SALON

Monday, Jun 13, 2011 5:01 PM UTC

We need to fix the economy to fix education

Diane Ravitch's position gains support from a new study that suggests job losses affect student performance

By

Topics: Education,

We need to fix the economy to fix educationDiane Ravitch

In the intensifying debate over the future of education, two camps seem to be emerging. On one side, there are people like New York University professor/former Deputy U.S. Education Secretary Diane Ravitch who argue that larger social ills such as poverty, joblessness, economic despair and lack of health coverage negatively affect educational achievement, and that until those problems are addressed, schools will never be able to produce the results we want. On the other side, there are so-called “reformers” who want to radically change (read: charterize and/or privatize) public education under the premise that the primary problems are bad/lazy teachers and “unaccountable” school administrators (to hear a debate between Ravitch and self-described “reformer” Jon Alter, listen to this podcast from my KKZN-AM760 radio show).

For her work marshaling hard facts and empirical data against corporate-backed “reformers” who rely largely on substance-free rhetoric and platitudes, Ravitch has been named this year’s winner of the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Prize — so clearly, she’s holding her own, even as U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is launching a desperate PR campaign to make her Public Enemy #1. But just in case she needed any help making her argument about poverty and education, the National Bureau of Economic Research has published a new report further supporting her position.

Cross-referencing data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics with 4th and 8th grade test scores, the study discovered a powerful connection between the social/psychological effects of job losses in a state and that the educational achievement of students in that state. Here’s the crux of the findings, summed up by the team of Duke University researchers who spearheaded the study (emphasis added):

Results indicate that job losses decrease scores. Effects are larger for eighth than fourth graders and for math than reading assessments, and are robust to specification checks. Job losses to 1 percent of a state’s working-age population lead to a .076 standard deviation decrease in the state’s eighth-grade math scores. This result is an order of magnitude larger than those found in previous studies that have compared students whose parents lose employment to otherwise similar students, suggesting that downturns affect all students, not just students who experience parental job loss. Our findings have important implications for accountability schemes: we calculate that a state experiencing one-year job losses to 2 percent of its workers likely sees a 16 percent increase in the share of its schools failing to make Adequate Yearly Progress under No Child Left Behind..

In this era of greatly increased focus on school accountability for student performance, education policymakers and leaders should be cognizant of the external factors that can negatively influence student achievement. Statewide job losses, which occur from factors external to schools, such as pressure from globalization and stock market fluctuations, can significantly influence student achievement and are well beyond the control of teachers and school administrators. The significant effect these losses can have on schools’ ability to meet accountability goals suggests that policymakers may want to consider recent economic change when defining whether a school is meeting accountability targets.

When a person with a horrific wound or longstanding illness shows up to a hospital emergency room, we don’t typically fault the ER doctors for failing to instantly cure the patient. Yet, those who see schools as social emergency rooms somehow expect teachers to be able to immediately cure children of all the wounds and ailments visited upon them by an economically ailing society. This NBER study shows that such an expectation is unrealistic, unfair and — in terms of policy-making — dangerous.

It highlights, in short, what I have called The Great Education Myth — the wrongheaded idea that if we just fix our schools, all of our other social problems will miraculously disappear.

This myth is a favorite of politicians and their super-rich campaign donors because it creates a scapegoat (schools/teachers/teachers unions) that distracts attention from the economic policies that are really harming our society — policies like job-killing trade deals, bank deregulation and revenue-draining top-bracket tax cuts that the political/economic elite have a financial stake in preserving. Rather than open up debates about those neoliberal economic policies, these politicians and their donors spend lots of political capital and money labeling themselves “education reformers” and manufacturing an Orwellian discourse that demonizes public education as the root of all our problems. And it’s no coincidence that the leading self-described “education reformers” are the politicians who rely most heavily on corporate campaign contributions and the business elites who have so handsomely profited from the economic status quo — after all, they are the ones who have the most to lose from a public debate about neoliberal economic policy, and, thus, the most to gain from The Great Education Myth.

But while the political world can be dominated by such spin and propaganda, the data is clear. Until we fix the economy — and specifically, the policies that have destroyed the economy — we probably will not get the education results we all want.

David Sirota

David Sirota is a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist, magazine journalist and the best-selling author of the books "Hostile Takeover," "The Uprising" and "Back to Our Future." E-mail him at ds@davidsirota.com, follow him on Twitter @davidsirota or visit his website at www.davidsirota.com. More David Sirota.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 19 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

vote
Journalists file suit against Manning's trial secrecy: Plaintiffs including Glenn Greenwald and Julian Assange demand press, public access to trial and documents
122 points123 points | comment
vote
Report: Nearly a quarter of Americans struggle to afford food
109 points110 points | 10 comments
vote
Kaitlyn Hunt refuses plea offer, will go to court over high school relationship - The 18-year-old rejected a deal that would have labeled her a sex offender and placed her under house arrest
66 points67 points | 15 comments
vote
Kaitlyn Hunt refuses plea offer, will go to court over high school relationship - The 18-year-old rejected a deal that would have labeled her a sex offender and placed her under house arrest
65 points66 points | 73 comments
vote
Journalists file suit against Manning trial secrecy: Plaintiffs including Glenn Greenwald and Julian Assange demand press, public access to trial and documents
57 points58 points | 3 comments

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: Chekhov's story mirrors Russia's own

Recommendations