Can Good Teachers Fix Poverty?

It's a commonly held belief that for children living in poverty, a high-quality education is the only way out. If all students could have excellent teachers, the theory goes, they would have the chance to go to college, pursue a career and live the American Dream. 

In this view, educators are the ultimate gatekeepers. The most effective ones give entire classrooms full of children the chance to live a better life, while the least effective ones prevent students from reaching their full potential.

Is this depiction of teachers based on facts, or is it a myth? Can educators really be expected to single-handedly overcome poverty's effects on children? 

DESPERATE SITUATIONS

According to a recent report issued by the Children's Defense Fund, since the year 2000, the number of children living in poverty has increased by four million.

In 2009, 15.6 million children received food stamps. The number of homeless children in public schools was 41 percent higher than it had been two years before.

During this time, the Obama administration implemented an ambitious reform agenda that made improving teacher quality a top priority. The media picked up on reformers’ rallying cries, proclaiming that teaching was the most important determinant of student academic performance.

Sarah Ransdell is a faculty member at Nova Southeastern University.  In her recent study of 259 Florida schools, she found that the single best predictor of reading comprehension test scores wasn’t instruction, but the percentage of children living in poverty. Differences in teacher resources (like education level, training and support) had little predictive power.

Furthermore, "resilient schools" with the highest poverty levels and highest reading scores shared several factors in common: greater per pupil funding, less reported crime, and better student-to-teacher ratios. 

Ransdell concluded that if districts wanted to raise reading test scores, reforms that focused solely on improving teaching and instruction were destined for failure.   

“Poverty is one of the most intractable problems facing American society today,” she shared with TakePart. “Any reader of the literature regarding poverty and educational outcomes can see how powerful these effects are and how difficult it will be to change them.”

POVERTY AND THE BRAIN

In her review of Steven Brill’s new book, education writer Dana Goldstein criticized Brill’s claim that the effects of poverty can be completely overcome by good teachers. 

“In fact, the work of the many researchers Brill approvingly cites…shows that while teaching is the most important in-school factor affecting student achievement, family and neighborhood characteristics matter more,” she wrote. “The research consensus has been clear and unchanging for more than a decade: at most, teaching accounts for about 15 percent of student achievement outcomes, while socioeconomic factors account for about 60 percent.”

Goldstein explained why poverty is such a strong obstacle to learning: Disadvantaged children are disproportionately exposed to risk factors that affect brain development. For example, 20 percent of middle schoolers in Providence, Rhode Island, suffered from lead poisoning when they entered kindergarten, which was associated with intellectual delays and behavioral problems.

When children are inadequately nourished, she added, their bodies use the limited amount of food energy for critical organ function and growth. Social activity and learning are last on the energy priority list, leaving children listless and with impaired cognitive capacity.

According to Goldstein, this doesn’t mean that teachers can’t move the needle when it comes to bridging the achievement gap. But their solo efforts can only go so far. 

Even no-excuses, high-poverty charter schools like KIPP, widely celebrated for impressive academic gains, struggled to raise their graduates’ six-year college completion rate above 33 percent. For high school graduates from wealthier communities, that number rose as high as 75 percent.

BEYOND THE CLASSROOM

Understanding that teachers alone can’t magically counteract the effects of poverty isn’t an excuse for lowered expectations or ineffective teaching. 

Instead, it’s motivation for the government to invest in more comprehensive reform interventions that extend beyond the classroom to address the child’s physical, emotional, and social needs.  

“Successful education reform efforts—such as the Harlem Children’s Zone, which provides ‘wraparound’ social and health services alongside charter schools, or California’s Linked Learning schools, which connect teenagers to meaningful on-the-job training—are built on this more holistic understanding of the forces that shape a child’s life and determine her future,” wrote Goldstein.

Ransdell added that educators shouldn’t be the only ones held accountable.

“Improving teaching and instruction is always a good way to expend resources, but it must be done in conjunction with before and after school engagement of students and with as much parent involvement as possible,” she told TakePart.

“Teachers, parents, students, school administrations, state and federal policy makers, are all accountable parts of the school success equation and must work together. Any accountable party in isolation, and without the concerted efforts of the whole, will fail.”