Schools for Tomorrow Blog

The Colorado Children’s Campaign’s released its annual Kids Count report last week, and the news was shocking enough to merit a front-page spread in the Post and even an article in the New York Times.  It seems that the number of children living in poverty in Colorado jumped faster than in any other state over the past few years.   In fact, Colorado’s increase of 73 percent dwarfed the next highest state, New Hampshire, which had 50 percent.

Not only are more kids living in poverty now than in 2000, but more live at extreme levels of poverty (50 percent of the federal poverty level or lower), and the trends hold across ethnic lines. 

So, once  we have prepared our fingers for pointing, where shall we aim them?   Colorado’s dismal performance seems to be a result of a combination of increased child care expenses, a tough economy, and a school system, on average, that is struggling to rise out of mediocrity.  Our state has also seen fairly dramatic increase in the number of immigrant families, who are likely to be poorer, although the ratio of immigrant to non-immigrant families has stayed roughly constant.

Our high child poverty rates should be cause for alarm, as they foretell economic and social woes in years to come.  As these children grow into adults, they will be statistically more likely to commit crimes, less likely to attend college, more likely to require more expensive health care, and less likely to hold high-paying jobs.

And what to do about it all?  While some of our state’s economic woes are our own fault (see my frequent punching-bag TABOR, along with other financial missteps), I suspect much of the problem is tied to bigger trends, such as increases in the cost of living for working people. 

I say we start with those things we know work to help bring kids out of poverty – education and child care.  Both should be accessible to all children, no matter what job their parents happen to hold. 

I enjoy reading Mike Klonsky’s Small Talk blog. I feature it on this blog’s index (blogroll, to use the lingo) on the right-hand side of the Schools for Tomorrow home page. Mike used to have this blog on his blogroll, but I guess we didn’t pass his orthodoxy test, because he removed us a while back. Mike is a passionate defender of  urban public education, sometimes to the extent that he’s blind to reality. But that’s OK. We all have our blind spots.

But his recent screed against a new Piton Foundation study about low-income students’ proximity to high quality schools—a noteworthy study, by the way – hits a new low for inaccuracy bordering on deliberate distortion. Klonsly inaccurately describes the report, completely butchers his description of The Piton Foundation, and generally makes himself look uninformed. Read the post, and Van Schoales’ spot-on response here.

Blogs are supposed to be whatever their creators want them to be. But we all benefit when there’s at least some attention given to detail and accuracy. Come on, Mike, you can do better.

Reading about the current advances in school and budgetary reform has me hopeful that Denver is embarking upon a new era, where students’ needs are placed first.  Yet as I sit here on a lazy Sunday afternoon planning out my week with my students, I wonder how far this reform can reach.  Even if these funds come through, my class size is lowered, I get an assistant, and more (allow me to dream for a moment), will it be enough?

Every single classroom in our school building contains students with extremely high needs.   These needs are social, emotional, academic, behavioral; you name it, we’ve got several.  Many of our students have a family member (or more) in jail, have lived or currently live in a motel, don’t have anyone in their family who has graduated from high school, let alone college, and don’t know where their next meal is coming from.

In the classroom, this translates into poor attendance, difficulty concentrating, being ill prepared, and, in the worst cases, very disruptive behavior.  With enough support systems, most of these challenges can be overcome.  Unfortunately one extreme student can negatively impact the entire group day in and day out.

I’m not referring to the average child who didn’t get enough sleep, doesn’t want to learn, and wanders around the room.  I’m focusing on the chair throwing, table climbing, “I’m angry because my mom passed away and my dad refuses to get any help for me” child. What can we do for him if dad won’t sign the paperwork and accept any resources?

Or maybe I’m the child who lives with 80-year-old grandma who can’t take it anymore and I get bumped from foster home to foster home.   Who advocates for me?

Solve that problem in the many forms that it takes, and you will see CSAP scores rise across the city.

I try to keep a general sense of numbers in my head, sometimes for policy discussions, more often for trivial pursuit type discussions, and I take some pride in being relatively accurate.  But, I also get a strange sense of excitement when I confront a new number that seems surprising, or perhaps just wrong.  So, I try to track it down and understand it better.

Yesterday’s Ed Week reported on a Raleigh News and Observer newspaper article about a Southern Education Foundation study showing that more than half of all K-12 public school students in the 11 state American southern region are now “poor.”  In other words, a majority of our students, in the south, are now poor.

This is astonishing and worth some consideration.  First of all, what is their definition of poor?  It is free and reduced lunches, the standard education policy definition of low-income for kids (since it is hard to connect Census type income data about parents, to kids in school districts).  Free and reduced lunch figures have their problems – the reduced lunch portion goes up to incomes in the $30K+ range, somewhat above poverty, and many schools that are 90%+ free lunch actually provide free lunches to 100% of their students, because it is easier to do that.

Looking deeper, I found that 46% of all American K-12 students are now free and reduced lunch (FRL) eligible.  That blows me away, too.  The south, which increased from 37% FRL in 1989 to 54% in 2007, is only a little ahead of the rest of the nation, and that rate of increase in southern states should be considered terrifying. 

As is often the case, there is enormous state-by-state variation across the U.S. – highs of 84% (84%!) in Louisiana, 75% in Mississippi, to lows of 17% in New Hampshire and a (thankfully) relatively low 34% in Colorado.

What is going on?  One thing happening, very sadly, is that the only segment of our society that has been growing poorer over time is kids.  Fifty years ago, the elderly were most likely to be poor, but increased Social Security and Medicare have made the elderly the least poor group in our society.  But welfare reform, tax changes, and reductions in other family support programs have led to children being our poorest group. 

Also coming into play is one of the strongest “iron laws” in social sciences: as countries develop and get wealthier, it is clear that “the rich get richer, and the poor have children.”  Despite the fact that kids cost a lot of money for families in places like the U.S., low income families are much more likely to have more kids.  So, this contributes to the trend of a greater proportion of poor kids over time, exacerbated by public policies.

I keep an image in my “education policy head” (as I suspect many of us do) where there are lots of poor kids in city schools (e.g., 65% FRL in Denver), a fair amount of low income kids in some rural areas, but a solid majority of middle-upper income kids in the suburban schools. And suburbs are where most Americans now live.  But, apparently this image is not accurate – nearly half of our K-12 students nationwide are now poor.  This makes the achievement gap not only a central equity issue, but an efficiency issue for America’s future.