Ed reform must look at poverty

It was just a letter to the editor in a news magazine. Actually it was a well-researched letter, one with statistics easily verified to support the writer's suggestion that poverty and education are two sides of the same coin. Moreover, the author is an English professor; an opinion is made more credible with related experience.

So I looked him up. Turns out Professor Stephen Krashen isn't just any professor who retired from USC; he's an outspoken, multiple award-winning author of 350 books and scholarly articles about linguistics, language, and learning. He's in the International Literacy Association's Hall of Fame.

His opinion, which is somewhat similar to one expressed by other national education experts and researchers? That the biggest thing wrong with Common Core, and the primary thing which must necessarily and first happen before we can begin to analyze its (or any other education program's) success or failure is simple and has nothing to do with the program itself:

In a word, poverty.

"Substantial improvement (in children's education) will come only when we deal with the real problem - poverty. When researchers control for the effect of poverty, American test scores are near the top of the world," Krashen wrote in The Monitor Weekly.

Basics first for children everywhere. We tend to think that poverty so "extreme" as to prevent learning must be far away, such as in Kenya. That's where one American founded a charity to educate young girls and discovered she couldn't do that before addressing "the basics." Children can't get an education, says Cynthia Kersey of the Unstoppable Foundation, unless their basic needs are met - clean water, nutritious food, health care, and parents earning adequate income.

Without removing the poverty factor, American test scores compared to those of other industrialized nations are less than impressive; hence the national discussion on education reform. Addressing poverty (such as with the minimum wage push and city efforts to add low-cost and temporary housing for the homeless - yes, there are homeless children attending local schools) could make an easily noticeable difference.

According to UNICEF, the U.S. has the second highest rate of child poverty among 34 economically advanced countries. A full 23 percent of American children are poor. Compare that with Finland, where only 5.4 percent of children live in poverty.

Poverty generally means poor nutrition, inadequate or nonexistent health care and housing, and lack of access to supplies and books. Children and families are often ashamed to admit it, so others don't always know why Johnny can't focus, or is acting out. As local educators regularly remind the community, coming to school with a hungry stomach, an unhealthy body and brain, or from a household chronically stressed - and depressed - from poverty means children are not "ready to learn" - they can't focus on learning, or their brains are too affected by such effects of poverty to function normally, let alone at their best potential.

With nearly a quarter of American children living with inadequate nutrition (including wages which have not kept up with food price increases), housing, and health care, we can hardly expect them to reach their learning potential. No amount of education reform will change a child's "basics." We forget when we make critical arguments about what strangers/working adults should and shouldn't be doing differently, how much poverty affects an entire childhood, which in turn affects their start in adult life, which in turn affects the community at large. We forget we are each affected by one another - through taxes and welfare, drug use, crime rates, and other ills whose rates and risks poverty increases.

At minimum, Krashen is right in one thing: without addressing Kersey's "basics," education reform is incomplete.

Sholeh Patrick, J.D., is a columnist for the Hagadone News Network. Contact her at [email protected].