Does Family Income Matter?

Does family income matter in students’ achievement in school?  The Reformists say no, of course, and draw themselves up piously and hurl charges of elitism and classism at anyone who would suggest that it does.

Common sense tells us that it does matter, if only because of the schools that the children of low-income families attend. School districts with low per capita and/or per household incomes have smaller tax bases; therefore they face greater challenges funding their schools adequately. More affluent districts have no such problems. Students in better funded districts generally out-perform those in less well funded districts for a number of reasons, which I am convinced, are not fully understood, nor are the complex relationships between these reasons. This is unfortunate for such children, but perhaps it is simply the luck of life’s draw, and nothing can be done. Yet even within a large district, there is often great disparity in the funding of schools within that district, with schools in the more affluent neighborhoods being funded better than schools in the poorer neighborhoods. Do schools matter? The Reformists themselves say so. That’s what they say they are all about.

There is more to it, of course. In a July 7 New York Times Column, “The Unexamined Society,” http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/08/opinion/08brooks.html?_r=1&ref=davidbrooks David Brooks makes an interesting observation:

Shafir and Mullainathan gave batteries of tests to Indian sugar farmers. After they sell their harvest, they live in relative prosperity. During this season, the farmers do well on the I.Q. and other tests. But before the harvest, they live amid scarcity and have to think hard about a thousand daily decisions. During these seasons, these same farmers do much worse on the tests. They appear to have lower I.Q.’s. They have more trouble controlling their attention. They are more shortsighted. Scarcity creates its own psychology. [Italics mine]

Could this explain another challenge facing the children of less affluent parents? Does this mean that poor children are a poor investment for taxpayer dollars, or that their needs are greater?

Brooks makes another observation that explains why much Reformist ideology ultimately misses the mark and will produce little if any improvement:

Over the past 50 years, we’ve seen a number of gigantic policies produce disappointing results — policies to reduce poverty, homelessness, dropout rates, single-parenting and drug addiction. Many of these policies failed because they were based on an overly simplistic view of human nature. They assumed that people responded in straightforward ways to incentives. Often, they assumed that money could cure behavior problems.

Fortunately, today we are in the middle of a golden age of behavioral research. Thousands of researchers are studying the way actual behavior differs from the way we assume people behave. They are coming up with more accurate theories of who we are, and scores of real-world applications…

…. We have two traditional understandings of poverty. The first presumes people are rational. They are pursuing their goals effectively and don’t need much help in changing their behavior. The second presumes that the poor are afflicted by cultural or psychological dysfunctions that sometimes lead them to behave in shortsighted ways. Neither of these theories has produced much in the way of effective policies.

Reformists ignore such considerations, not only with regard to children, but with regard to their teachers. Reformists not only ignore what really motivates teachers, but their policies run counter to it.