[Vision2020] Student Achievement and Income Inequality

[nickgier at roadrunner.com]

Good Morning Visionaries:

Tom Hansen (bless his heart) has already linked videos of the Moscow Human Rights Commission's Forum on Income Inequality and Human Rights.  Here is the text that became my radio commentary and column for the week.  The full version is attached.

One of the strongest correlations that Wilkinson and Picket found was growing lack of trust with increasing income inequality.  Significantly, the U.S. had trust levels in the 1960s than correspond to Sweden's today, namely, 60 percent of those polls said that they trusted their neighbors. For much more on the effects of income disparity see www.NickGier.com/SpiritLevel.pdf 

Doubly significant is that fact that racial conflict was greater even when there was more income equality.  It used to be that race and parental education/involvement were the greatest factors in student achievement, but now income inequality has replaced race.

Growing income inequality will leave us far behind in all social and health areas by the middle of the century.

Fearing for the future of our nation,

Nick Gier, President, Idaho Federation of Teachers.

STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT AND INCOME INEQUALITY

For over thirty years medical scientists Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett have studied levels of trust, mental illness, life expectancy, infant mortality, child well being, educational achievement, teen births, homicides, and incarceration rates in a selection of rich countries.  

In their book "The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger" they found that the U.S. performed the worst on all nine issues, and that the most consistent predictor of these problems is economic inequality.  The authors discovered the same strong correlations among less equal and more equal American states.  

In this column I want to focus on income inequality as it pertains to educational achievement and child well being.  I will not argue that people have the right to have the same income as their neighbors, because I believe that people should be rewarded for their talents and their hard work.  But I will argue that every child has a right to quality education and health care.

In an article in The Nation (6/14/10) Linda Darling Hammond at Stanford University notes that in the 60s and 70s, after the Great Society programs went into effect and child poverty was cut almost in half, student achievement gaps between ethnic groups were reduced and blacks and Hispanics attended college at a rate equal to whites. 

Earlier, between 1952 and 1963, when Americans were far more equal in income, SAT scores improved dramatically across all ethnic boundaries.  As income inequality increased, SAT scores—particularly verbal scores above 600—gradually dropped for all students regardless of race.  The average SAT reading score for the class of 2011 was 497, the lowest number since 1972.  More and more students are taking the SAT and ACT but even the white students are doing less well.

Dropout rates are progressively higher in states that have more income inequality.  In some inner cities 50 percent of students leave before they graduate.  Significantly, American teacher retention is 50% higher in wealthy schools than poorer ones. 

>From 1995 to 2005 the U.S. has dropped from second among rich countries in high school graduation rates to 16th.   Greece, Germany, and Finland are now at the top. Each of the countries that are now ahead of us has much higher income equality than the U.S.  

Robert Frank, Economics Professor at Columbia University, has come up with what he calls the “Toil Index.”  With it he calculates “the number of hours median income employees must work each month to rent a house in a school district that offers an average quality education.”  

>From 1950 to 1970—during a period of relative income equality—the number of hours dropped from 42.5 hours to 41.5. But from 1970 to 2000, when income inequity rose, the toil index rose from 41.5 hours to 67.4 hours.  

The framework fact for the Toil Index is the strong correlation between local housing prices and American school quality.  The heavy reliance on property taxes not only leads to disparities in school funding and student achievement, but sometimes it also has the perverse effect of raising the taxes on the poor.  For example, in rust belt counties in Pennsylvania where businesses have fled to rich urban counties, property tax rates in the former are as much as six times higher than the latter. 

Conservatives are right to a certain extent: increasing school funding without addressing the deeper issue of income inequity does not always improve student test scores. A local school may have good teachers and a wonderful learning environment, but as long as poor kids in the neighborhood come to school hungry and sick they will not succeed.  

Thirty years ago it was race and parental education/involvement that were the main factors in student achievement gap, but Sean F. Reardon of Stanford University has discovered that income disparity is playing a much larger role. Commenting on Reardon’s research, Claude Fischer states: “The rich-poor gap is now one-and-a-half times larger than the race gap; 50 years ago it was just about the reverse.”

Millions of American children are already lost before they begin school.  As long as too many American families remain dysfunctional and unsafe; as long as far too many do not truly value education; as long the teaching profession and their unions are vilified; and as long as income inequality is at a Third World level, America’s children will never catch up with their peers in other nations. 

Nick Gier taught philosophy at the University of Idaho for 31 years.  

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