finding (in)justice

On No Child Left Behind

The attempt to close the achievement gap began with the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965. After several amendments and reauthorizations, we now have No Child Left Behind (NCLB), which went into effect under George W. Bush in 2002 with widespread bipartisan support.  The way the act works is pretty straightforward.  Schools with a high number of poor students receive Title I funding from the federal government.  This money is intended to equalize the amount of resources that poor students get compared to students in wealthier communities.  NCLB was widely supported because it holds schools accountable for student performance, instead of blaming students for their failures.  When a school does not continually reach its annual yearly progress (AYP) goals, parents have a right to transfer their child to a better school, or the school is required to provide Supplemental Educational Services (SES) for the students to improve their test scores.

From a general description, NCLB sounds pretty good.  However, it hasn’t been extremely effective, for several reasons.

As seen by the chart above, the progress made since NCLB has been very small and has varied based on the year.  As minority students improve their scores, white students also tend to improve, nullifying the degree of improvement for minority students as the achievement gap remains large.  NCLB went into effect in 2002, and the degree of improvement since then is not much more efficient than it was prior to the legislation.

First of all, AYP is measured by standardized testing scores.  This is problematic in a few different ways.  Standardized test prep has become an extremely high priority in low-income school curriculum.  Schools are desperate to prepare their students for a test that is written with a cultural bias towards affluent white students.  Not only are English and Math scores an insufficient measure of intelligence and intellectual growth, but the pressure to raise scores has forced many schools to remove liberal arts programs.  Critical thinking skills, creativity, and emotional and social development are crucial to a child’s well-rounded education.  In some cases, students still perform poorly because their teachers have emphasized formulas and memorization, instead of practical application of skills.  In other cases, teachers wrongly anticipate what will be on the test that year.

Secondly, Title I funding is used at the discretion of school administration.  Title I schools tend to feel that their funding is not sufficient to meet their needs – they still need more money.  Title I funding does not account for the fact that schools in more affluent neighborhoods receive outside assistance from wealthier parents.  

The concept of Supplemental Educational Services has great potential, as it gives students the right to free extra help, most often in the form of a private tutoring service.  However, the SES market has become an extremely competitive private market with the goal of making money soaring over the goal of the educational value of the program.  I was recently offered a job with a not-to-be-named SES company.  At my interview, I learned that the entire job was about marketing, and not about education.  My interviewer explained to me that the company now offers high-tech tablets to all students which they can keep upon completion of the program, because, “let’s be honest,” he said, “the parents don’t care about the educational value of the program, they just pick whichever one offers them something extra.”  Horrified by his statement that parents of low-performing students don’t care about their child’s education, I realized that the SES portion of NCLB is forcing districts to throw hundreds of thousands of dollars each year into private organizations with very questionable goals.  Needless to say, I didn’t take the job.

We must come up with a new, well-rounded way to measure success in schools, not just by standardized ELA and Math scores.  As our current standards of measurement fail and public education shifts increasingly towards the private market, we can be sure that the fate of education will lie within the hands of businessmen, not educators or parent “choice.”  

On Online Education

With the price of higher education skyrocketing, educational innovators are looking for ways to make knowledge more accessible through alternatives to traditional classroom settings.  Online schooling is becoming increasingly more common.  If we have access to the internet, we can now learn almost anything we want for free, whether it is JavaScript from Code Academy or if it is Lady GaGa’s birthday from Wikipedia.

TEDx released a new talk today given by Scott Young, an ambitious man who is completing a 4 year MIT computer science degree in 12 months by managing his own time and watching lectures online sped up to 1.5x the normal speed. He argues that in spite of his lack of on-campus resources, his method is more efficient and effective than attending the classes over a span of four years.  He has the capacity to fast forward, rewind, check his answers on work immediately instead of waiting weeks for a response, and shorten the length of big projects by managing his own work and deadlines.  The cost? Only the price of books.

I do believe that traditional schooling is inefficient in many ways.  I also believe that knowledge is a human right and we should not have to pay copious amounts of money to procure it.  However, I cannot emphasize enough the importance of social interactions in the process of gaining knowledge.  Being taught by a person, and not by a computer, has benefits that even Scott Young can’t ignore.  The talk Scott gives is very powerful, and he has created an image in my head of millions of Americans crouched in front of a screen watching someone speak at 1.5x their normal conversational pace in order to maximize the efficiency of education.  It gives me the chills.  That’s not how learning works. 

I am currently working at a school in Oakland that uses Cyber High to teach their students.  The classroom has become a computer lab – every student has their own computer and their own log-in.  Everyone sits facing the screen the entire time, including the teacher, who is completely uninvolved since the students are all working on different tasks at any given time.  Cyber High follows lesson plans almost identically to a traditional textbook.  One screen is a lesson containing an explanation and practice examples.  Then there is a quiz where students have to utilize the skills from the lesson to pass the quiz in order to move on to the next lesson.  Students can take the quiz as many times as they want – and they do.  When moving around the classroom to try to help students pass their quizzes, I quickly find out that none of them actually read the lesson.  They guess randomly time after time until they get at least a 60%, which is the passing grade. 

Now, I completely acknowledge the fact that my students are no Scott Young.  He is incredibly internally motivated.  But the stakes of students passing Cyber High are much greater than those of Scott.  These students are struggling to get a high school diploma, while Scott will do fine with the business degree he already possesses.  My students understand the gravity of their failure, but they need people – not computers – to help them out of it.  When I explain a concept to a student one-on-one, and they have the opportunity to ask questions, clarify their comprehension with me, ask to hear it explained in non-textbook language, and get feedback from someone who already possesses the knowledge, it’s amazing how quickly they can acquire skills they never thought possible.

Although I highly admire Scott Young’s project, and I am certain he will be successful, current technological innovations in education are reproducing the same cycle that traditional public school has created: the few students that it works well for are speeding ahead while the rest are left even further behind, exacerbating the achievement gap.  If the money that was spent on computers and Cyber High software went towards hiring a few tutors to teach the skills directly to the students, it would be much more cost effective.

I am a big fan of free online educational websites such as the Kahn Academy, and I use them myself.  But as soon as I reach a challenging point, I am forced to stop the lesson and give up, much like students attending Cyber High, or Scott Young, if, God forbid, he ever has a clarifying question while watching lectures online.  No lesson plan will work for everyone.  We all learn in different ways.  Humans can adapt to each other’s styles of communication in ways that no pre-written computer program ever will.

With online school becoming a more and more popular route, how can we ensure that the valuable knowledge that real people have to share will continue to be recognized for what it is worth?

On Working Mothers

A recent Gallup survey has exposed that stay-at-home moms are more likely to experience anger, depression, and sadness than working moms, who are more fulfilled. 

The survey even states that employed mothers smile and laugh more than stay-at-home moms.  On the flip side, more and more high-profile women are beginning to speak out about the sacrifices they have made for their families in order to pursue their careers.  Some women, such as Anne-Marie Slaughter, who spent years working at Princeton before serving in the U.S. State Department, have decided to step down from their careers because they can’t bear the effect it is having on their families.  So what is the tradeoff for an American mother?  Pursue her career while her children suffer, or, stay at home and experience more depression, sadness, and anger than if she was in the workforce?  Neither option is very tempting.

I first began to realize the stress that working mothers are under after reading The Second Shift, by Arlie Hochschild.  After observing several families for extended periods of time, Hochschild came to describe the work at home after a full day at the office as the “Second Shift,” made up of a muddle of sacrifice and guilt by working mothers.  When husbands are helpful, the women feel guilty about not doing their “duty,” pushing them to take over the responsibility anyway.  When the husbands are not helpful, the women feel resentful.  In the end, women put more work into the household and make more sacrifices in their careers than their husbands almost 100% of the time.

As a young woman eager to pursue countless career goals, my dream of having it all is fading fast.  Although the potential for improvement for working women is great, it is not likely to get much better by the time I want to have a family. 

How could this situation be improved?  Let’s take a look at Denmark, where parents of both genders are equally encouraged to work and raise their children while being supported by the government in order to combat the perils of the “Second Shift.”

In Denmark, as in many other Scandinavian countries, both mothers and fathers get equal ma/paternity leave from work, encouraging men to put as much effort into their newborns as women – the women aren’t expected to do it on their own.  All families get a child allowance to support them financially with raising their child.  This avoids the problem of parents working extra hours in order to make ends meet, allowing them to spend that extra time with their family.  Additional allowance is available for single parents or parents who are in school advancing their education.   Child care may also be subsidized for lower-income families in Denmark, which encourages everyone to remain in the workforce.  How emotionally beneficial are these benefits for the Danes?  Well, the Gallup survey shows how unhappy working parents are in the United States, while Denmark has the highest happiness index in the world. 

The bottom line is this:  Gallup has shown that the fulfillment of pursuing a career is emotionally beneficial for a woman.  Being a stay-at-home mom is not an easy task, and the pressure to fill that role by a more traditional husband may stifle a woman’s emotional well-being.   However, women who are forced to work long hours as a result of economic necessity or a high-profile career do not feel sufficient as mothers.  Men are not going through these same struggles, in spite of the fact that they are also working parents.  

Denmark’s model is working effectively and efficiently.  What’s the likelihood that we adopt a similar model here?  It’s not going to happen anytime soon.  Our culture is such that we believe more in traditional gender roles than other wealthy developed countries.  Americans also tend to believe that if someone chooses to have children, they better be able to take care of them, which gets in the way of our child welfare policy.  

Low-income mothers are suffering the most.  Almost 1 in 4 children in the United States lives in poverty.  Many of their parents are working while trying to care for them, many poor mothers are not working because they won’t make enough money to offset the cost of childcare, and many women have timed out of benefits for their children in spite of the fact that their family is still poor.  Conger et. Al (2000) demonstrate the cycle of family stress for low-income families as a result of economic distress (a problem which is practically non-existent in countries like Denmark because of government support).

Although careers are important, I would imagine that most parents will say that their greatest accomplishment in life is their children, not their jobs.  Working women should be supported enough that they can pursue their careers while raising their children.  Stay-at-home moms should be recognized for the amount of work they do on a daily basis to run their families.  Jobs provide income and benefits to their employees, and being a parent is, after all, a full-time job.  Maybe we could provide mothers with some of the same benefits that other jobs provide in order to relieve some of their emotional and financial distress.

On Homelessness in Berkeley

A no sit/lie ordinance has been placed on the November ballot in Berkeley in order to prevent the local homeless community from blocking traffic to local businesses.  This proposal has caused an extreme amount of controversy between local businesses and advocates for the homeless community.  The passage of this ordinance would mean a complete change of direction for the City of Berkeley’s stance on homelessness.

Frankly, I don’t believe that business is being harmed by the people on the street.  I have never chosen to avoid a business in order to avoid the homeless.  The reason nobody ever goes into the small novelty shops on Telegraph is because the surrounding area is filled with local students with very little disposable income.  Businesses that successfully target the college student population, such as CREAM or Yogurt Park, have been successful regardless of the amount of homeless individuals that panhandle in front of their stores.  The community here is so accustomed to seeing poverty and mental illness throughout the day that it doesn’t even faze us.  Berkeley is an amazing place, filled with clean parks, a beautiful campus, and wonderful gourmet restaurants.  Somehow, this culture has never before been tainted by the mark of homelessness, as so many others would be.  What is different about Berkeley that has caused us to embrace the homeless community instead of forcing them out?

The most feasible explanation is the classic example of Berkeley’s tolerance.  The homeless have come and stayed because they are tolerated.  The police let them sleep in doorways, let them loiter, let them smoke and drink on the street.  Cars wait patiently at stoplights while an extremely slow homeless man drags his belongings through the intersection without regards for the “walk” sign.  We have all accepted the fact that we will be asked for spare change 15 times a day.  Students don’t even notice when someone starts digging through the trash can next to them on campus.

The homeless are also supported in Berkeley.  In this city, you can find a free meal 3 meals a day 7 days a week, occasionally lacking lunch, within walking distance of practically any location.  So when you do get asked for change, yes it is probably for beer, not for food, but who cares? I like beer, and I bet I would like it even more if I was homeless.  There are also innovative and unique services like freezer trucks, which freeze and store a person’s belongings to kill all vermin that may be living in it, improving hygiene and health.

So if the community is so supportive of the homeless, why don’t we channel our resources into housing the population, helping them get on their feet, isn’t that more effective in the long run than sustaining their current situation?  Possibly, and there are numerous programs in Berkeley that offer this kind of support, but it’s not that easy. Here’s why:

First of all, around 70% of the chronically homeless are mentally ill.  Mentally ill homeless people would need medical attention, psychological evaluations, and possibly medication, before becoming stable enough to find a job and a place to live.  It is illegal to force help on the mentally ill.  Unless someone is considered a danger to themself or others, they have the right to refuse medical services and psychological evaluations, which they usually do.  When your mental state is unstable and you have developed a comfortable routine living homeless, choosing to make big changes becomes very unlikely.

Second of all, getting a job when you’re homeless is not as easy as people seem to think it is.  In order to get a job, you first need a place to live, not the other way around.  You need a resume, you need dress clothes, you need to shower and shave, and you need access to job applications, computers, and transportation.  Most Berkeley grads I know are struggling to find a job, and they’re not homeless, uneducated, or mentally ill.

Why don’t they just get government subsidized housing?  These programs, known as Section 8 and the Projects, would be great if they were widespread and sufficiently funded.  People in Alameda County are trying to get spots in these programs, but there are wait lists, big wait lists, we’re talking years. In fact, the waitlist for Section 8 in Berkeley is currently closed, since there is no point in expanding it even further. Once someone finally receives a Section 8 voucher, few landlords will accept it for rent.  Landlords have a choice of whether or not to accept these vouchers, and since they can probably find tenants that are not using Section 8, it is a safer bet for them to fill their buildings with tenants who have a stable income.

This is why so many great organizations in Berkeley have accommodated the population in such a way that it allows people to be sustained living on the streets.  They can’t be forced to live otherwise and they need a massive amount of resources before they can become employed. You can’t take someone off the streets unless they’re ready; they’ll just end up back where you found them.  If and when someone is ready to make that change, there are people here who can help them to do so.  I am proud of my local community for embracing all humans, whether or not they live with a roof over their heads.  I hope this tradition continues after November 6^th. 

On Food Stamps

Yesterday morning the Huffington Post put out a fairly un-biased article on the Food Stamp debate, explaining that many politicians and Americans are demanding that purchases made with Food Stamps begin to be tracked (see article here).  The anti-welfare community hopes to track spending in order to prove that families are spending their Food Stamps on junk food instead of healthy food, ultimately leading to higher costs in health care, causing us “better-than-them” to be financially burdened even further by our “lesser-than-us” counterparts.

The program, called SNAPs (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), has restrictions on what may be purchased using the funds.  It excludes non-grocery items such as alcohol, cigarettes, or toiletries. The type of food purchased is unregulated, so SNAPs can be used to purchase soda, chips, or candy and can also be used at fast food restaurants, which is the source of the debate.  The article points out, however, that spending on junk food among low-income families is not much higher than it is for other families.  Yes, believe it or not, rich kids also like Pepsi and Snickers. 

Americans have noticed that some families receiving Food Stamps are overweight: “I’m sorry if you and your kids are obese you don’t need food stamps,” says Snibbets, a commenter on the Huff Post article.  However, a lot of this obesity can be explained by inadequate access to healthy foods.  There are no Whole Foods or farmers markets in poor communities.  Many low-income parents buy groceries at neighborhood corner stores, which don’t offer as much of a variety as larger chains.

Another Huff Post commenter pointed out:

Well, there aren’t many other restaurants that would be affordable for SNAPs recipients, and if you’ve ever seen a kid excited to go out to McDonalds, you may have a change of heart.  Low-income families have a right to eat at a restaurant occasionally too.  Also, the fast-food inclusion for SNAPs has a serious purpose – it is intended for homeless individuals who do not have a kitchen.  Most homelessness in the United States is temporary.  This means that homelessness is most likely to occur for a few days to a few weeks at a time before the individual finds housing.  During this time, fast-food purchased by SNAPs is the only way to attain prepared food, since prepared food in grocery stores is excluded from the program.

There is one final problem with this argument – those who want to track spending tend to be on the same side of the political spectrum as the big businesses who believe in free market.  New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is a free-market proponent who also happens to be spearheading the conversation about limiting Food Stamp purchases.  If people want to buy Coca-Cola, they have that God given right, don’t they?  I guess so, but only if they’re white and wealthy.  In America, we should be free to eat what we want and make choices for our own families, even with tax payer money.  Public assistance should serve our freedom, not stifle it.  I would love to tell Michael Bloomberg what his children are allowed to eat based on somebody else’s standards – but that sounds a bit more like Soviet Russia than the United States of America, doesn’t it?  

(Source: The Huffington Post)

On White Identity

As a white, affluent young woman striving to work with low-income minorities, I have repeatedly faced the same challenge – I have nothing in common with the community I’m serving.  In spite of my shiny new college degree in social work, all of my prospective employers have the same question:

“And how can you relate to this community? How do you expect to understand them?”

It’s a fair question, a really fair question.  I’ve heard other people like myself give all sorts of answers.  They usually explain that they’ve studied social inequality, that one year they had to ride the bus to school instead of carpooling, or that they just have a knack for it.  To be perfectly honest, these answers are bullshit.  My response to this question is much more frank:

“I can’t relate to them, but I don’t pretend to.”

I have never known what it feels like to go to bed hungry, to walk home alone in a dangerous neighborhood, to speak English as a second language, to be discriminated against because of my race.  If I needed pencils, new clothes, or a private tutor, I had access to those things.  I can’t relate.  People who seek to find the perfect answer to this question are looking for an answer that simply does not exist, which perpetuates the issue.

The key to overcoming this problem is to accept it, rather than ignore it.  I have worked in several underserved schools in the Bay Area.  Before walking into a classroom full of low-income minority students, I always reflect on a few things.  Where do I come from and how is it different?  What assumptions might be made about me? What assumptions might I make about them? What might their parents think of me when they see me tutoring their child?  We should not deny where we’ve come from and the way it has affected our perception of the world.  My inability to say “I’ve been there too” could prevent me from forming relationships with people who are different from me – but only if I let it.

The problem often boils down to this: white kids never learned to embrace a racial identity.  Many Whites think that race simply does not affect them – it only affects people who have a “real” race.  In school we learn about African Americans struggles, Cesar Chavez, the Chinese Exclusion Act, Japanese internment camps, but nothing about White Americans, who, coincidentally, possess more racial power than anyone else.  We may learn a bit about the struggles of Irish and Italian immigrants, but what I’ve heard from my professors is, “Back then they weren’t considered white – but now they’re white, just like Jews.”  Once you’re white you’re excluded from the race talk.  When White Americans walk down the street, they are conscious of other people’s races, but not of their own.  If they do become conscious, it comes with guilt, shame, and confusion.  No socially conscious American wants to shout from the roof tops, “I’m white and I’m proud!”  That’s why we’d rather not deal with it. 

To my fellow White Americans, I say this:  Stop pretending like you don’t have a race.  Yes, we have done some pretty awful things in the past.  Yes, I feel that shame too.  However, we should accept the fact that we don’t face discrimination – aren’t we lucky?  If you act like you understand a 13 year old Latino boy who hates school because he can’t read and hates home because he’s poor, you’ll get nowhere.  He’s not going to buy it.  Instead, you can ask him what’s up, ask him why he’s in trouble, ask him why he doesn’t like his school, hear what he has to say and learn something about his life that you wouldn’t know from your own experience.  Then you can help him with his geometry, because you understand that.  And he won’t think you’re faking it.  He may even start to like you.  It’s a step.

On Welfare Recipients

I grew up in an upper-middle class neighborhood in Fresno, California, where most people are white, conservative, and part of the 1%.  Within the same city, there is also an extreme amount of poverty, homelessness, illiteracy, and welfare use.  I saw some of it in my public elementary school far across town, plenty of it at track practice, but none of it within my immediate community. I did hear people talk about it though, and what I heard wasn’t good.  Comments about laziness, bad parenting, violence, and race seemed to target the source of the problem. Although I was very young and unsure what welfare meant, I grasped that rich people had to give their money to poor people, and rich people didn’t like it.  This attitude seemed fairly widespread, among my teachers, administrators, doctors, and friends’ parents. 

Last summer, I went home to Fresno for a check-up with the optometrist. 

“What do you study up there at Berkeley?”

“Social Welfare.”

And that was the end of that, or rather, the beginning.  I proceeded to have a 3 hour appointment, about 15 minutes of which consisted of an eye-exam, the other 2 hours and 45 minutes consisting of my optometrist ranting about Mexicans and stupid poor children and bad mothers and lazy Blacks.  In my ideal Berkeley liberal bubble, I had almost forgotten that the other half existed. 

However, I had a realization.  Everything he was complaining about wasn’t true.  It wasn’t even a matter of opinion—he was flat out wrong. 

“Women don’t work because they can just live off their welfare checks their whole lives.”

“Actually, there’s a 5 year lifetime limit.  And there are work requirements – women have to work to receive money.”

“Well, I don’t know about that, but I do know that if those women want to have children, they should get a job, or get married.”

“You know, it’s entirely possible for a woman to work full time and still not make enough money to raise her family above the poverty line.  And in order to receive a welfare check, she has to file child support as well.”

I was beginning to realize that the negative stereotypes associated with welfare recipients were not really grounded in evidence.  True, there is an intellectual theoretical foundation against government assistance, such as Charles Murray or Ayn Rand.  But that does not explain how Americans seem to be significantly misinformed about what welfare is and how it works.  So, I decided to tackle this topic for my senior thesis. 

In a nutshell, I found that Americans are reluctant towards welfare spending for countless reasons, most of them cultural, racial, or political.  More importantly, many of the factors affecting public perception of welfare have created an inaccurate portrayal of both the system and the people benefitting from it.  Despite what you may have heard, here are some facts about welfare that may surprise you.

In 2010, only .2% of our GDP went to Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), the program that people are referring to when they say “welfare.”  Out of all TANF funds, only 27.8% goes to cash assistance, the rest goes mostly to child care and work-readiness programs.  This means that the percentage of our GDP going to cash assistance is practically nonexistent.  TANF has a 60 month (5 year) lifetime limit of receiving aid.  This has caused many women to be forced off the rolls in spite of the fact that their children are still living in poverty.  When surveyed, welfare recipients would prefer to support their families on their own than be forced to accept government assistance.  Most surprising, however, may be the fact that citizens in conservative Red states continually receive more government assistance than liberal Blue states.  There are infinite conflicts between what we think is happening versus what is actually happening, our values versus our actions. People have no idea what is going on.  In fact, I would imagine that many people who are opposed to welfare have never even heard of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, the Earned Income Tax Credit (the largest tax-transfer program in the country), or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (what Food Stamps have been called for years now).  This is not just the case with welfare, but the case with many hot topics that people feel so strongly about – terrorism, education, immigration, etc.  With the endless amount of information available at the click of a mouse, something is still preventing us from being an informed population, but what?