Turning Around a School District By Fighting Poverty (npr.org)

New submitter gomezedward40 writes: Through her unconventional focus on addressing poverty, Superintendent Tiffany Anderson has been credited with rapidly improving the school district of Jennings, Mo. NPR reports: "The school district of 3,000 students has taken unprecedented steps, like opening a food pantry to give away food, a shelter for homeless students and a health clinic, among other efforts. 'My purpose is to remove the challenges that poverty creates,' she says. 'You can not expect children to learn at a high level if they come in hungry and tired.' That unconventional approach has had big results. When Anderson took over in 2012, the school district was close to losing accreditation. Jennings had a score of 57 percent on state educational standards. A district loses accreditation if that score goes below 50 percent. Two years later, that score was up to 78 percent, and in the past year rose again to 81 percent, Anderson says. She points to a 92 percent 4-year graduation rate, and a 100 percent college and career placement rate."

Comments

Goddam SJWs.

[Anonymous Coward]

Next thing you know, kids will get out of the poverty trap.

Re:Goddam SJWs.

[Anonymous Coward]

It may surprise you but (a) poverty correlates with poor academic in the US (not so much in other first world countries, why is that?) (b) the effects of poor nutrition and poor parenting in the first 5 years of life are persistent. (c) universal free public education is a cornerstone of democracy

Re:Goddam SJWs.

[Anonymous Coward]

She's on the dole for $200k/year ...

That's horrible! She should be paid around the median household income of $28,429! That'll fix things!*

... and just feeds kids into affirmative action and welfare:

Because obviously we should starve kids into affirmative action and welfare. I mean, it's your bygone conclusion these are all affirmative action and welfare babies, so let's just fuck them over when we can, right?

"just 36 percent of the graduates in 2015 scored high enough on the ACT, SAT or similar tests to meet Missouri's definition of 'college and career ready.'"

"One-quarter of Jennings’ residents are living below the federal poverty line, according to 2014 Census Bureau data. The median household income is $28,429. Just 13 percent of those age 25 and older have a bachelor’s degree, half of the state average."

Or, in short, the place is so far in the hole that their rates are actually an improvement.over the norm and imply possibly improving the state average. Yea, it'd be great if those "college and career ready" were a lot better, so we really need to look further down the line to see if things continue to improve. You know, crazy shit like that.

*Whether $200k/year is actually is actually a fair pay rate, I don't really know. But short of some part of jealousy (or pissy whining about taxes), I don't see why she shouldn't be being paid well if she's improving the circumstances of her district. Fuck knows that private company presidents can do much worse and can be paid much more. If that's the efficiency of the market, it's hard to argue that the public sector is doing wrong to pay their Superintendent well.

PS - Seriously, what's with assholes like you who say she's "on the dole" to be paid a decent salary for her work. And why do you jump to the conclusion this will invariably lead to "affirmative action" and "welfare"? Are you really that pathetically racist that anyone who would try to actually improve their own situation and the situation of others through measurable stats is somehow worse than a person who otherwise would be paid the same but improve nothing? Because the insanity precisely is that we already have affirmative action, welfare, starving children, and your racism. Clearly you don't want success. Success would just drive point how much of a horrible person you are.

PPS - Before you think I'm giving a "free ride" to anyone, I'd note that I'd expect in the future to see further success in this school district and a failure would indicate that the strategy is incomplete or outright flawed. Not that, you know, you're presenting some sort of counterargument or actual suggestions on ways that would improve the circumstance. But, then, the objective for you is obviously not to improve the circumstance. It's to, no matter the circumstance, to use examples to justify your racism. Even when the examples disprove your biases.

Re:Goddam SJWs.

[sociocapitalist]

She's on the dole for $200k/year and just feeds kids into affirmative action and welfare: "just 36 percent of the graduates in 2015 scored high enough on the ACT, SAT or similar tests to meet Missouri's definition of 'college and career ready.'"

1) She's employed, not on the dole.
2) There can be no doubt that her policies are effective, even if you don't like them. FTFS: "When Anderson took over in 2012, the school district was close to losing accreditation. Jennings had a score of 57 percent on state educational standards. A district loses accreditation if that score goes below 50 percent. Two years later, that score was up to 78 percent, and in the past year rose again to 81 percent, Anderson says. She points to a 92 percent 4-year graduation rate, and a 100 percent college and career placement rate."
3) Your negative perception of the 36 percent being ready to go on to college doesn't take int account previous rates or, for that matter, that getting a high school diploma is in and of itself an achievement in such areas, for such poor people.

Re:Goddam SJWs.

[AmiMoJo]

This is the American Dream. Anyone can make it, but if it looks like they might you must hate them because that means it's slightly harder for you to get ahead*, and especially if it looks like they may have benefited from the tax/welfare system more than you did.

* Of course, this isn't true.

Re:Goddam SJWs.

[murdocj]

At $200k a year, if even a couple of kids a year become productive citizens instead of the State having to pay to house them in jails, she is a bargain.

Re:Goddam SJWs.

[Coren22]

Also, the SAT is optional. It could be that only 36% of the kids took the SAT but they had a 100% pass rate (I doubt it, but it is possible).

Not everyone takes the SAT, it is something you have to pay to take outside of school hours.

Fighting Poverty..not new.

[lionchild]

This isn't new news here, this is all data that's been proven out over more than a decade of study. What's news is that someone has finally had the wherewithall to actually use the data. Hopefully, this will be a wake up call, and just the first of more to come.

No student can focus on learning when they're distracted with the struggle of just living, hoping they'll have food to eat tonight, and a warm place to sleep, clean close to wear. All the things that so many of us take for granted.

Re:Fighting Poverty..not new.

[Jason Levine]

Sadly, in my son's district, a school failing due to poverty is told they're failing because of "bad teachers" and the school is put into receivership. They then have 1 or 2 years to turn it around (how much is determined by State Ed who are the ones blaming teachers). If they don't turn it around enough, the school will be given to an outside agency who can turn it into a charter school and restrict student admittance to whomever they want. In other words, they'll kick out "under-performing" kids or kids with issues that require extra assistance - pushing them to other public schools - and then they'll show how they've "improved" scores and will push for more schools like theirs. (Using more taxpayer money, of course.) Meanwhile, the poor kids will still be worrying about whether they'll be able to eat or have a place to sleep tonight.

I'd go for a funny line like quoting Futurama's "Thus solving the problem once and for all.... ONCE AND FOR ALL" but, sadly, these politicians refuse to look at the studies that show poverty is the leading factor and instead want to channel public school funds to companies that donate to their campaigns.

Re:Fighting Poverty..not new.

[Anonymous Coward]

If they don't turn it around enough, the school will be given to an outside agency who can turn it into a charter school and restrict student admittance to whomever they want.

This should really be called "class warfare", but somehow the term only applies when it is the poorer parts of society taking action against the wealthier.

Offtopic: Are the /. devs trying to kill the site by driving away readers through persistent, unfixed login issues?

Re:Fighting Poverty..not new.

[HiThere]

You seem to fail in reading comprehension. Read what the grandparent wrote again. You don't need to agree with it, but your response indicates you didn't understand it.

Re:Fighting Poverty..not new.

[jandersen]

This is just yet another illustration of the privatization fallacy: that privatizing public services somehow makes them more efficient and cheaper NO MATTER WHAT. I've never been able to understand the reasoning behind - when the state provides a service, they do not have to produce a profit for shareholders, whereas private companies exist mainly to do this; all things being equal, how can a private company deliver the same service and skim off a profit? The answer is of course that the private company doesn't actually deliver the service, for one thing. The other side of the answer is that public services are cronically underfunded, and the staff is underpaid - which leads to poorer quality services that rely on overly complicated bureaucracy, since nobody is willing to take responsibility and take real leadership; public servants are simply not allowed to do the things that would lead to efficiency and real improvements.

That said, I think traditional welfare is probably not the way to help the poor; in order to manage your life well, you need more than a home and money to spend; there's a lot of life skills that you never had a chance to learn when you were a child and which are are very difficult to pick up when you are constantly running to keep things together as an adult. I know this - I grew up in poverty, and although I managed to climb out of it, I had to fight many years with the debt trap, and the fact that I had never been in a situation where making a budget was a realistic proposition; how can you make a budget, when you know you are going to be hit by more bills than you can possibly pay - and on top of that, even if you do make a list of everything, there is always going to be several that you have missed? It is very easy to simply give up and think "what do I care"; a lot of poor people do just that - they know they will never have any real hope. What you need in that situation is a way to get rid of their debt once and for all, and then coaching in basic life skills: budgetting, planning, even cooking good meals - all the things they didn't get the opportunity to learn, because they grew up knowing they were just trash and society didn't want to know about it.

Re:Fighting Poverty..not new.

[cold fjord]

You don't have that quite right, and there seem to be some things that you don't realize.

It’s Not ‘Unfair’ for Charter Schools to Expel Disruptive Students

After Katrina, Fundamental School Reform in New Orleans

Today, about 91 percent of New Orleans students attend charter schools.

These reforms altered public education in New Orleans, but they did not eliminate it: Charter schools are public schools, although they do not answer to school-district administrators. They are still paid for by the taxpayers, but the government’s principal role, apart from channeling the funding to the various schools, is oversight — that is, holding schools accountable and, if a school is found to be ineffective, closing it.

A team of academic researchers, led by Tulane University’s Douglas Harris, has been studying the impact of New Orleans’s education revolution. In a recent report, Harris and his colleagues found that the reforms have produced enormous gains. Test-score improvements for New Orleans students are of a life-changing size — on average, the students’ percentile rankings on standardized exams are up by about 15 points. New Orleans students are now more likely to graduate from high school and attend college.

The Big Easy’s experience demonstrates that radical education reform can fundamentally improve the lives of poor urban kids. ... Previous research had suggested that incremental education reform can be positive. New Orleans demonstrates that comprehensive reform can be a stunning success.

If 91% of the students are in charter schools it is hard to claim that they are only taking the cream of the crop, isn't it? And yet they are still making large gains in performance.

Re:Fighting Poverty..not new.

[houghi]

The reqson that many think privitazation is a solution is the same as many think (IT) outsourcing is a good idea. Because the companies telling them it will be cheaper (and sometimes are right.) It also fails for the same reason. In those cases where they ARE cheaper, they fail because of loyalty to the wrong group. People are loyal to those who pay them. If they work inhouse, that is who they are loyal to. If theu work for the outsources, that is who they are loyal to. (In general)
These two parties might not have the same goals. One wants to make money, the other wants to have good and cheap code.
Here one wants to make money, the other wants to help children learn.

Sure, solving poverty alone will not help. It will make some things possible. A better enviroment to do homework due to less stress at home because there is less stress of not having money. The ability to DO budgetting; planning and good meals.

In the early 1900s my Great Aunt was a teacher learning girls to sow. Due to the law at that time, the children (many who still lived insod houses were not allowed to learn on real clothes. The clothes had to be hald size, so they would not be competition for the professional sowers.
These families did not have the money to do that. My great aunt said 'sod it' (see what I did there?) and let them repair their own clothes over and over again, because they did not have money:

Did she solve poverty? Nope, not at all. She perhaps just let them eat a potato more per week, so they did not die.

I applaud you for being able to get out of poverty. If traditional welfare adds just a few a bit more, why not? If it would reduce your ,any years to some years, why not.

There is no simple single solution. It will be a combination of things. I do know that doing nothing is certainly worse.
If you see somebody drowning, you TRY to help. And even if it does not work for every person that is drowning, more are save than by doing nothing.

And yes, you need to teach people and kids on how to budget, plan and cook. To teach that to the children is what schools are for. Taking a bit of poverty away will help that long process of ,any years. This is not something that happens overnight. If you start now, the next generation will be able to learn that from their parents.

That is an investment of 25 years at least. And that is another reason privitazation would be bad. Companies think 5 years ahead. Governements _should_ be thinking a generation ahead.

That they do not do that is a whole other issue.

Re:Fighting Poverty..not new.

[edtice1559]

The reason that privatization may work is that government employees can't be fired. This is especially true for teachers but also applies to pretty much everything government. When organizations (public or private) get large, bureaucracy starts to take over. Instead of striving for good outcomes for the organization, people start manipulating the situation for their own benefit. In private companies this harms the shareholders. In government it harms the tax payers. It also harms both of their customers since the quality of what is delivered goes downhill. Normally private companies solve this by getting smaller through sales of assets, bankruptcy, or some other extreme means. Government can't do this so things just keep getting worse and worse.

Re:Fighting Poverty..not new.

[Ol Olsoc]

Why do we have private companies in other areas besides schools? Why doesn't the state run all businesses?

Because some things should not be run for profit, some things should.

Most things should be run for profit in fact. For me, the dividing line is money over life. Owning a farm or a widget factory is money over life. Yes there is safety and all, but the main idea is to provide something, and profit off it. Then you get to life over money. The idea of running schools, prisons and healthcare as for profit industries is now putting money over life, and the student is not a commodity, the prisoner is a commodity that has an even more pernicious aspect of needing to have more criminals created for increased profit, and healthcare has proven the points.

Somehow we used to be able to do this. Somehow other countries are doing it successfully now.

Re:Fighting Poverty..not new.

[jandersen]

Why do we have private companies in other areas besides schools? Why doesn't the state run all businesses?

Because private business is the right thing in many cases, especially small to medium sized businesses, which apparently are much better at creating employment than large companies. What I'm saying is that privatization is not universally the best solution; a lot of things would be provided much better, if it was provided by well-paid, public employees. Well-paid, because this attracts many of the best talents, public, because that removes the profit-seeking and ensures long-term stability.

One of my favourite examples: I lived for some years in a place where the water mains would burst at least twice a year, always at the same place, at a bend in the road. The same private contractors would come out every time and fix it. Maybe I'm a nasty, suspicious kind of person, but it seems to me that these contractors had a cushy little number going: they would make a slightly dodgy repair, so they could be guaranteed to have the same job again a few months later. How they got away with this for years is a good question - but in a rural, local council like this one, the people sitting on all the council's committees are... the larger, local businesses. Privatization is not universally a good idea, and private companies are not all driven by moral idealism.

Re:Fighting Poverty..not new.

[orgelspieler]

A lot of the ones who didn't return to NO moved to Houston and the surrounding areas. The neighborhood I used to live in had great schools until 2006. Then everything went to hell: increases in violence, decreases in test scores and graduation rates, higher teacher turnover. By the time my kid was old enough to go to kindergarten, the whole district was in shambles. So we moved.

I'm not going to argue that the refugees were the only reason things got bad. The general problems with home values (and thus school district tax revenues) in 2009 certainly played a big part. But there was a definite feeling that somehow school violence was the new normal immediately after our new neighbors moved in.

Re:Fighting Poverty..not new.

[Jason Levine]

Nope. I wrote what I meant to write. In NY (and many other parts of the country), companies like Pearson Education are contacting politicians and telling them that there's a huge education problem. The companies say that students are failing and that teachers are to blame. Don't worry, though, the companies have the solution. You just need to give them a few million dollars and they'll test and re-test and re-re-re-test the kids to show that they are failing. Then they'll sell you lesson plans, teacher education, books, etc to help "fix" this problem as well as more tests to make sure the problem is fixed. If the "problem" isn't fixed, some other companies will open for-profit charter schools to pull public funds away from those "failing" public schools.

I've been right in the thick of this whole mess in NY for years so I'm well aware of the situation. I'm under no illusion that teacher's unions are saints, but right now the big threat to education are private companies who look at students and get huge dollar signs in their eyes. They aren't interested in teaching the next generation, they're interested in making a quick buck while implementing cheap, cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all "education."

Side Note: In NY, the teachers unions didn't support our governor during his re-election campaign so he's doubled down on his rhetoric against teachers, going to far as to tie high stakes test results to teacher jobs. A teacher can be fired if his/her kids don't pass the tests twice. Whether tests pass or fail is determined by the companies who have a profit motive on students failing (there's more to sell for failing students) and without independent oversight. Test scorers have come forward and said they were told that they had to "see" more passing tests as failing. As John Oliver put it, it's like telling umpires that they've got to see more doubles as strikeouts and more home runs as doubles.

Re:Fighting Poverty..not new.

[Jason Levine]

That's been the problem where I am. We had tons of charter schools without much of any oversight. They got to set their own goals and if they missed them, oh well. One charter school was finally closed when they missed their own goals for 10 years straight. Even then, they fought in the courts saying they should be allowed an 11th year to turn things around.

The standard response by politicians in my area to a school not doing well is "let's open a charter school." Usually these politicians have clear campaign donation links to the companies opening the charter schools. Those schools are allowed to kick out kids who aren't as profitable. (My child and a bunch of others were kicked out because they required occupational therapy services. Unfortunately, we were afraid to upset the wrong people by pursuing it so it never was pursued.) The charter schools drain money from the public schools and leave the public schools with the lowest performing students and the students who cost the most money. This means the public schools continue to do poorly and the call goes out to open another charter school. Businesses profit and kids who need the most help suffer.

So...federal breakfast+lunch+dinner+... = fail?

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

>> She added round-the-clock care for children with crappy parents.

So...federal breakfast+lunch+dinner+afterschool+foodstamps+welfare = fail? Can we just invest in what she's doing then and cut back on all the other social programs that are not addressing poverty?

Re:So...federal breakfast+lunch+dinner+... = fail?

[Anonymous Coward]

A fellow in Florida took his lottery winnings and started day cares for people in his district. Free of charge. School attendance went way up. Parents could get jobs and help their families...

Re:So...federal breakfast+lunch+dinner+... = fail?

[Jason Levine]

>> She added round-the-clock care for children with crappy parents.

This isn't about parents who said "We could afford to do your laundry or take you to the doctor but we're too busy partying on our yacht to do that." This is about parents who are working two jobs (each in the case of 2 parent households) and even then barely able to afford the bare necessities of food, clothing, and housing. These are parents who have to make the serious budgetary decision of whether they feed their kids dinner tonight or pay the rent on their apartment because there's not enough money for both. These are the parents for whom having to pay an unexpected doctor's bill means possibly losing their apartment and living on the streets. These are parents who are doing the best they can do, but are barely keeping afloat (or, in some cases, not even keeping afloat).

When your life involves constant anxiety about whether you'll eat tomorrow, whether you'll have a place to sleep tonight, or whether you'll have clothing warm enough for the cold weather, you tend not to be able to pay attention to your teacher and won't do well on the tests.

And this isn't welfare. They opened a food pantry, had a shelter for homeless kids, and a clinic for kids whose parents couldn't afford to take them to a doctor. How are any of these actions bad? Considering how the scores improved, this sounds like money well spent. It's a much better use of funds than spending a million dollars to improve the high school football field so that the local sports team has state of the art equipment to play with.

Re:So...federal breakfast+lunch+dinner+... = fail?

[cdwiegand]

Well if they refused to work your definition might be valid. Sadly these parents ALREADY HAVE JOBS DIPSTICK! In some cases multiple jobs. Your libertarian right-wing "I hate handouts" bit doesn't actually work in this case because it doesn't apply. It's not welfare, either, it's child welfare - it's helping the CHILDREN of those parents. Because those children will be cooking your next meal, stopping you at your next traffic stop, and saving you from your house fire next time you leave the stove on. Some of those children will even go to college, and could become politicians, making decisions affecting you.

I grew up in poverty, but I did what I could, and with some natural ability and some luck I've done pretty well for myself. Imagine how much more I could have done if I'd not had to worry about food, or heat growing up. Clothes. All of these things would have really helped my attention to school and not starving or freezing. These kids will have those opportunities, and SOCIETY AT LARGE will benefit from them. That's why we have public roads, public schooling, public funding for all sorts of things - it benefits EVERYONE.

So get off your libertarian "I hate poor people" stand. You're not held at gunpoint - none of YOUR money went into the CLEARLY LOCALLY FUNDED district. If you want to complain about someone holding a gun to your head and forcing you to fund something, complain about the military that we have to fund 857 MILLION in "defense spending" when we are at peace with our only two neighbors - Canada and Mexico. But we only spend 393 million on welfare. Source: http://www.usgovernmentspendin...

Re:So...federal breakfast+lunch+dinner+... = fail?

[phantomfive]

So...federal breakfast+lunch+dinner+afterschool+foodstamps+welfare = fail? Can we just invest in what she's doing then and cut back on all the other social programs that are not addressing poverty?

Most likely, no.
With programs like these, often it is a single person who cares that makes a huge difference. In the foster-child program, for example, the people who are hired by the government to handle cases are the difference between a horrible program and an excellent program.

You can try throwing money at the problem, but unless people care, it's not going to make a huge difference.

Re:So...federal breakfast+lunch+dinner+... = fail?

[drsmithy]

The few of us that work are getting crushed under the massive amount of money taken from us to give to lazy people that refuse to work.

No you're not.

"Lazy people that refuse to work" are a vanishingly small proportion of the un- and under-employed. The problem is a lack of jobs.

The real problem is a lack of demand, since the poor have no money, and the middle classes are either flat broke after decades of wage stagnation, or completely tapped out on debt and sacrificing most of the money they do have into it.

Re:So...federal breakfast+lunch+dinner+... = fail?

[AmiMoJo]

Successes like this go against many comfortable rationalisations for doing nothing and paying less tax.

"Anyone can get themselves out of poverty, I did!"
"Intelligence is genetic, X are just dumb/gifted from birth"
"It's all wasted money, nothing works"
"The problem is too many kids, the only solution is sterilization"

That's why people get upset. It breaks their comfortable bigotry.

Re:So...federal breakfast+lunch+dinner+... = fail?

[Bert64]

Having high wages is worthless if your cost of living is even higher...

Re:So...federal breakfast+lunch+dinner+... = fail?

[cold fjord]

Job creation is being stifled by administration policies, regulations, and the "reforms" that the president's party pushed though. Two examples:

"Angel" investors have traditionally played an important part in funding startups in the early stages. Under the "reforms" pushed through by the Democrats there have been significant limitations placed on that which make it more difficult for startups to develop their business.

"Obamacare" has resulted in many businesses restricting their growth to stay below the thresholds in various ways. Some businesses keep their total staff count below the levels where they would be hit fully by the regulations and costs, and other businesses have significantly cut back on full time employment while simultaneously greatly expanding part time jobs. This is a major force driving the US towards being a "part-time" nation of workers.

Regulatory uncertainty is another issue. The Obama administration is opening the floodgates to huge numbers of new regulations, and I doubt many of them will be friendly to business and job creation. The Obama administration has made its hostility clear to a number of industries, and that isn't helping either.

On the bright side, the firearms industry is doing very well under Obama ... so far. It looks like he will shortly remedy that.

Re:So...federal breakfast+lunch+dinner+... = fail?

[Calydor]

This. So much this.

I really wish that reports of, "Undeveloped country X has a monthly wage of just ten dollars!" would also include the cost of basic necessities in that same country. What does a loaf of bread cost? A gallon of milk? Average rent for a two bedroom apartment if they have those?

'Ten dollars' means nothing if you can buy a car for twenty dollars.

Re:So...federal breakfast+lunch+dinner+... = fail?

[cold fjord]

Successes like this go against many comfortable rationalisations ....

Indeed they may. Take this snippet from the article, for example:

Part of the funding for these efforts comes from donations from Jennings residents and many local businesses.

Imagine that, local voluntary donations .... including from businesses.

-----

That's why people get upset. It breaks their comfortable bigotry.

Does that include knee-jerk hatred of businesses? What about making automatic assumptions of hateful bigotry?

Re:So...federal breakfast+lunch+dinner+... = fail?

[tlhIngan]

Oh, don't give me that. American minimum wage is enough to put you into the 1% super rich global elite. Even a single part time job, paid minimum wage, would be 10 times the salary of the vast majority of families in the world. If they do not have enough money for food, it is become of an ill managed luxurious lifestyle. And if this improved test scores, well they still are scoring orders of magnitude under many many communities living under much greater poverty.

Statistics fail - sorry, but 1% is not the entire US.

The world has around 7-7.3 billion people. 1% of that puts you at 70-73 million people. The US population is nearly 320M people. Or basically, if all the 1%-ers are in the US, that would mean almost one-in-four to one-in-five is a 1%-er.

As much as it is trendy to hate on the rich, being in a first world nation does not make you a 1%-er. There are much more valid reasons to hate on the 1% such as creating the laws that make income inequality a growing thing since the 70s, or the CEO salary ratio, which means the average CEO would make as much money as their lowest paid employee by mid-day Tuesday (this is in the US) this week (January 5). Those are very valid problems.

Most kids in poverty aren't there because the parents spent all the money on yachts and expensive cars, but are because of those policies. Minimum wage is a wage - money paid per hour. Just because it's $10.50 or so doesn't mean you even get full time work - a lot of those jobs are for 4 hour blocks or less per day. Which is why a lot of those parents work 2, 3 or more jobs, plus commuting (and a lot of places in North America mean you need a car, which is expensive).

So housing, car(s), food, and you can barely make it through the month. That sort of stress creates a negative learning environment. And that assumes they can make it - if they can't, then something has to give - rent, electricity/heat/etc, food, etc.

And it's a big social problem too - because people then turn to crime to fulfill basic needs, so society ends up paying. WE end up paying anyhow becase someone has to pay for their medical bills and other social problems they inflict on everyone else as well.

So yes, hate on the 1% for creating an environment where the rich get richer and everyone else gets screwed (and stuff like medical reform and Obamacare are putting bandaids on the real problem).

Sure you may think the guy living on the street is lazy, but it actually costs everyone time and money dealing with them.

Re:So...federal breakfast+lunch+dinner+... = fail?

[TheRaven64]

US Federal minimum wage is $7.25/hour. At 2080 working hours in a year (40-hour working week, no days off), that gives you $15,080/year. Global Rich List indicates that this puts you in the richest 11.44% - not even a 10%er. If you aren't able to work a full-time job, it will be less than that. And even that is meaningless, because it doesn't cover cost of living. I used to live somewhere where my cost of living (including mortgage on a house overlooking the sea and a short walk from the town centre, food, all other recurring expenses) was less than that. Now I live somewhere where that is less than my rent and that's just moving between two similar sized towns in the UK. The difference in cost of living in the USA can be even larger.

Re:So...federal breakfast+lunch+dinner+... = fail?

[silas_moeckel]

You're trying to count SS as part of the budget. It should be separate (needs a constitutional firewall to be effective also useful for other specific purpose taxes), We still have not payed anything but the SS payroll tax and interest on securites. To add insult to injury they then try to claim that paying back the special non marketable treasury securities is funding SS, no it's paying back a loan + below market interest.

Re:So...federal breakfast+lunch+dinner+... = fail?

[phantomfive]

You can also turn that around and say that you can have people who care but if there's no money to support the program (ie. the free food, shelters for homeless kids (what country is this again!?!?!?!), etc that the program cannot succeed.

No, it just adds an extra step for people who care (and raises the barrier somewhat). See The Freedom Writer's Diaries for example, or Stand and Deliver.

Most districts don't think of this...

[jpellino]

they just keep throwing money and gadgets at the school building with little or no thought for the other 18 hours of the students' day.

Re:Why is this on Slashdot?

[Anonymous Coward]

fucking keyboard ;-)

That's fruitless. Find a woman instead.

Re:Another NPR snowjob

[Anonymous Coward]

And how useful is private education? Private industry is good when there is plenty of competition and consumers can switch easily. I dont think parents can easily keep on switching their kids to different schools to "shop around"

You are either a corporate shill for private schools or just plain ignorant.

Really?

[ledow]

Working in UK schools, I think I'm safe in saying that a homeless child coming to school would be a priority one issue and get solved pretty damn quickly.

Children coming without proper breakfast - yes, we have breakfast clubs for those parents who can't get up and spend ten minutes making cereal (not an insult to them all, some of them just literally do not have the time and must go to work).

But a child (anyone under 18 now) coming in with even unwashed clothes, or hunger? That's an issue that gets referred to social services pretty damn quick. I'm not saying they can act immediately, but we have a range of neglect laws and getting taken into care can happen pretty damn quick if the parents obviously aren't around, can't cope or don't give a shit.

It's not the school's job to be doing this. And it's quite telling of a complete failure of social care, rather than a success story for a school. "We finally fed the kids, now they are doing better"? Well, fucking yes!

Something like 40-50% of kids in the UK are eligible for free school meals, you have to declare the figure as part of being a school and I've been involved in that many times. But even in schools where that's been near 100%, I've yet to see kids suffering complete neglect or lack of suitable social care to this extent.

Re:Really?

[phantomfive]

But a child (anyone under 18 now) coming in with even unwashed clothes, or hunger? That's an issue that gets referred to social services pretty damn quick. I'm not saying they can act immediately, but we have a range of neglect laws and getting taken into care can happen pretty damn quick if the parents obviously aren't around, can't cope or don't give a shit.

That sort of support exists in America, too. In this situation, it's not really clear what was going on, why that wasn't happening already, the article doesn't go into enough detail.

Re:Really?

[sociocapitalist]

But a child (anyone under 18 now) coming in with even unwashed clothes, or hunger? That's an issue that gets referred to social services pretty damn quick. I'm not saying they can act immediately, but we have a range of neglect laws and getting taken into care can happen pretty damn quick if the parents obviously aren't around, can't cope or don't give a shit.

The home for children that I grew up in was closed out of funding a few years ago having been blocked by the state for the home not having employed a full time on-site doctor and all the costs that go with it.

I spent eight years living in that home and with a full-time nurse and two hospitals about ten minutes away by car there was never a need for a full time doctor so I can only assume this was a thinly veiled trick to cut the state budget.

With a poverty level of 24.4% in 2013 (about the same as Jennings, MO), New Haven CT certainly has no fewer kids in need than it did in my time so I don't see the need for such homes decreasing - and if anything the opposite.
http://www.city-data.com/pover...

With antisocial policies being espoused by those who feel that their hard earned money shouldn't be used for 'socialist' programs like getting the dirt poor out of the cycle that they are stuck in I am not surprised that the number of homeless children in the US is increasing.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/...

So yes, you're right that this is not a problem for schools. The failure is in the people of the US who want to cut social services, and in those social services themselves who are incapable, for whatever reasons, of fixing what is an endemic problem in the US.

So hats off to the woman who has found a way to make it work in her part of this mess.

Re:It's sad a school district does this

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Organizationally, the school district might actually be pretty logical.

These sorts of things aren't supposed to be the school's problem; but it seems hard to argue with the idea that they have become the school's problem anyway, since the readiness of the students they have to work with is being seriously affected. When something becomes your problem, having the option to deal with it is ugly; but often much less painful than waiting hopefully for whoever is supposed to fix the root cause of the problem to sort things out so that you can do your work.

Re:Homeless Students?

[dbIII]

Who ever heard of homeless children going to high school?

High school teachers.

Re:Another NPR snowjob

[ArmoredDragon]

And how useful is private education?

Here's a government report on the topic:

https://nces.ed.gov/nationsrep...

TL;DR: In some subjects, the private schools "significantly" outperformed public schools, but overall they're only slightly better.

Re:Another NPR snowjob

[NotDrWho]

They love these. Then ten years later, all the facts come out, and the "miracle" turns out to be fake.

Yeah, much as I would love to believe this story to be true (so everyone else could then learn from it), really dramatic increases in test scores from year to year are usually the result of some sort of cheating or cooking the numbers. In real life, there are no quick fixes for education. It takes hard work over the long haul. If the test scores jump drastically in a single year or two, that usually just means something fishy is going on.

I would also seriously question her claims of "a 92 percent 4-year graduation rate, and a 100 percent college and career placement rate." Even the best public schools in the country don't have those kinds of numbers. There is no way she has that in some inner-city school in a poor neighborhood unless she is seriously fudging the numbers or playing with the language.

Re:Another NPR snowjob

[Zero__Kelvin]

You make a great point. There is no reason to believe a kid who is fed well and well rested will do better than if they are starving and tired.

Re:Another SJW article ?

[dave420]

"Give kids some food so they're not hungry and can learn" == SJW, should be hated. Gotcha. Your parents raised a lovely human being. They must be so proud!

Depressing Comments

[CohibaVancouver]

These comments are so depressing. Someone is helping hungry kids eat, have somewhere to sleep and get medical attention and all the top voted comments are THE TEST SCORES ARE FAKE, KIDS CHEAT MONEY WASTED.

Man, America sucks sometimes. Take care of your KIDS for christsakes.

Re:Another NPR snowjob

[whitroth]

BS. All the studies that I've read say that when the private/charter schools are required to take *anyone*, not cherry-pick, they do NO BETTER, and frequently worse, than the public schools.

And it's this kind of send 'em to private school crap that's helping destabilize the US. Without most kids going to public schools, they never meet kids from other backgrounds, other ethnicities, and so they're all "them", soon to be trashed by Faux "News" and Donald Trump.

When I was growing up, we were *proud* to be "the melting pot". Norman Corwin, in "On a Note of Triumph", written for the end of WWII in Europe, couldn't have put it better when he said, "His Aryan supermen beaten by a mongrel race".

But you think you're going to be a billionaire any day now.... sucker.

                        mark

36% - bad, but is it an improvement?

[Firethorn]

What was it 3 years ago when she took over? Below 36%? Above? The same? Heck, looking at the article, it implies that the graduation rate has increased substantially. Even if it remained the same, that's a lot more kids graduating, which means that 36% of graduates being considered ready is a higher percentage of the kids entering her school.

Also, if she's really getting 100% of graduates employed or in college within, say, a year of graduation, is the state's metric of readiness really accurate?

Finally, I believe that you can only really consistently raise kids ONE rung of the economic ladder a generation. Yes, you can get 1-10% up a couple, but you have to realize that 90% will be within one rung. If the parents are dropouts, you need to shoot for graduation, and being ready for a job on graduation, not necessarily college.