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Handout Materials
The Influence of
Financial Poverty on
Academic Success
Robert Bligh
Omaha, NE
March 17, 2015
Third Annual
Critical Issues Forum
Education Administration Department
University of Nebraska - Lincoln
2011-12
Fifteen Largest Nebraska School Districts
2012 FRL Poverty and 2012 NeSA Reading, Math and Science Proficiency
NDE Data
After more than a decade of NCLB "reforms."
District
Building
Grade Poverty Reading Math Science
Omaha - 50,330 students - 71% poverty
Lincoln - 36,523 students - 44% poverty
Millard - 32,075 students - 18% poverty
Elkhorn
Elkhorn
Millard
Ridge
View
Russell
Middle
Middle
Middle
2.7
2.9
7.9
138
130
135
130
126
123
123
126
128
Papillion - 10,335 students - 23% poverty
Bellevue - 9,988 students - 32% poverty
Millard
Lincoln
Beadle
Lux
Middle
Middle
8.5
10.7
131
140
117
127
115
117
Grand Island - 9,035 students - 64% poverty
Elkhorn - 6,059 students - 7% poverty
Westside - 5,963 students - 29% poverty
Millard
Lincoln
Elkhorn
Kiewit
Scott
Middle
Middle
Middle
Middle
11.4
13.0
15.3
131
131
130
118
124
124
123
110
118
Kearney - 5,287 students - 40% poverty
Fremont - 4,524 students - 53% poverty
No. Platte - 4,186 students - 42% poverty
Papillion
Bellevue
Millard
Papillion
Lewis & Clark
North
Middle
Middle
Middle
18.0
19.3
21.0
122
125
132
105
108
121
111
111
117
Norfolk - 4,015 Students - 48% poverty
So. Sioux City - 3,743 students - 68% poverty
Columbus - 3,733 students - 50% poverty
Hastings - 3,634 students - 57% poverty
Fifteen districts - 63% of Nebraska students
Lincoln
Millard
Omaha
Papillion
Westside
North Platte
Grand Island
Millard
Bellevue
Kearney
Bellevue
Lincoln
Lincoln
Lincoln
Pound
Andersen
Buffett
La Vista
Westside
Adams
Westridge
Central
Fontenelle
Horizon
Mission
Schoo
Mickle
Irving
Middle
Middle
Middle
Middle
Middle
Middle
Middle
Middle
Middle
Middle
Middle
Middle
Middle
Middle
25.9
26.1
26.2
27.7
30.3
34.4
35.6
35.7
39.2
40.5
41.9
42.6
42.7
43.2
129
119
128
120
120
111
123
120
121
121
114
111
116
124
122
102
104
104
124
102
123
105
108
100
93
101
111
115
114
109
101
107
123
105
112
107
102
93
102
91
96
109
District
Elkhorn
Millard
Elkhorn
Millard
Lincoln
Papillion
Lincoln
Building
South
West
North
North
East
South
Southwest
Bellevue
Papillion
Westside
Millard
Lincoln
Bellevue
North Platte
Kearney
Columbus
Norfolk
Fremont
West
North
Westside
South
Southeast
East
North Platte
Kearney
Columbus
Norfolk
Fremont
High
High
High
High
High
High
High
High
High
High
High
20.7
23.2
25.6
27.1
29.2
30.7
32.4
36.1
39.9
41.2
43.1
116
114
105
101
103
108
100
95
101
103
103
105
110
110
87
101
91
90
88
96
97
85
107
102
106
100
100
96
96
101
103
99
95
Kearney
Norfolk
Columbus
Lincoln
Fremont
Hastings
Omaha
Omaha
North Platte
Grand Island
Lincoln
Sunrise
Norfolk
Columbus
Lefler
Fremont
Hastings
Morton
Beveridge
Madison
Barr
Park
Middle
Middle
Middle
Middle
Middle
Middle
Middle
Middle
Middle
Middle
Middle
49.1
50.8
51.0
53.6
54.9
57.8
60.7
65.4
66.3
66.6
70.5
109
107
103
120
109
111
99
94
91
107
109
104
103
105
111
97
111
80
77
82
104
96
104
91
92
104
103
95
85
80
87
98
86
Omaha
Hastings
Burke
Hastings
High
High
45.1
49.9
91
98
82
92
91
95
Omaha
Lincoln
Lewis & Clark
Dawes
Middle
Middle
71.0
71.2
90
101
72
93
74
91
High
High
High
High
50.2
51.3
57.4
57.4
95
92
86
89
85
92
89
85
96
92
92
90
So Sioux City So Sioux City
Omaha
McMillan
Omaha
King
Lincoln
Goodrich
Middle
Middle
Middle
Middle
72.1
72.2
74.7
76.4
96
96
92
98
81
80
78
95
89
74
80
95
Lincoln
Northeast
Lincoln
North Star
Grand Island Grand Island
So Sioux City So Sioux City
Grade Poverty Reading Math Science
High
3.5
129
129
114
High
8.8
114
105
110
High
11.8
125
126
115
High
13.1
123
109
112
High
13.3
125
122
113
High
16.1
125
112
109
High
18.0
106
97
92
Omaha
Lincoln
Central
Lincoln
High
High
58.5
61.0
97
86
86
85
92
88
Grand Island
Omaha
Walnut
Hale
Middle
Middle
77.7
79.5
95
74
95
58
80
60
Omaha
Omaha
North
Northwest
High
High
63.6
73.6
82
77
73
60
86
80
Lincoln
Omaha
Culler
Bryan
Middle
Middle
79.9
81.1
104
78
98
68
92
73
Omaha
Omaha
Omaha
Benson
Bryan
South
High
High
High
77.4
78.1
84.8
65
71
69
57
59
58
71
77
69
Omaha
Omaha
Omaha
Marrs
Monroe
Norris
Middle
Middle
Middle
84.7
86.9
89.2
100
78
82
96
63
69
79
68
69
-0.95
-0.92
-0.93
-0.92
-0.83
-0.90
Correlation of Student Poverty to NeSA Scores
Rob Bligh - Nov. 20, 2012
Correlation of Student Poverty to NeSA Scores
Handout Page 2
http://reportcard.education.ne.gov/
Handout Page 3
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Academic “Matthew Effects” of a Childhood in Poverty
For a large majority of children who spend their childhoods immersed in poverty, the experience has
many cognitive, behavioral, and motivational consequences that impede the development of their
academic skills and inhibit their performance on many academic tasks. As a child faces the many
challenges of academic development, the attitudes, habits and expectations that accompany poverty
interfere persistently with the child’s efforts.
Impediments to the acquisition of academic skills and knowledge that are generated by a childhood in
poverty confront such children at every academic turn. Every early failure to develop academically
impedes the child’s later academic development. The longer this sequence is allowed to continue, the
more generalized the deficits become, seeping into more and more areas of cognition and behavior.
With the exception of certain* conditions and events, I do not suggest that a child born into poverty
is in any meaningful sense instantly immune to education. What I do contend is that living in poverty
tends to “teach” a child attitudes, expectations and behaviors that, once adopted, are inconsistent
with successful academic achievement and successful adult life. The result is a wildly disproportionate
fraction of such children who seem to be either education-resistant or education-proof, despite 48
years of honest efforts by K-12 teachers.
Consider the likely truth (and the likely educational impact, if true), of each of these 20 propositions:
1.
A typical American child spends less than 9 percent of childhood in a K-12 school even if that child
has perfect attendance for all 13 school years.
2. Children living in poverty tend to be absent oftener than more affluent children; thus, their ratio
of school time to non-school time is even smaller than that of more affluent children.
* More premature births, lower birth weights, and greater exposure to chemical pollutants generate additional
poverty-related impediments to the academic development of children forced to live immersed in poverty.
December 7, 2013
Handout Page 4
Rob Bligh
Academic “Matthew Effects” of a Childhood in Poverty
3. Adults in the lives of children living in poverty are less likely to express and demonstrate positive
expectations for children than adults in the lives of more affluent children.
4. Adults in the lives of children living in poverty are less likely to express and demonstrate respect for
children, their intelligence and their curiosities than adults in the lives of more affluent children.
5. Adults in the lives of children living in poverty are more likely to express and demonstrate a belief
in institutionalized victimhood more than adults in the lives of more affluent children.
6. Adults in the lives of children living in poverty are more likely to see children’s needs in
competition with their own needs than adults in the lives of more affluent children.
7. Adults in the lives of children living in poverty are less likely to express and demonstrate respect
for self-discipline than adults in the lives of more affluent children.
8. Adults in the lives of children living in poverty are less likely to express and demonstrate respect
for education than adults in the lives of more affluent children.
9. Adults in the lives of children living in poverty are less likely to include examples of academic
success than adults in the lives of more affluent children.
10. Adults in the lives of children living in poverty are likely to have a greater need for - and less
access to - mental health services than adults in the lives of more affluent children.
11. Fathers of children living in poverty are likely to have less contact - and less positive contact with their children than fathers of more affluent children.
12. Children living in poverty are less likely to have access to age appropriate books and magazines
than more affluent children.
13. Children living in poverty are more likely to experience food insecurity and meaningful threats of
food insecurity than more affluent children.
14. Children living in poverty are likely to experience more alcohol and drug abuse among adults than
more affluent children.
15. Children living in poverty are likely to experience more violence and more meaningful threats of
violence than more affluent children.
16. Children living in poverty are likely to enter kindergarten with vocabularies less (and in many cases
far less) than half the size of the vocabularies of more affluent children.
17. Children living in poverty are more likely to move from place to place - and from school to school at a rate greater than more affluent children.
18. Children living in poverty are less likely to travel than more affluent children.
19. Children living in poverty are less likely to have regular meaningful conversations with adults than
more affluent children.
20. Children living in poverty are less likely to have responsible adult supervision outside school than
more affluent children.
December 7, 2013
Handout Page 5
Rob Bligh
Brown and UNK
Student Quality and Academic Success
Brown University’s undergraduate
students are of unusually uniform high
average quality. Evidence for this is the
published median ACT score for Brown
first year students of 32.
The academic quality of University of
Nebraska
at
Kearney’s
(UNK)
undergraduate students is very much
lower. Evidence for this is the published
median ACT score for UNK first year
students of 23.
It would be remarkable if more than a
very small fraction of UNK’s first year
students would even qualify for
admission to Brown.
The academic success of Brown’s
undergraduate students is uniformly
high. Evidence for this is the published 4year graduation rate of 86 percent.
The academic success of UNK’s
undergraduate students is very much
lower than those at Brown.
Evidence for this is the published 4year graduation rate of 22 percent.
Indeed, the published 6-year graduation
rate at UNK is only 58 percent.
There is, of course, some small number
of relatively high quality undergraduate
students who enroll at UNK.
Such students tend strongly to earn
good grades, graduate on time, gain
acceptance to high quality graduate and
professional schools, and otherwise
succeed academically by any measure
that could be applied to Brown students.
Such a result is not surprising for such
students, but it simply is not the result for
the overwhelming majority UNK students
whose average academic quality is very
much lower than those at Brown.
Indeed, every such high quality
exception at UNK drives the average
quality of the remainder further down.
Consider this thought experiment.
Imagine the result if Brown were to enroll
only undergraduate students of the
average academic quality of the students
who now regularly enroll at UNK.
It seems reasonable to suspect that the
academic success of such students would
be little – if any – better than the regular
result at UNK, irrespective of the relative
pedagogical skills of the two faculties.
Similarly, imagine that UNK enrolled
only undergraduate students of the
average academic quality of the students
who now regularly enroll at Brown.
It would be reasonable to suspect that
the academic success of such students
would be little – if any – worse than the
regular result at Brown, irrespective of the
relative pedagogical skills of the two
faculties.
I do not mean to denigrate either the
pedagogical skills or the academic
expertise of the faculty members at either
institution.
I merely mean to suggest that the
relative academic success of the
undergraduate
students
at
each
institution can be substantially explained
in terms of the relative academic quality
of the students at initial enrollment.
The quality of a finished product is
limited by the quality of the raw material
no matter how skilled the craftsman.
The following short locker room
speech was delivered by a very successful
college track coach after his team had
failed to do as well as expected at the
NAIA national indoor championships in
Kansas City.
“I know that this loss today is a bitter
disappointment for everyone in this
room. I want to assure you all that today’s
result was all my fault. I take full
responsibility. I should have recruited
better athletes.
– Rob Bligh, Omaha, March 11, 2014
Handout Page 6
From: Christopher Fitch <[email protected]>
Date: Wednesday, April 2, 2014 at 11:09 AM
To: Rob Bligh <[email protected]>
Cc: "Deeann R. Goeser" <[email protected]>
Subject: OPS Data Request
Mr. Bligh,
Attached you will find two data files containing the data you requested regarding paired
Nebraska State Assessment (NeSA) scale scores from the 2011-12 and 2012-13 school years.
The first file contains NeSA math scale scores and the second file contains NeSA reading scale
scores. Both files include each student's school and grade level for both 2011-12 and 2012-13.
Based on our previous discussions, I have also included a table below illustrating the correlation
between 2011-12 and 2012-13 NeSA scale scores. This table contains the overall correlation for
all students, as well as correlations by grade level based on the students' 2012-13 grade. As you
can see, the correlations were quite high and statistically significant regardless of grade level.
Correlation between 2011-12 and 2012-13 Nebraska State Assessment
Scale Scores by Grade Level
2012-13 Grade Level
NeSA Math
NeSA Read
4
0.80*
0.78*
5
0.79*
0.78*
6
0.80*
0.81*
7
0.82*
0.79*
8
0.86*
0.84*
All Grades Combined
0.81*
0.80*
*Indicates that the correlation is statistically significant; p < 0.05.
Thank you for your continued interest in the Omaha Public Schools. As always, please feel free to
contact me at 402-557-2088 if you have any questions or wish to discuss the provided
information further. Have a wonderful day!
Sincerely,
Chris Fitch, M.S.
Evaluation Specialist
Division of Research
Omaha Public Schools
Voice: (402) 557-2088
Fax: (402) 557-2049
Handout Page 7
Breaking News
June 24, 2014
www.aapnews.org
Parents who read to their children nurture more than literary skills
by Lori O’Keefe • Correspondent
Reading proficiency by third grade is the most significant predictor
of high school graduation and career success, yet two-thirds of U.S.
third-graders lack competent reading skills. A new AAP policy statement recommends that pediatric providers advise parents of young
children that reading aloud and talking about pictures and words in
age-appropriate books can strengthen language skills, literacy development and parent-child relationships.
Literacy promotion during preventive visits has some of the
strongest evidence-based support that it can make a difference in the
lives of young children and families, said Pamela C. High, M.D.,
M.S., FAAP, lead author of Literacy Promotion: An Essential Component
of Primary Care Pediatric Practice, http://pediatrics.aappublications.
org/cgi/doi/10.1542/peds.2014-1384. The policy, released June 24,
will be published in the August Pediatrics.
Promoting early literacy development in the pediatric primary
care setting was a resolution at the 2008 AAP Annual Leadership
Forum, leading to development of the policy statement. Dr. High
is past chair of what now is the AAP Council on Early Childhood,
which authored the policy.
Multiple benefits
Children who are read to during infancy and preschool years have
better language skills when they start school and are more interested
in reading, according to research highlighted in the statement. In
addition, parents who spend time reading to their children create
nurturing relationships, which is important for a child’s cognitive,
language and social-emotional development.
“When I started with Reach Out and Read years ago, efforts were
focused on early literacy and school readiness,” said Perri Klass, M.D.,
FAAP, national medical director of Reach Out and Read and contributing author to the policy statement. “Although those are still
tremendously important, the bigger picture now is to help parents
build interactions with their children into their everyday lives because
this can create nurturing relationships, which promote early brain
development, early literacy, language development and school readiness.”
Make it fun
An important job for pediatric providers is to help parents understand what is developmentally appropriate for their child and how
to make reading fun, Dr. Klass said. “A parent shouldn’t read a long
story to an infant or young child and expect them to listen attentively.”
Dr. Klass recommends parents point to and name pictures in books
for infants and ask young children questions or have them complete
rhymes from a short book.
Parents need to understand that 2-year-olds have a short attention
span, and infants may put books in their mouths because that is how
they explore their world, she said.
“We don’t want a parent to feel that their child is failing at reading
if the child loses interest,” Dr. Klass added.
Powerful tool for all
Books also can be a useful tool during well-child visits.
Making books part of preventive visits allows pediatric providers
to observe fine motor skills, language, literacy and parent-child interaction. Incorporating books into a visit also enables health care professionals to model book interaction with patients, according to the
policy statement.
According to the 2011-’12 National Survey of Children’s Health,
only 60% of children from families with incomes 400% above the
poverty level and 34% of children from families below 100% of the
poverty level are read to daily. Every family, regardless of income,
should be counseled about the importance of reading together, said
Dr. High.
The policy statement recommends providing books to patients
who are at financial and social risk and exploring options to obtain
books if they are cost-prohibitive.
The statement also recommends:
• hanging posters that promote reading;
• distributing information to parents about reading and local
libraries;
• partnering with child advocates to influence national messages
and policies about literacy;
• promoting the “5 R’s” of early education: reading, rhyming, routines, rewards and relationships;
• incorporating literacy promotion and training into pediatric resident education;
• supporting state and federal funding to distribute books to highrisk children at pediatric visits; and
• researching the effects and best practices of literacy promotion.
“Books are a useful tool,” Dr. High said, “but we also want parents
to understand that reading to their children is so powerful because
children think their parents are the most important people in their
world.”
RESOURCES
• Literacy promotion in pediatric practice, http://bit.ly/1uBySnv
• Reach Out and Read, www.reachoutandread.org; summer reading list,
http://bit.ly/ULVtmN
• New collaborate effort to promote early literacy (launched June 24),
http://bit.ly/1qurfiN
Handout Page 8
Freshman Quality and Graduation Rate
Undergraduate
Institution
Phoenix KCMO
Admission Freshman Four Year Five Year Six Year
Percent ACT Median Graduation Graduation Graduation
100.0
--1.5
13.2
13.2
NE Peru
100.0
---
9.7
31.8
36.9
NE Chadron
100.0
---
24.2
41.1
45.5
NE Wayne
100.0
---
23.2
43.3
47.5
NE Saint Mary
42.4
21
43.6
45.5
46.5
NE Midland
48.5
22
44.8
52.4
52.4
Nebraska-Omaha
80.4
23
12.7
35.4
44.8
South Dakota
87.0
23
25.0
45.6
49.6
So. Dakota State
93.5
23
25.2
49.3
54.5
NE Doane
76.2
23
53.5
55.4
55.4
NE Union
41.3
23
32.1
54.0
56.9
Nebraska-Kearney
76.5
23
22.4
49.3
57.6
Arizona State
90.3
23
32.3
53.1
59.1
NE Hastings
74.3
24
52.6
64.0
64.7
Northern Iowa
84.8
24
35.2
61.7
67.0
NE Concordia
75.1
25
37.1
57.2
59.7
NE Wesleyan
82.5
25
52.1
63.8
65.0
Iowa State
87.3
25
36.7
65.8
70.2
Nebraska-Lincoln
62.9
26
29.4
58.0
64.2
Millsaps
73.6
26
61.2
66.9
68.0
Iowa
83.0
26
44.2
66.5
69.6
NE Creighton
81.8
27
65.4
75.9
76.8
Texas A&M
66.9
27
46.2
75.7
79.9
Texas Austin
45.3
27
52.5
75.7
80.3
Trinity (TX)
59.1
29
67.7
77.2
78.4
Michigan
50.0
29
72.0
87.5
89.7
Columbia
11.0
32
84.6
90.8
92.5
Stanford
8.0
32
78.4
92.2
94.7
Brown
11.2
32
85.7
94.2
95.6
Harvard
7.2
33
87.1
95.9
97.4
0.85
0.95
0.96
Correlation of ACT and Graduation Rate:
Source: http://www.collegeresults.org/
Handout Page 9
Academic Success Among Financially Impoverished Children
The information on which this document is based was taken from data posted on the Nebraska Department
of Education websites and data provided by the Research Office of the Omaha Public Schools. It covers
the 2011-12 school year. See next page. “FRL” indicates students whose households qualify for free-orreduced meal benefits under applicable standards of the United States Department of Agriculture.
(1) OPS total K-12 enrollment was 50,014 students.
(2) Approximately 71 percent, or 35,560 OPS students qualified for FRL benefits.
(3) NeSA Reading Tests were given to all OPS students in grades 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 11.
(4) A total of 14,214 FRL students took the NeSA Reading Tests.
(5) Of those 14,214 FRL students, 8,013 (or 56 percent) scored “satisfactory” or above on the NeSA
Reading Tests.
(6) 56 percent of all OPS FRL students would equal approximately 19,914 students.
(7) If 19,914 financially impoverished but academically successful students were in a separate school
district, (a) it would be the fourth largest district in Nebraska, (b) it would be nearly twice as large
as the fifth largest district and (c) it would be the only Nebraska school district in which 100
percent of the students were financially impoverished and 100 percent of the students were
academically successful in reading.
(8) NeSA Math Tests were given to all OPS students in grades 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 11.
(9) A total of 14,328 FRL students took the NeSA Math Tests.
(10) Of those 14,328 FRL students, 6,301 (or 44 percent) scored “satisfactory” or above on the NeSA
Math Tests.
(11) 44 percent of all OPS FRL students would equal approximately 15,646 students.
(12) If 15,646 financially impoverished but academically successful students were in a separate school
district, (a) it would be the fourth largest district in Nebraska, (b) it would be over 50 percent
larger than the fifth largest district and (c) it would be the only Nebraska school district in which
100 percent of the students were financially impoverished and 100 percent of the students were
academically successful in math.
Conclusions
Impoverished students tend disproportionately to fail in school.
About half of impoverished OPS students succeed in school.
Same schools. Same classrooms. Same books. Same classmates. Same curricula. Same teachers. Same
assignments. Same tests. Same poverty.
Different families.
Rob Bligh
Omaha
June 20, 2013
Handout Page 10
K-12 Schools as
Substitutes for Inadequate Parents
Suicide Prevention Training
Cardio-Pulmonary Resuscitation Training
School Medical Clinics
School Mental Health Services
Free-or-Reduced Meals
Afternoon Social Services
Parental Involvement Policies
Prenatal & Neonatal Training
Student Health Data Collection
Student Weight Reduction
Handout Page 11
Analysis of Central Park Student Achievement by School Choice Groups
Using 2011-12 NeSA Results
The following report compares 2011-2012 NeSA Reading and Math scale scores from three
different groups of students. The first group is comprised of students attending Central Park
Elementary who are living in the school’s home attendance area (Students Remaining at Central
Park). The second group is comprised of students attending Central Park who are from outside the
school’s home attendance area (Students Choosing Central Park). The final group is comprised of
students from the home attendance area of Central Park who chose to attend another school
(Students Leaving Central Park). To be included in this analysis, students had to have taken the
NeSA in 2012, and they had to have attended their current school for at least two years. Students
who had attended their current school for less than two years were omitted from the sample
because it is less likely that their NeSA scores were significantly impacted by their current school
of enrollment. The mean NeSA Reading and Math scores along with standard deviations for each of
these groups are presented in Table 1. In addition, this table includes the number of students
comprising each group.
Table 1. Mean NeSA Reading and Math Scores.
Student Group
Home Attendance
Area Students
Remaining at Central
Park
Students Choosing
Central Park
Students Leaving
Central Park
NeSA Math Scale
Score
M =111.75
SD = 29.53
N = 64
M =107.38
SD = 28.14
N = 104
M =80.11
SD = 30.35
N = 75
NeSA Reading Scale
Score
M =112.81
SD = 36.44
N = 64
M =116.01
SD = 30.87
N = 104
M =88.88
SD = 34.12
N = 75
Analysis & Results
To further analyze these observed mean differences, an Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) was
conducted. This analysis allowed for the comparison of mean group NeSA scores while controlling
for group demographic differences including free/reduced price lunch program participation,
special education status, gifted and talented status, English as a second language status, and
minority status. In general, demographic data suggested that the three groups in this analysis were
fairly similar in makeup. However, the ANCOVA results suggested that the groups did differ in
terms of mean NeSA Math (F=26.15, p < .05) and mean NeSA reading scores (F=13.41, p < .05). The
groups’ mean NeSA Math and Reading scores adjusted for group demographic characteristics along
with the standard error of each are presented in Table 2.
Handout Page 12
Grand Island - Wasmer Elementary School – Student Transfers
Student Group One
Student who lived within the Home Attendance Area of Wasmer who attended
Wasmer
Math: Number 111 - Average scaled score 134.98
Reading: Number 111 - Average scaled score 121.36
Student Group Two
Student who lived within the Home Attendance Area of Wasmer who attended a
GIPS elementary school other than Wasmer
Math: Number 35 - Average scaled score 100.14
Reading: Number 34 - Average scaled score 99.78
Group Three
Students who lived outside the Home Attendance Area of Wasmer who attended
Wasmer
Math: Number 45 - Average scaled score 131.58
Reading: Number 45 - Average scaled score 117.98
At Wasmer, (1) the ablest students stay, (2) the least able students leave and (3)
those who transfer in are roughly as able as those who stay and much abler than
those who leave.
There might be other reasons for Wasmer’s and CPE’s stark and utterly
unexpected academic success. There might even be pedagogical reasons of the
success. Nevertheless, it is very rational to suspect that the Wasmer/CPE success
is caused by the fact the students who enroll at each school are
disproportionately among the ablest impoverished students in each district. Those
who leave are among the least able.
In Omaha, about half of the 35,000 impoverished students score at-or-aboveproficient on the state’s tests.
If you can somehow place a couple hundred of the children from the successful
half into one school, you can make that school look like a miracle school.
Handout Page 13
Local View: Better Childhoods Needed
Rob Bligh – Omaha – July 3, 2012
We should stop thinking of the
disproportionate academic failure of poor
children as a sign of the failure of our schools.
Instead, we should begin to recognize it as
the modern-day equivalent of canaries in a
coal mine.
Before the development of sophisticated
devices to detect and warn of the presence of
odorless, tasteless and colorless — but very
deadly — methane gas that could seep into a
working coal mine, miners would take caged
canaries with them to work.
When the canaries — with practically no
tolerance for methane — began to collapse,
the miners knew that methane was in the air
they were breathing and that it was time to
vacate the mine or begin to lose
consciousness and quickly die.
If more children are failing in our schools,
it is largely because more are spending
childhood immersed in poverty.
Poor children are failing at the same rate
as they always have. We are noticing it more
lately because poor children are becoming a
larger and larger proportion of America’s
birth-to-18 population.
Their noticeable failure should be
interpreted just as the miners used to
interpret unconscious canaries. America is
generating the cultural equivalent of deadly
methane to the extent that it allows its future
citizens to reach the age of adulthood without
being effectively nurtured as children.
I am beginning to think that there is only
one thing on which America should be
spending resources to promote the academic
advancement of children living in poverty.
We should do whatever we can to make
the 50,000 hours between conception and the
first day of kindergarten more stable, more
humane, more friendly, more supportive, less
toxic, healthier, more attentive, more
nutritious, safer, less threatening, less
abusive, more nurturing, more respectful, less
neglectful, etc.
The futile “reform” of our K-12 schools
certainly is not the answer. School reform has
failed consistently since it first became
politically popular in 1965. Schools don’t fail.
Some students fail in school. Most of the
students who fail are students who spend
childhood immersed in poverty. Less than 9
percent of any childhood is spent in school.
The other 91 percent is spent someplace else.
To the extent that America can make the
conception-to-kindergarten lives of its poor
children more like the lives of its non-poor
children, a growing share of our children will
succeed in school and a growing share of our
children will become contributing adults.
Every year, in every school in America, a
significant minority of poor children do every
bit as well in school as their non-poor
classmates.
This very probably is because their
parents — even in the face of numbing
poverty — go to very considerable trouble to
actively nurture and guide their children.
Every child deserves that kind of childhood.
Most non-poor children get it. Most poor
children do not.
There is plenty of reason for despair about
the prospect for America’s children. When I
was in school (45 years ago), poverty wore a
metaphorical hearing aid.
Today, thanks to Social Security COLAs
and limitless Medicare benefits, poverty in
America has exchanged the hearing aid for a
diaper. Americans over 65 constitute our
wealthiest cohort by age.
Conversely, nearly one in every four
American children now lives in poverty, and
that fraction is growing.
I and other members of my “baby
boomer” cohort are signing up for Social
Security and Medicare and George W. Bush’s
prescription-drugs-for-old-timers program at
a rate of 10,000 every 24 hours.
That's another adult at the public trough
every 8.7 seconds around the clock, every day
of the year. That rate is scheduled to continue
unabated through 2038.
And we vote. And children do not.
Poor children don’t need better schools.
Poor children need better childhoods. The
future of America depends upon it. If
America cannot respond to this need,
America will not succeed.
Nor will it deserve to.
Handout Page 14
Things Educators Could Say But Don’t
Valerie Strauss – The Answer Sheet – October 8, 2012
With reform policies based more on hope than data, you might think educators would speak up more than do.
Why don’t they? Here are some thoughts about why most stay quiet, from Robert Bligh, former general counsel
of the Nebraska Association of School Boards. Bligh’s research interest involves the efficacy of the school reform
efforts promoted by the Elementary and Secondary Education Act since its original adoption in 1965. He served
as assistant professor at Doane College and was editor and publisher of the Nebraska School Law Reporter.
Robert Bligh
Many public policies – especially those
established at the federal level – seem to be riddled
with “reasons” that are based more on hope than
data. No category of public policies fits this
description better than America’s public policies on
K-12 education.
About 37 years ago, when I became the first
agency legal counsel at the Nebraska Department of
Education, I began to suspect that K-12 teachers and
their schools were being held responsible for things
that were completely beyond their reach. Most of
what I have observed since about K-12 education
has supported that suspicion.
Federal statutes governing public education
have been based more on hope than data since at
least 1965. That was the year the Elementary and
Secondary Education Act (ESEA) was adopted as
part of President Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society.”
ESEA’s fundamental approach was to order
teachers and schools to solve a host of noneducation social problems that all other social
institutions – especially families and churches – had
failed to solve. ESEA — better known in its current
form as No Child Left Behind — and its legislative
progeny have all failed. All of the problems have
gotten worse rather than better.
I have long been surprised that these irrational
policies have been adopted and readopted without
serious objection by most education practitioners.
Educators could say all of the following:
1. To Parents: “If you effectively raise your children
before you send them to school, we can teach
most of them. If you do not, we cannot.”
2. To Legislators: “Do not order us to repair the
developmental damage that is done to children
before they reach school age. We cannot do so
and pretending otherwise wastes resources,
damages K-12 education and does nothing to
help those utterly innocent children who need it
(and deserve it) most.”
3. To Reformers: “Academic achievement gaps,
robust and intractable, are well-established long
before the first day of kindergarten. Those gaps
are not caused by teachers and cannot be fixed by
teachers. What you like to call ‘reforming’ schools
does nothing to help children who spend their
first five years living in inadequate, often chaotic,
households. If you want to help those children,
you must do something to change those
households. Any other approach is foolish,
wasteful and destined to fail.”
Educators could say those things, but, with rare
exceptions, they do not. Consider the following
speculation as a possible way to explain why
educators are mostly silent when their profession is
slandered by politicians and pundits and crippled
by irrational public policies.
I suspect that those people who are attracted to
the teaching profession strongly tend to be much
more humanely motivated than the rest of us. By
that, I mean that teachers tend to believe deeply that
human behavior is significantly influenced by
human experience: the better people are treated, the
better they will behave.
For teachers, K-12 education is a formalized
process of treating children in a manner that will
tend to make them become more civilized as they
mature.
Of course these humane tendencies serve
teachers very well in dealing with their students.
Indeed, for very many children, educators are the
only humanely motivated adults in their lives.
Furthermore, I suspect that these humane
motivations are absolutely necessary in order to face
classrooms, day-after-day and year-after-year, that
almost all include from a few to a great many
children who are destined to go through school as
academic failures, no matter what any teacher does.
For example, consider our depressingly reliable
ability to identify – before they enter the 4th grade –
those children who will drop out before graduation.
I suspect that a person who is not deluded into
believing that every child can be educated could not
tolerate being a teacher for very long.
I do not use the term “deluded” to belittle
educators. I am convinced that the only people I
want to be in charge of a K-12 classroom are those
who believe that all children can be educated —
irrespective of all data to the contrary.
However, what might be a necessity in a teacher
is a tragedy in a public policy maker. We have
accumulated 47 years of data to support that
conclusion. School reform, as dreamed up by
politicians, has been tried many times during the
last half century. It has failed every time.
Handout Page 15
Poverty and student achievement: Are we comparing the wrong groups?
Valerie Strauss – The Answer Sheet – May 9, 2013
Earlier this week I published a piece by UCLA Professor and author Mike Rose titled, “Leave No Unwealthy
Child Behind,” in which he discusses how economic inequality is reflected in educational achievement.
Here’s a response from Robert Bligh, former general counsel of the Nebraska Association of School Boards.
Bligh’s research interest involves the efficacy of the school reform efforts promoted by the Elementary and
Secondary Education Act since its original adoption in 1965. He served as assistant professor at Doane
College and was editor and publisher of the Nebraska School Law Reporter.
Robert Bligh
I write in response to UCLA Professor Mike
Rose’s “Leave No Unwealthy Child Behind.” I
want to suggest a somewhat broader view of the
problem. No rational person can question the
overwhelming relationship between a financially
impoverished childhood and a strong tendency to
fail in school.
Unfortunately Professor Rose’s commentary
seems to suggest that the sole cause of the
problem is poverty and that it is unrelated to the
behavior of the failed students’ parents.
Such a conclusion ignores the fact that millions
of impoverished students succeed academically
every day. This is very probably because their
parents have gone to considerable trouble to raise
their children despite the difficulties created by
numbing poverty.
Any child, impoverished or affluent, who is
treated like a treasure rather than a nuisance
enters kindergarten with a built-in advantage.
When we are silent about the fundamental impact
of failed families, our silence is an insult to the
heroic families who refuse to allow financial
poverty to become academic destiny for their
children.
If we really want to use scientific comparisons
to identify approaches that could be used to help
children succeed in school – and in life – perhaps
we should examine the possibility that we are
comparing the “wrong” groups of children.
Perhaps we should stop comparing children
living in poverty with children not living in
poverty. Perhaps we should begin looking more
closely at two different groups of poor children.
Consider research to identify the most
meaningful differences between the households of
(a) poor kids who fail academically and (b) poor
kids who succeed academically. That would do at
least two good things:
(1) It would remind all of us that strong
(responsible, adult, humane, caring, childoriented, nurturing, etc.) families tend
strongly to generate academically successful
children even in the face of financial poverty,
and
(2) It would give us a list parenting skills (and
other non-school factors) that, when
steadfastly and humanely applied even in
financially poor families, tend to produce
kindergartners who show up on the first day
of school without academic achievement gaps
already well-established. We know that
teachers can successfully teach such children.
Each child’s life includes about 50,000 hours
between conception and the first day of
kindergarten. Each student spends only about
14,000 hours in classrooms between kindergarten
and the end of 12th grade.
Consider the Stanovich “Matthew Effects”
explanation of the delayed acquisition of reading
skills. Earlier learning failure generates later
learning failure.
It seems undeniable that what happens (that is,
what is experienced, learned and suffered by a
child) during the first 50,000 hours of life largely
determines the academic success or failure during
following the 14,000 hours of formal schooling.
I admit that this sounds as if I am “blaming”
the parents for the academic failure of their
offspring and, thus, violating a cherished political
taboo. For a minute, forget “blame” and its
political baggage.
Consider “cause” and its scientific significance.
If our emotional distaste for the term “blame”
prevents us from conducting an intellectual
search for “cause” (as it has for the last five
decades), then I would argue that we become
morally responsible for the ensuing damage.
The solution to this horrific problem is not
hiding in our classrooms. If it were, we would
have found it by now. We are academically and
morally obligated to look elsewhere.
Impoverished
parents
of
academically
successful children are heroes. We should
examine the aspects of their behavior that make
them so successful at being parents.
It would not only give them the honor they
deserve, but it might give us a map of the
pathway to academic success for all children
trapped in poverty.
Handout Page 16
Are teachers born and raised rather than trained?
Valerie Strauss – The Answer Sheet – November 13, 2012
Who should teach? Robert Bligh, former general counsel of the Nebraska Association of School
Boards, looks at the issue in the context of the previous post about historian David McCullough’s
comments about who should teach and who shouldn’t. (He said no professional teacher should
have an education degree.) Bligh’s research interest involves the efficacy of the school reform
efforts promoted by the Elementary and Secondary Education Act since its original adoption in
1965. He served as assistant professor at Doane College and was editor and publisher of the
Nebraska School Law Reporter.
By Robert Bligh
I am intrigued by the comments of David
McCullough about the training of K-12
teachers. I have several reactions:
(1) I suspect that a successful teacher
training program produces good teacher
candidates
because
of
the
personal
characteristics of the prospective teachers it
admits and graduates. Indeed, I have begun
to suspect that most of what goes into making
a successful K-12 teacher is in place before the
teacher-to-be
becomes
a
kindergarten
student. I would say that a good teacher is
born (with the right genes) and raised (in the
right household), rather than “trained” or
“educated.”
(2) Pure academic intelligence (whatever
that might be) is probably the least important
characteristic in an effective K-12 teacher.
Certainly there are plenty of extremely bright
teachers, but teacher contributions to K-12
students are not influenced much by pure
teacher academic ability.
(3) Teacher personality traits (humane
motivations, patience, sensitivity, tolerance
for many circumstances that most people
cannot tolerate) mean much more than mere
academic ability. K-12 teaching is more of a
nurturing role than an intellectual role.
Teachers at every level who “fail” with bad
students are the same teachers who
“succeed” with good students.
(4) I wish that all teacher training
programs would simply acknowledge that
the most important thing they do to produce
effective teachers is deciding (a) who they let
into the program and (b) who they let
graduate. If well-chosen teacher candidates
are able to demonstrate that they are smart
enough to graduate from college, their
success in the K-12 classroom will be directly
proportional to the quality of students they
are given to teach.
(5) The common judgment of the impact
of teachers is wrong. The idea that formal
education – preschool or K-12 – can be an
effective substitute for a healthy nurturing
family is nonsense. Children spend less than
9 percent of childhood in school and more
than 91 percent of childhood someplace else.
Every child lives 50,000 hours between
conception and the first day of kindergarten
and spends less than 14,000 hours in a
classroom between the start of kindergarten
and the end of Grade 12.
(6) Students who are well-raised –
especially during the prekindergarten period
– tend strongly to succeed in school
irrespective of the “quality” of their teachers.
Students who are not well-raised —
especially during the prekindergarten period
— tend strongly to fail in school irrespective
of the “quality” of their teachers. This
outcome occurs in every state, in every school
district and in every classroom.
(7) Expecting education to repair the
developmental damage inflicted upon
children by preschool life in inadequate
households has been a uniform and universal
failure since it began to become politically
popular in 1965. Children who fail
academically do not need better teachers and
better schools. They need better childhoods.
Handout Page 17
Midlands Voices: Nebraska Could Use Help With Pre-K
Bruce Lesley & Carolyn D. Rooker – Omaha World-Herald – June 17, 2013
[Rob Bligh Comments]
In America, a child’s ability — not the
circumstances of birth — should determine
his or her future. But today, a family’s
income has everything to do with whether
children
succeed.
Good-quality
prekindergarten education can make all the
difference.
[That is a premise that should be proved
rather than merely believed as a matter of
faith. America has been repeating the
mistake of “faith instead of proof” with K12 education for the last five decades and
has nothing but failure to show for it.]
By age 5, just 48 percent of poor children
in America are ready for school, compared
with three-fourths of children from families
with moderate and high incomes. Once kids
fall behind, the research shows they’re
much less likely to catch up. A student from
a poor family who cannot read at grade
level by third grade is 13 times less likely to
graduate from high school.
[It is not the poverty that is the cause. It
is the inadequate families. Millions of
financially impoverished children succeed
academically every year because their
parents are very good at being parents
despite the numbing burdens of financial
poverty.]
And the consequences are felt in
communities all over Nebraska. About 2,000
kids drop out of Nebraska high schools
every year. And every time we fail to
graduate a child from high school, the
foregone tax revenue and increased costs of
health care, criminal justice and other
public expenditures total nearly $300,000.
[The problem is real, it is very large and
it is growing. Our solution must not be
based merely on hope and it must not be
limited by our squeamishness about even
acknowledging the role of inadequate
families.]
What’s the problem? Money. A year of
privately funded pre-K costs about as much
as a year of college tuition at a public
university. And while many children in
low-income families attend Head Start or
other publicly funded pre-K, these
programs don’t have the funding they need
to serve all the children who qualify. So
when it’s not available, kids are left behind.
[The kids that need the help are not
“left” behind. Thanks to the inadequate
households in which they spend 50,000
hours
between
conception
and
kindergarten, they start out behind and
they never catch up. The last half century
has demonstrated that K-12 schools cannot
repair this developmental damage. There is
no evidence that pre-school can do any
better.]
Children in middle-income families also
feel the impact when incomes are too high
for Head Start but nowhere near enough to
cover the high cost of a private pre-K. As a
result, just under half of middle-income
children attend publicly subsidized pre-K
— usually financed through states or school
districts. But these opportunities are also
underfunded, leaving many middle-income
children behind.
[Is this a claim that children of the
affluent who succeed in school do so
because they attend “high cost . . . private
pre-K” programs? I would be astonished to
learn that anything approaching a majority
of children from affluent families attend
such programs. Indeed, it seems far more
likely that an overwhelming majority of
academically successful children from
affluent families, from “middle-income”
families and from impoverished families
never see the inside of any preschool
program.]
Handout Page 18
These inequities hurt all of us. They
strain our public education system, making
K-12 education more about helping kids
catch up than challenging all students to
pursue academic excellence. And when kids
fail to reach their potential, the result is
lower lifelong productivity and higher
taxpayer costs for law enforcement, health
care and welfare.
[This makes it all the more important
that we deal honestly and openly with the
cause of the problem. The cause of children
who show up at kindergarten unprepared
to succeed academically is not the absence
of preschool programs. The cause is the
absence of parents who act as if their
children are a miraculous treasure rather
than a bothersome nuisance.]
Solving this problem boils down to two
relatively straightforward requirements:
affordability and quality. High-quality early
education doesn’t matter if it doesn’t reach
the kids who need it most, so solving this
problem means making pre-K affordable.
We also must ensure the quality of pre-K
educational opportunities so all kids get
real educational benefit and taxpayers get
real value for their dollar.
[There is no reason to believe that
putting unraised children in preschool will
be any more successful than putting them
in K-12 schools has been for the last five
decades. The problem is not pedagogical.
It’s parental.]
Nebraska has already recognized the
importance of affordability and quality in
early childhood education. This year, the
Legislature took an important step toward
improving the child care subsidy program
by establishing a quality rating system for
large, publicly funded child care centers.
Recognizing that affordability is important
too, Nebraska increased the eligibility level
so more families are able to access goodquality child care.
[As a remedy for the developmental
damage inflicted on innocent children by
bad quality parental care, “good-quality
child care” is equivalent to taking an aspirin
for bullet wounds.]
But Nebraska’s economic competition
isn’t coming from Connecticut and Indiana.
It’s coming from China and India. This is a
national problem, and our leaders in
Congress must craft a national strategy. A
federal-state partnership would provide the
federal funding necessary to make pre-K
affordable for every child. And quality
would be ensured, because federal funding
would be limited to providers meeting
evidence-informed quality standards.
[If the “national strategy” that “Congress
must draft” does not deal effectively with
the households that produce these innocent
victims, the result in the future will be
indistinguishable from the failure of the
past.]
We know it won’t be easy, but can no
longer ignore the evidence that some of the
most important learning takes place in the
years before kindergarten. That expensive
delusion has already cost children and
taxpayers too much. A child’s potential, not
a parent’s income, should define the limits
of success in school and life.
[Expensive delusion, indeed! What is
damaging these children is not low level
parental income. What is damaging these
children is low quality parental care. If we
cannot squarely face the real cause, we will
simply add to the failure we have
steadfastly accumulated since this problem
was officially dumped on America’s K-12
schools with the passage of the useless and
wasteful federal Elementary and Secondary
Education Act in 1965. – Rob Bligh]
Handout Page 19