Sociology > Education > STUDY: Moving From Low-Income To Higher-Income Neighborhood Schools Has Little Effect On Student Grades!
| Topic: |
Sociology > Education |
| User: |
"John Fartlington Poopnagel" |
| Date: |
14 Aug 2007 11:30:11 AM |
| Object: |
STUDY: Moving From Low-Income To Higher-Income Neighborhood Schools Has Little Effect On Student Grades! |
This knocks gouges in the old theory that if a disadvantaged kid could
be moved to a better school from his low-achieving school in his poor
neighborhood, he would probably improve his grades and performance.
But we'll give this study a chance to simmer and stand up to educators
and other school officials.
---------------
"Neighborhoods' Effect On Grades Challenged"
"Moving Students Out of Poor Inner Cities Yields Little, Studies of
HUD Vouchers Say"
By Jay Mathews
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, August 14, 2007; A02
Many social reformers have long said that low academic achievement
among inner-city children cannot be improved significantly without
moving their families to better neighborhoods, but new reports
released today that draw on a unique set of data throw cold water on
that theory.
Researchers examining what happened to 4,248 families that were
randomly given or denied federal housing vouchers to move out of their
high-poverty neighborhoods found no significant difference about seven
years later between the achievement of children who moved to more
middle-class neighborhoods and those who didn't.
Although some children had more stable lives and better academic
results after the moves, the researchers said, on average there was no
improvement. Boys and brighter students appeared to have more
behavioral problems in their new schools, the studies found.
"Research has in fact found surprisingly little convincing evidence
that neighborhoods play a key role in children's educational success,"
says one of the two reports on the Web site of the Hoover
Institution's journal Education Next.
Experts often debate the factors in student achievement. Many point to
teacher quality, others to parental involvement and others to economic
and cultural issues.
Some critics, and the researchers themselves, suggest that the new
neighborhoods may not have been good enough to make a difference.
Under the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's Moving to
Opportunity program, one group of families received vouchers that
could be used only to move to neighborhoods with poverty rates below
10 percent, one group got vouchers without that restriction and one
group did not receive vouchers. Families with the restricted vouchers
moved to neighborhoods with poverty rates averaging 12.6 percent lower
than those of similar families that did not move, but not the most
affluent suburbs with the highest-performing schools.
"There is a wide body of evidence going back several decades to
suggest that low-income students perform better in middle-class
schools," said Richard D. Kahlenberg, senior fellow at the Washington-
based Century Foundation. "But, in practice, Moving to Opportunity was
more like moving to mediocrity."
Harvard University sociologist William Julius Wilson said that
although the families that were studied moved to neighborhoods that
weren't as poor, they still had many disadvantages. Three-fifths of
the families relocated to neighborhoods that were still "highly
racially segregated," he said, and "as many as 41 percent of those who
entered low-poverty neighborhoods subsequently moved back to more-
disadvantaged neighborhoods."
The authors of one of the new reports were Lisa Sanbonmatsu, a
postdoctoral fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research;
Jeffrey Kling, a Brookings Institution economist; Greg J. Duncan, an
education and social policy professor at Northwestern University; and
Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, a child development and education professor at
Columbia University.
They cite several possible explanations why students' performance did
not improve when their families moved to less poverty-stricken
neighborhoods in the Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and New
York areas. Some families returned to poorer neighborhoods after
sampling a more middle-class environment. "For many families who
remained in their new tracts, the poverty rate in their neighborhood
increased around them," the researchers said.
Stefanie DeLuca, a Johns Hopkins University sociologist who wrote the
second report based on interviews of Moving to Opportunity families in
Baltimore, said many of the parents had little faith that better
teaching in better schools would help their children. They felt it was
up to their children to make education work.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/13/Ar2007081300966.html
.
|
|
| User: "R. Steve Walz" |
|
| Title: Re: STUDY: Moving From Low-Income To Higher-Income Neighborhood Schools Has Little Effect On Student Grades! |
14 Aug 2007 04:23:19 PM |
|
|
John Fartlington Poopnagel wrote:
This knocks gouges in the old theory that if a disadvantaged kid could
be moved to a better school from his low-achieving school in his poor
neighborhood, he would probably improve his grades and performance.
But we'll give this study a chance to simmer and stand up to educators
and other school officials.
--------------------------
Poverty causes poor educational opportunities, but culture can be
what holds some kids back.
Steve
.
|
|
|
|
|
Related Articles |
|
|
