Spreading white poverty and failing schools
It is possible paint a picture with numbers. The State Journal-Register did
it the other day when it used data from the Illinois Report Card, the
state’s education data source, to draw beforeand-after portraits of 15
area school districts from 2001 and 2016.
I was particularly interested in one measure:
how
much of the enrollment in each district comprises kids from low-income
families. “Every school district in the area,” reported the SJ-R, “saw
its low-income population rise, and in the case of some communities,
more than double.” The kids behind the numbers are not refugees from
Chicago’s troubled black and brown neighborhoods; the biggest shift
happened in Riverton (97.2 percent white in 2010), where the share of
kids from poor backgrounds rose from not quite 30 percent to nearly 60
percent of total enrollment.
This matters for the kids and for the schools.
On
average, nothing so reliably predicts how well a kid will do in school
than his family’s household income. The importance of poverty as an
aspect of school performance was underlined by a recent study done by
the Urban Education Leadership Program at the University of Illinois
Chicago. The authors are Paul Zavitkovsky, a former Chicago public
school principal, and program director Steve Tozer, a familiar name to
those who knew him and his educator father in Springfield who now is
professor of educational policy studies at UIC.
The
two men tracked standardized test rankings of 55 large unit districts
across Illinois from 2001 through 2016, with results that are both
heartening and dismaying. Having a lot of poor kids in a district – “a
lot” here meaning at least 50 percent of enrollment – was long assumed
to doom that district to poor performance. Such districts were
concentrated in greater Chicago, where in 2001 only about 35 percent of
kids were performing at the statewide median on standardized tests of
reading and math.
Since
then – haltingly, imperfectly – a crisis was acknowledged. Steps were
taken. Changes were made. By 2016, about 50 percent of kids in
Chicago-area districts were scoring at or above statewide medians, even
though the statewide scores had risen
over the period. While still low, the scores in such schools showed the
highest rates of increase among all 55 districts examined.
The
news was less happy in the larger Downstate districts like Galesburg
and Bloomington and Urbana. Such districts have seen increases since
2001 in the number of poor kids similar to those seen in the Springfield
area. As noted, most of these kids are white, but poverty’s effect on
families is indifferent to race. In a June interview with Dusty Rhodes
of NPR Illinois, Zavitkovsky explained, “We now have concentrations of
white poverty that are nothing like the concentrations of poverty that
occur in communities of color, yet we’re getting these gigantic declines
in achievement that pretty much match what low-income communities of
color have been experiencing for years.”
One
might quibble with the word “gigantic,” but the performance declines
were real. While Chicago-area kids got better over the past 15 years,
test scores hereabouts remained stagnant. In Springfield’s District 186,
39 percent of students performed at the state reading median in 2001;
in Chicago-area districts that year only 27 percent did. By 2016,
Springfield did slightly better, at 41 percent, but Chicago schools had
pulled even. In math, in 2001 39 percent of
Springfield kids tested at or above the state median compared to
Chicago’s 23; by 2016, Springfield had slipped slightly (to 36 percent)
but Chicago districts had pulled ahead, with 41 percent of their kids
testing at or above the state median.
The
larger districts in greater Chicago and Downstate all turned a corner
in the past 15 years, in short, but they are going in opposite
directions.
The social
forces that drove black social breakdown are now affecting more and
different communities Downstate. As lowincome enrollment rose (by an
average of 16 to 21 points) overall achievement in central and southern
Illinois fell by an average of 6 to 9 points. As Tozer explained to me,
the study “does substantially challenge the narrative that it’s kids of
color who are depressing Illinois achievement test scores. It is really
Downstate poor white kids.”
The
numbers, like the sputtering candle that used to alert miners when
oxygen was low, are a warning about looming social failure as the ills
of globalization, mechanization and wealth inequalities spread. Tozer
says that many administrators and boards out in corn country are in
denial about the trends. Happily, he adds, “We actually know what to do
about it and aren’t doing it. As Chicago is demonstrating.” “What to do”
includes smaller class sizes, creating a safe and orderly environment,
ambitious instruction from teachers who are given time and freedom to
collaborate and offering lots of parentcommunity outreach. Such measures
have slowed the slide in performance that used to accompany a poorer
student body. In suburban Chicago, low-income enrollment rose by an
average of 22 points over the period but average achievement declined by
just 1 to 3 points – a triumph in the circumstances.
Contact James Krohe Jr. at [email protected].
Editor’s note
Trolls
of old were the ones who ate farmers’ goats. Now President Trump takes
pride in being regarded as an internet troll, one who sends out
provocative messages intended to cause maximum disruption. This week
Trump has taken his trolling far beyond Twitter, reversing national
monument protection for Bears Ears, endorsing Roy Moore, planning to
recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital – all bad decisions intended
mostly to make people mad. Don’t be telling him not to start a nuclear
war. –Fletcher Farrar, editor and CEO
