View: Schools alone cannot overcome effects of poverty

Re "The Math of Success," Jan. 6 article:

A new study published by Yonkers Partners in Education is a welcome addition to the conversation about how to help all public school students achieve success in school and beyond. The authors urge identification and replication of the methods used by high-poverty districts that perform better than their poverty measures would predict. This is a worthy undertaking and could help schools better target their interventions and resources.

To us, the study raises some other important questions and issues:

The racial composition of the districts was not examined as a possible factor in student outcomes. A less sophisticated analysis done by the Westchester Children's Association several years ago about Westchester districts showed that districts with high rates of poverty, low graduation rates, and low rates of college attendance were also most likely to have high percentages of non-white students. Institutional racism can impact communities, families and individuals in similar and different ways than poverty, and perhaps should be accounted for in devising remedies for poor student achievement.

As the study rightly emphasizes, the statistics are all about districts with high rates of poverty, not about poor students. Communities with high concentrations of poverty are plagued by a wide range of problems at much higher rates than non-poor communities, including chronic diseases, toxic stress, environmental toxins, community violence, poor housing and poor nutrition, to name a few. Leading thinkers about education, including James Comer and Diane Ravitch, have identified the pernicious effects of poverty on the life chances of children living in communities of highly concentrated poverty. Clearly, ameliorating the true effects of poverty are well beyond the scope of a single school district, although efforts such as "community schools" and "promise neighborhoods" try to bring many supports together in schools to bolster children and families.

The most effective anti-poverty policies in our nation's history have been laws allowing collective bargaining by workers, the minimum wage law, the Earned Income Tax Credit and, most spectacularly, Social Security.

What if we took all the money we currently spend on trying to ameliorate the effects of poverty and instead adopt two ideas once espoused by Richard M. Nixon: a guaranteed minimum income for every family and universal high quality early education? These might be a surer way to provide a path out of poverty for every child.

The writer is executive director of Westchester Children's Association.

The issue

A study by Bud Kroll of Yonkers Partners in Education found a strong relationship between poverty levels in school communities and the readiness of students for college and careers. He urged the replication of methods used by school districts that outperform their poverty levels.