By HELEN F. LADD and EDWARD B. FISKE Published: December 11, 2011
Durham, N.C.
NO one seriously disputes the fact that students from disadvantaged households perform less well in school, on average, than their peers from more advantaged backgrounds. But rather than confront this fact of life head-on, our policy makers mistakenly continue to reason that, since they cannot change the backgrounds of students, they should focus on things they can control.
The Occupy movement has catalyzed rising anxiety over income inequality; we desperately need a similar reminder of the relationship between economic advantage and student performance.
The correlation has been abundantly documented, notably by the famous Coleman Report in 1966. New research by Sean F. Reardon of Stanford University traces the achievement gap between children from high- and low-income families over the last 50 years and finds that it now far exceeds the gap between white and black students.
International research tells the same story. Results of the 2009 reading tests conducted by the Program for International Student Assessment show that, among 15-year-olds in the United States and the 13 countries whose students outperformed ours, students with lower economic and social status had far lower test scores than their more advantaged counterparts within every country. Can anyone credibly believe that the mediocre overall performance of American students on international tests is unrelated to the fact that one-fifth of American children live in poverty?
Yet federal education policy seems blind to all this. No Child Left Behind required all schools to bring all students to high levels of achievement but took no note of the challenges that disadvantaged students face. The legislation did, to be sure, specify that subgroups — defined by income, minority status and proficiency in English — must meet the same achievement standard. But it did so only to make sure that schools did not ignore their disadvantaged students — not to help them address the challenges they carry with them into the classroom.
So why do presumably well-intentioned policy makers ignore, or deny, the correlations of family background and student achievement?
Some honestly believe that schools are capable of offsetting the effects of poverty. Others want to avoid the impression that they set lower expectations for some groups of students for fear that those expectations will be self-fulfilling. In both cases, simply wanting something to be true does not make it so.
Another rationale for denial is to note that some schools, like the Knowledge Is Power Program charter schools, have managed to “beat the odds.” If some schools can succeed, the argument goes, then it is reasonable to expect all schools to. But close scrutiny of charter school performance has shown that many of the success stories have been limited to particular grades or subjects and may be attributable to substantial outside financing or extraordinarily long working hours on the part of teachers. The evidence does not support the view that the few success stories can be scaled up to address the needs of large populations of disadvantaged students.
A final rationale for denying the correlation is more nefarious. As we are now seeing, requiring all schools to meet the same high standards for all students, regardless of family background, will inevitably lead either to large numbers of failing schools or to a dramatic lowering of state standards. Both serve to discredit the public education system and lend support to arguments that the system is failing and needs fundamental change, like privatization.
Given the budget crises at the national and state levels, and the strong political power of conservative groups, a significant effort to reduce poverty or deal with the closely related issue of racial segregation is not in the political cards, at least for now.
So what can be done?
Large bodies of research have shown how poor health and nutrition inhibit child development and learning and, conversely, how high-quality early childhood and preschool education programs can enhance them. We understand the importance of early exposure to rich language on future cognitive development. We know that low-income students experience greater learning loss during the summer when their more privileged peers are enjoying travel and other enriching activities.
Since they can’t take on poverty itself, education policy makers should try to provide poor students with the social support and experiences that middle-class students enjoy as a matter of course.
It can be done. In North Carolina, the two-year-old East Durham Children’s Initiative is one of many efforts around the country to replicate Geoffrey Canada’s well-known successes with the Harlem Children’s Zone.
Say Yes to Education in Syracuse, N.Y., supports access to afterschool programs and summer camps and places social workers in schools. In Omaha, Building Bright Futures sponsors school-based health centers and offers mentoring and enrichment services. Citizen Schools, based in Boston, recruits volunteers in seven states to share their interests and skills with middle-school students.
Promise Neighborhoods, an Obama administration effort that gives grants to programs like these, is a welcome first step, but it has been under-financed.
Other countries already pursue such strategies. In Finland, with its famously high-performing schools, schools provide food and free health care for students. Developmental needs are addressed early. Counseling services are abundant.
But in the United States over the past decade, it became fashionable among supporters of the “no excuses” approach to school improvement to accuse anyone raising the poverty issue of letting schools off the hook — or what Mr. Bush famously called “the soft bigotry of low expectations.”
Such accusations may afford the illusion of a moral high ground, but they stand in the way of serious efforts to improve education and, for that matter, go a long way toward explaining why No Child Left Behind has not worked.
Yes, we need to make sure that all children, and particularly disadvantaged children, have access to good schools, as defined by the quality of teachers and principals and of internal policies and practices.
But let’s not pretend that family background does not matter and can be overlooked. Let’s agree that we know a lot about how to address the ways in which poverty undermines student learning. Whether we choose to face up to that reality is ultimately a moral question.
Helen F. Ladd is a professor of public policy and economics at Duke. Edward B. Fiske, a former education editor of The New York Times, is the author of the “Fiske Guide to Colleges.”
By any reasonable measure, my friend is a success. His now-grown kids are well-educated. He has a big house in a good part of town. Paid-for condo in the Caribbean. Influential friends. Lots of frequent flyer miles. Enough time of his own to give serious attention to his school board responsibilities. The margins of his electoral wins and his good relationships with administrators and teachers testify to his openness to dialogue and willingness to listen.
He called me the morning he took the test to say he was sure he hadn’t done well, but had to wait for the results. A couple of days ago, realizing that local school board members don’t seem to be playing much of a role in the current “reform” brouhaha, I asked him what he now thought about the tests he’d taken.
“I won’t beat around the bush,” he wrote in an email. “The math section had 60 questions. I knew the answers to none of them, but managed to guess ten out of the 60 correctly. On the reading test, I got 62%. In our system, that’s a “D”, and would get me a mandatory assignment to a double block of reading instruction.
He continued, “It seems to me something is seriously wrong. I have a bachelor of science degree, two masters degrees, and 15 credit hours toward a doctorate.
“I help oversee an organization with 22,000 employees and a $3 billion operations and capital budget, and am able to make sense of complex data related to those responsibilities.
“I have a wide circle of friends in various professions. Since taking the test, I’ve detailed its contents as best I can to many of them, particularly the math section, which does more than its share of shoving students in our system out of school and on to the street. Not a single one of them said that the math I described was necessary in their profession.
“It might be argued that I’ve been out of school too long, that if I’d actually been in the 10th grade prior to taking the test, the material would have been fresh. But doesn’t that miss the point? A test that can determine a student’s future life chances should surely relate in some practical way to the requirements of life. I can’t see how that could possibly be true of the test I took.”
“It makes no sense to me that a test with the potential for shaping a student’s entire future has so little apparent relevance to adult, real-world functioning. Who decided the kind of questions and their level of difficulty? Using what criteria? To whom did they have to defend their decisions? As subject-matter specialists, how qualified were they to make general judgments about the needs of this state’s children in a future they can’t possibly predict? Who set the pass-fail “cut score”? How?”
“I can’t escape the conclusion that decisions about the [state test] in particular and standardized tests in general are being made by individuals who lack perspective and aren’t really accountable.”
There you have it. A concise summary of what’s wrong with present corporately driven education change: Decisions are being made by individuals who lack perspective and aren’t really accountable.
Those decisions are shaped not by knowledge or understanding of educating, but by ideology, politics, hubris, greed, ignorance, the conventional wisdom, and various combinations thereof. And then they’re sold to the public by the rich and powerful.
All that without so much as a pilot program to see if their simplistic, worn-out ideas work, and without a single procedure in place that imposes on them what they demand of teachers: accountability.
Winerip writes: “As of last night, 658 principals around the state (New York) had signed a letter — 488 of them from Long Island, where the insurrection began — protesting the use of students’ test scores to evaluate teachers’ and principals’ performance.”
One of those school principals, Winerip says, is Bernard Kaplan. Kaplan runs one of the highest-achieving schools in the state, but is required to attend 10 training sessions.
“It’s education by humiliation,” Kaplan said. “I’ve never seen teachers and principals so degraded.”
Katie Zahedi, another principal, said the session she attended was “two days of total nonsense. I have a Ph.D., I’m in a school every day, and some consultant is supposed to be teaching me to do evaluations.”
A fourth principal, Mario Fernandez, called the evaluation process a product of “ludicrous, shallow thinking. They’re expecting a tornado to go through a junkyard and have a brand new Mercedes pop up.”
My school board member-friend concluded his email with this: “I can’t escape the conclusion that those of us who are expected to follow through on decisions that have been made for us are doing something ethically questionable.”
He’s wrong. What they’re being made to do isn’t ethically questionable. It’s ethically unacceptable. Ethically reprehensible. Ethically indefensible.
How many of the approximately 100,000 school principals in the U.S. would join the revolt if their ethical principles trumped their fears of retribution? Why haven’t they been asked?
"The problem of Hepatitis A from food has been in the headlines in the US in recent years." (bottom)
Hepatitis A crisis in frozen berries recall
Australian food manufacturer Patties Foods is facing serious consequences of some consumers have fallen ill with Hepatitis A after eating a batch of its Nanna’s Frozen Mixed Berries product. The Company has extended its food recall to a second brand, Creative Gourmet Mixed Berries.
The Company said the recall of the Creative Gourmet Mixed Berries 300g and 500g packs was “a precautionary measure, in the interests of public safety”. The Creative Gourmet recall follows the announcement yesterday of a Consumer Recall of Nanna’s Frozen Mixed Berries 1kg packs, on advice from the Victorian Health Department of potential Hepatitis A contamination.
Hepatitis A crisis in frozen berries recall
The products are made from four berries – strawberries, raspberries, blackberries from China, and blueberries from Chile – packed in China and distributed in Australia by Patties, based in Bairnsdale. It is distributed mainly to Woolworths, Coles and IGA supermarkets. It is unclear whether the contamination occurred in China or Chile.
“While our quality control testing to date has not revealed any concerns with the food safety of either product, further detailed testing is being done and the recall is an important step to ensure public safety and confidence,” said Steven Chaur, Patties Foods MD and CEO. “We have decided that all our frozen Mixed Berries should be recalled until such time as we receive the results of further laboratory tests,” he said.
A detailed testing process is continuing with health authorities.
Imported from China and Chile
Patties Foods shifted the sourcing and packing of its frozen-fruits brands to China about a year ago, following a strategic review of its business revenues.
Australian Food News reported .. http://ausfoodnews.com.au/2014/02/26/private-label-contract-loss-hits-australia%E2%80%99s-iconic-pie-maker.html .. in February 2014 that Patties Foods had announced a revenue increase of only 0.9 per cent for the first half of the 2014 financial year, saying its results had been heavily impacted by the loss of a major supermarket private label frozen fruit contract. However in August 2014, Australian Food News reported .. http://ausfoodnews.com.au/2014/08/25/big-leap-in-profits-reported-by-leading-australian-pie-maker.html .. that Patties Foods had seen a big leap in profits for the full financial year, reported a profit of $16.7 million for the year ending 30 June 2014, up from $4.8 million in the previous year. The Company reported that its profit growth was in part due to branded growth from the Nanna’s frozen fruit brand, which grew 92 per cent as a result of “innovative new product launches” with high customer penetration, while the frozen fruit category grew by 36 per cent.
Hepatitis A food poisoning
The recall of the two Patties Foods mixed berries brands followed notifications of Hepatits A cases in four adults — three in Victoria and one in New South Wales.
Victoria’s Chief Health Officer, Dr Rosemary Lester said frozen berries had been implicated in past outbreaks of Hepatits A virus infection.
Hepatitis A virus can take between 15 to 50 days to develop and the onset of the illness ranges from early January to mid-February.
“Hepatitis A virus infection is uncommon, and normally associated with travel to countries affected by endemic hepatitis A,” Dr Lester said. “The only common link between the cases is consumption of this product – there is no overseas travel or common restaurant exposure,” she said.
“Sampling of the product will be undertaken to identify the virus, but it is difficult to find hepatitis A virus even in a contaminated batch,” Dr Lester said.
Hepatitis A is spread when traces of faecal matter containing the virus contaminate hands, objects, water or food and is then taken in by mouth. Symptoms of hepatitis A include abdominal pain, nausea, fever and chills and yellow skin or eyes.
Recall sparks Country-of-Origin labelling debate
The recall of the Patties Foods Mixed Berries products has prompted calls for action on Country-of-Origin Labelling (CoOL) on foods in Australia.
The Australian Made Campaign has encouraged consumers to spend more time checking the country-of-origin labels on food products, while consumer group CHOICE and vegetable farmers’ representative body AusVeg have called for Government action on CoOL.
“This issue exemplifies the differences in health and safety standards for the production of food around the world,” said Ian Harrison, Australian Made Chief Executive. “Australia’s clean, green environment helps produce exceptionally high quality food, but moreover, our strict regulatory framework ensures Australian-grown produce is also safe to eat, and we encourage consumers to consider this factor when choosing what to buy,” he said.
The Australian Made Campaign is the not-for-profit organisation that administers and promotes Australia’s registered country-of-origin certification trade mark, the Australian Made, Australian Grown kangaroo logo.
“Consumers should look for the logo to be sure what they are buying is genuinely Aussie,” Mr Harrison said. “Imported food products which are packed in Australia – as was the case in this instance – do not qualify to use the symbol,” he said.
Call for Government action by CHOICE consumer group
CHOICE has called on the Federal Government to reconsider Country-of-Origin Labelling recommendations made in October 2014 by the Parliamentary Standing Committee in light of the current food recall.
“Unfortunately for consumers the Committee missed an opportunity to simplify the system and this latest issue illustrates the challenge we have in trying to make informed decisions about where our food comes from,” said Tom Godfrey, CHOICE spokesperson.
“One of the products in the latest recall, Creative Gourmet Mixed Berries, is listed on the Coles website as being ‘Packed in Australia using imported fruit’,” Mr Godfrey said. “This claim is totally meaningless when it comes to the country of origin of the fruit inside the pack,” he said.
Incident raises ‘serious concerns’, AusVeg
Meanwhile, Australian horticultural growers’ representative body AusVeg has said it is “deeply concerned” by the the reported outbreak of Hepatitis A in imported berry products.
“The incident has raised serious concerns about the level of testing and scrutiny applied to the imports of not just frozen berry products, but all fresh and frozen commodities being brought into Australia, including vegetables,” said Andrew White, AusVeg Deputy CEO. “Given that Australian producers are required to comply with some of the world’s strictest quality assurance standards before their products are made available for public consumption, it is high time the same level of scrutiny is applied to imported produce to ensure public safety,” he said.
Mr White said given the “superior production standards” employed by Australian growers, “consumers would always be better off opting for local produce”.
However, Mr White added despite Australians’ widely acknowledged preference for buying local produce, ongoing confusion surrounding Country-of-Origin-Labelling laws meant it was still often difficult for consumers to determine precisely where the products they were purchasing came from.
“In this latest incident, we are seeing berries sourced from Chile and China, being processed in China then shipped here, and seemingly posing a health risk to Australian consumers,” Mr White said.
Severe Hepatitis A outbreaks of other companies
The problem of Hepatitis A from food has been in the headlines in the US in recent years.
In 2013, hundreds of staff and diners who had worked at or attended a high-end New York restaurant were vaccinated against the disease after it was revealed that a part-time pastry maker in the restaurant was infected with the virus. The scare initiated a class-action lawsuit against the restaurant.
In 2011, some 1,500 people in North Carolina were vaccinated against the virus when a restaurant staffer tested positive for Hepatitis A.
In 2009, more than 10,000 McDonald’s patrons were urged to get Hepatitis A vaccinations after two employees at a McDonald’s restaurant in northwestern Illinois were found to be infected with the virus.
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