Rating and Testing Part II: Could it Be Poverty Itself?

This is the second article in a series. See Part I.

I think the next question we need to ask ourselves is: is there something about poverty itself that interferes with learning? 

There are many pop-psychology explanations of why poor kids do worse in school: poor kids don't do as well as rich kids because their parents are too busy to help them (or not well-educated enough), or that they don't have access to enrichment activities. These are the more generous ones. Others simply lean on negative stereotypes about low-income families: they don't value education, they are trapped in a culture of poverty, or, my personal favorite, the debunked theory that they simply don't talk to their kids enough (the "word gap theory" [insert eye roll here]. 

So let's unpack some of these a little. First off, let's just knock off the beating up on families of low-income kids. Yes, parents may be busy but poor and/or marginalized families care just as much, if not more, about education as their higher-income peers. So let's just kick that racist/classist idea out the door. And while it may be true that kids who have been exposed to certain kinds of academic language and/or middle class experiences may, by design, score higher on standardized tests (more on this in our tests post), this doesn't explain the gaps that we also see outside of standardized testing, like graduation or dropout rates. 

There is a much more obvious explanation: being poor is stressful, sometimes in long-term and/or traumatic ways, and stress, particularly long-term or traumatic stress, makes it much harder for our brains to learn. Low-income students might experience homelessness or food insecurity, or their families may be more at risk for mental health issues or chronic diseases, and this makes learning more difficult. 

There is actually a lot of convincing evidence that poverty itself, and not particular mindsets or actions by families, impact kids learning. There's brain research that shows differences in brain development between low- and higher-income children, which tracks with some of the ways we know that toxic stress impacts child development. But there's also at least a decade's worth of research that shows that students' scores go up if their family's income increases; in a review of recent education studies, Chalkbeat news reported, "Over and over, they find that more money or benefits helps kids in school.  

Seriously. Giving families an extra 3,000-4,000 dollars a year increased test scores and graduation rates. I mean, it makes sense - if a family could avoid eviction or having their lights turned off, that allows kids to focus on the classroom. 

What this means is *not* that poor kids can't learn. I think a useful metaphor here is the one of an airplane, which faces headwinds and tailwinds while it flies. The tailwinds help it fly  with less effort, while headwinds impede progress, and more effort is required to make the same flight. Low-income students can certainly cover the same distance - it just takes more: more effort, more resources, more work.  

What this means for the conversation around standardized tests and school accountability is somewhat damning. While in the last post we looked at ways that poorer students might have access to *fewer* academic resources, this evidence makes clear that comparing students without taking into account their "headwinds" and "tailwinds" - as well as the resources available in their education - is neither a useful nor fair endeavor. Some students need help overcoming what's happening in their lives outside of school, and that takes more resources. To label a school "failing" without looking at what kind of learners it is serving, and what kind of resources it has to do so, is intellectually disingenuous at best. 

 If what we want to know is the quality of teaching and learning, then we must at the very least make apples to apples comparisons, and factor in the educational challenges facing our students. In many competitive arenas, we don't just tabulate wins - we take into account how difficult that opponent was to beat. So it should be with teaching.

Teaching students that are already near mastery in a subject, or are already skilled independent learners, is simply a different task than teaching students that are novices, or struggle with basic learning skills (still learning how to learn). 

For a parent (like me) looking for a school with talented teachers that will be able to help my son where he struggles and champion his abilities, test scores disconnected from headwinds and tailwinds don't help me understand the teachers or management of a school. 

Next up: Rating and testing Part III: So....what about those test scores? 

Sources: 

• Let's Stop Talking About The '30 Million Word Gap'

• THE WASHINGTON POST: Stop blaming black parents for underachieving kids

• Why Standardized Tests Don't Measure Educational Quality - Educational Leadership

• Stress as a mechanism of poverty's ill effects on children: Making a case for family strengthening

• Learning and memory under stress: implications for the classroom

• Racism, Toxic Stress, and Education Policy - Science in the News

• The neuroscience of inequality: does poverty show up in children's brains?

• Family Poverty Affects the Rate of Human Infant Brain Growth