
• Make tutoring less embarrassing: set up a fun themed store as the streetside venue so that kids are not entering a remedial center, but something like a pirate store.
• Word of Mouth Marketing: By using a teaching professional in schools to encourage kids to go and then creating fun, interactive writing activities during and after school, they were able to capture kids and parents using word of mouth or direct demonstration, as if they were a business.

The model is incredibly intriguing because the use of professionals in space they already were paying for to do their publishing, a creative store that generated interest and eventually profits, and word-of-mouth/school professionals for advertising contributed to a low-overhead cost with a huge pay-off. This creates a community space, reduces likelihood of truancy, adds extra educational programming to a child's day, and bridges gaps between the educational and professional communities. It does so in a fluid environment that serves a variation of pace and skill levels in a way that a single-teacher classroom could not.

Talk about it!

If you were to start an 826 Franchise in your city, how would you set it up?

Do you think the model could be used for other school subjects and/or served by other types of professionals? Are there subjects or fields that might be limited in their ability to carry out this model?

Act on it!

Visit the 826 Group and donate materials or time to a local branch!

Find a way to bring your professional skills closer to a child so that they are better integrated with the labor market and are able to hone their knowledge using your skills!