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Teachers College Record Volume 115, 120308, December 2013, 26 pages
Copyright © by Teachers College, Columbia University
0161-4681
Effects of Inequality and Poverty vs.
Teachers and Schooling on America’s Youth
DAVID C. BERLINER
Arizona State University
Background/Context: This paper arises out of frustration with the results of school reforms
carried out over the past few decades. These efforts have failed. They need to be abandoned.
In their place must come recognition that income inequality causes many social problems, in-
cluding problems associated with education. Sadly, compared to all other wealthy nations, the
USA has the largest income gap between its wealthy and its poor citizens. Correlates associated
with the size of the income gap in various nations are well described in Wilkinson & Pickett
(2010), whose work is cited throughout this article. They make it clear that the bigger the
income gap in a nation or a state, the greater the social problems a nation or a state will en-
counter. Thus it is argued that the design of better economic and social policies can do more to
improve our schools than continued work on educational policy independent of such concerns.
Purpose/Objective/Research Question: The research question asked is why so many school
reform efforts have produced so little improvement in American schools. The answer offered is
that the sources of school failure have been thought to reside inside the schools, resulting in at-
tempts to improve America’s teachers, curriculum, testing programs and administration. It is
argued in this paper, however, that the sources of America’s educational problems are outside
school, primarily a result of income inequality. Thus it is suggested that targeted economic
and social policies have more potential to improve the nations schools than almost anything
currently being proposed by either political party at federal, state or local levels.
Research Design: This is an analytic essay on the reasons for the failure of almost all con-
temporary school reform efforts. It is primarily a report about how inequality affects all of our
society, and a review of some research and social policies that might improve our nations’
schools.
Conclusions/Recommendations: It is concluded that the best way to improve America’s
schools is through jobs that provide families living wages. Other programs are noted that offer
some help for students from poor families. But in the end, it is inequality in income, and the
poverty that accompanies such inequality, that matters most for education.
Teachers College Record, 115, 120308 (2013)
2
What does it take to get politicians and the general public to abandon
misleading ideas, such as, “Anyone who tries can pull themselves up by
the bootstraps,” or that “Teachers are the most important factor in deter-
mining the achievement of our youth”? Many ordinary citizens and poli-
ticians believe these statements to be true, even though life and research
informs us that such statements are usually not true.
Certainly people do pull themselves up by their bootstraps and teach-
ers really do turn around the lives of some of their students, but these are
more often exceptions, and not usually the rule. Similarly, while there
are many overweight, hard-drinking, cigarette-smoking senior citizens,
no one seriously uses these exceptions to the rule to suggest that it is
perfectly all right to eat, drink, and smoke as much as one wants. Public
policies about eating, drinking, and smoking are made on the basis of
the general case, not the exceptions to those cases. This is not so in
education.
For reasons that are hard to fathom, too many people believe that
in education the exceptions are the rule. Presidents and politicians of
both parties are quick to point out the wonderful but occasional story of
a child’s rise from poverty to success and riches. They also often proud-
ly recite the heroic, remarkable, but occasional impact of a teacher or a
school on a child. These stories of triumph by individuals who were born
poor, or success by educators who changed the lives of their students, are
widely believed narratives about our land and people, celebrated in the
press, on television, and in the movies. But in fact, these are simply myths
that help us feel good to be American. These stories of success reflect
real events, and thus they are certainly worth studying and celebrating so
we might learn more about how they occur (cf. Casanova, 2010). But the
general case is that poor people stay poor and that teachers and schools
serving impoverished youth do not often succeed in changing the life
chances for their students.
America’s dirty little secret is that a large majority of poor kids attend-
ing schools that serve the poor are not going to have successful lives.
Reality is not nearly as comforting as myth. Reality does not make us feel
good. But the facts are clear. Most children born into the lower social
classes will not make it out of that class, even when exposed to heroic
educators. A simple statistic illustrates this point: In an age where col-
lege degrees are important for determining success in life, only 9% of
low-income children will obtain those degrees (Bailey & Dynarski, 2011).
And that discouraging figure is based on data from before the recent re-
cession that has hurt family income and resulted in large increases in col-
lege tuition. Thus, the current rate of college completion by low-income
students is probably lower than suggested by those data. Powerful social
TCR, 115, 120308 The Effects of Poverty and Schooling
3
forces exist to constrain the lives led by the poor, and our nation pays
an enormous price for not trying harder to ameliorate these conditions.
Because of our tendency to expect individuals to overcome their own
handicaps, and teachers to save the poor from stressful lives, we design
social policies that are sure to fail since they are not based on reality.
Our patently false ideas about the origins of success have become driv-
ers of national educational policies. This ensures that our nation spends
time and money on improvement programs that do not work consis-
tently enough for most children and their families, while simultaneously
wasting the good will of the public (Timar & Maxwell-Jolly, 2012). In the
current policy environment we often end up alienating the youth and
families we most want to help, while simultaneously burdening teachers
with demands for success that are beyond their capabilities.
Detailed in what follows is the role that inequality in wealth, and pov-
erty, play in determining many of the social outcomes that we value for
our youth. It is hoped that our nation’s social and educational policies
can be made to work better if the myths we live by are understood to be
just that, simple myths, and we learn instead to understand reality better.
A WRONGHEADED EDUCATION POLICY
Bi-partisan congressional support in the USA for the No Child Left Behind
Act (NCLB), passed in 2001, demanded that every child in every public
and charter school in the country be tested in grades 3-8 and grade 10.
There were severe consequences for schools that did not improve rapid-
ly. The high-stakes accountability program at the center of the policy was
designed to get lazy students, teachers, and administrators to work hard-
er. It targeted, in particular, those who attended and worked in schools
with high concentrations of poor children. In this way it was believed that
the achievement gap between poor students and those who were middle-
class or wealthy could be closed, as would the gaps in achievement that
exist between black, Hispanic, American Indian, and white students. It
has not worked. If there have been gains in achievement they have been
slight, mostly in mathematics, but not as easily found in reading (see
Amrein & Berliner, 2002; Braun, Chapman, & Vezzu, 2010; Chudowsky,
Chudowsky, & Kober, 2009; Lee, 2008; Nichols, Glass, & Berliner, 2006,
2012; Smith, 2007). It may well be that the gains now seen are less than
those occurring before the NCLB act was put into place. In fact, the pres-
tigious and non-political National Research Council (2011) says clearly
that the NCLB policy is a failure, and all the authors of chapters in a
recently edited book offering alternative policies to NCLB reached the
same conclusion (Timar & Maxwell-Jolly, 2012). Moreover, a plethora
Teachers College Record, 115, 120308 (2013)
4
of negative side effects associated with high-stakes testing are now well
documented (Nichols & Berliner, 2007; Ravitch, 2010).
By 2008-2009, after at least five years of high-stakes testing in all states,
about one-third of all U.S. schools failed to meet their targeted goals
under NCLB (Dietz, 2010). Estimates in 2011, by the U.S. Secretary of
Education, are that more than 80% of all U.S. public schools will fail
to reach their achievement targets in 2012 (Duncan, 2011), and almost
every school in the nation will fail by 2014. And this widespread failure
is with each state using their own testing instruments, setting their own
passing rates, and demanding that their teachers prepare students as-
siduously. The federal government at the time this paper is being writ-
ten is now quickly backing off the requirements of the failed NCLB act,
and granting waivers from its unreachable goals to those states willing
to comply with other “reform” efforts that also will not work. These oth-
er inadequate reforms required by the federal government include the
forced adoption of the Common Core State Standards, using numerous
assessments from pre-kindergarten to high school graduation that are
linked to the Common Core, and evaluating teachers on the basis of their
students’ test performance.
In addition, and long overdue, as this paper is being written a backlash
against high-stakes testing from teachers, administrators, and parents
has begun (see “Growing national movement against ‘high stakes’ test-
ing,” 2012). Still, most state legislatures, departments of education, and
the federal congress cling to the belief that if only we can get the assess-
ment program right, we will fix what ails America’s schools. They will not
give up their belief in what is now acknowledged by the vast majority of
educators and parents to be a failed policy.
Still further discouraging news for those who advocate testing as a
way to reform schools comes from the PISA assessments (The Program
for International Student Assessment). Nations with high-stakes testing
have generally gone down in scores from 2000 to 2003, and then again
by 2006. Finland, on the other hand, which has no high-stakes testing,
and an accountability system that relies on teacher judgment and school
level professionalism much more than tests, has shown growth over these
three PISA administrations (Sahlberg, 2011).
Finland is often considered the highest-achieving nation in the world.
Their enviable position in world rankings of student achievement at age
15 has occurred with a minimum of testing and homework, a minimum
of school hours per year, and a minimum of imposition on local schools
by the central government (Sahlberg, 2011). Although we are constant-
ly benchmarking American school performance against the Finns, we
might be better served by benchmarking our school policies and social
TCR, 115, 120308 The Effects of Poverty and Schooling
5
programs against theirs. For example, Finland’s social policies result in
a rate of children in poverty (those living in families whose income is less
than 50% of median income in the nation) that is estimated at well under
5%. In the USA that rate is estimated at well over 20%!
The achievement gaps between blacks and whites, Hispanics and
Anglos, the poor and the rich, are hard to erase because the gaps have
only a little to do with what goes on in schools, and a lot to do with so-
cial and cultural factors that affect student performance (Berliner 2006;
2009). Policymakers in Washington and state capitals throughout the
USA keep looking for a magic bullet that can be fired by school “re-
formers” to effect a cure for low achievement among the poor, English
language learners, and among some minorities. It is, of course, mostly
wasted effort if the major cause of school problems stems from social
conditions beyond the control of the schools. The evidence is that such
is the case.
Virtually every scholar of teaching and schooling knows that when the
variance in student scores on achievement tests is examined along with
the many potential factors that may have contributed to those test scores,
school effects account for about 20% of the variation in achievement test
scores, and teachers are only a part of that constellation of variables as-
sociated with “school.” Other school variables such as peer group effects,
quality of principal leadership, school finance, availability of counseling
and special education services, number and variety of AP courses, turn-
over rates of teachers, and so forth, also play an important role in student
achievement. Teachers only account for a portion of the “school” effect,
and the school effect itself is only modest in its impact on achievement.
On the other hand, out-of-school variables account for about 60% of
the variance that can be accounted for in student achievement. In aggre-
gate, such factors as family income; the neighborhood’s sense of collec-
tive efficacy, violence rate, and average income; medical and dental care
available and used; level of food insecurity; number of moves a family
makes over the course of a child’s school years; whether one parent or
two parents are raising the child; provision of high-quality early educa-
tion in the neighborhood; language spoken at home; and so forth, all
substantially affect school achievement.
What is it that keeps politicians and others now castigating teachers
and public schools from acknowledging this simple social science fact, a
fact that is not in dispute: Outside-of-school factors are three times more
powerful in affecting student achievement than are the inside-the-school
factors (Berliner, 2009)? And why wouldn’t that be so? Do the math! On
average, by age 18, children and youth have spent about 10 percent of
their lives in what we call schools, while spending around 90 percent of
Teachers College Record, 115, 120308 (2013)
6
their lives in family and neighborhood. Thus, if families and neighbor-
hoods are dysfunctional or toxic, their chance to influence youth is nine
times greater than the schools’! So it seems foolish to continue trying to
affect student achievement with the most popular contemporary educa-
tional policies, mostly oriented toward teachers and schools, while as-
siduously ignoring the power of the outside-of-school factors. Perhaps it
is more than foolish. If one believes that doing the same thing over and
over and getting no results is a reasonable definition of madness, then
what we are doing is not merely foolish: it is insane.
HOW INEQUALITY OF INCOME, AND POVERTY AFFECT THE
ACHIEVEMENTS OF OUR YOUTH
Few would expect there to be equality of achievement outcomes when
inequality of income exists among families. The important question for
each nation is the magnitude of the effect that social class has on test
scores within countries. In the recent PISA test of reading achievement,
socio-economic variables (measured quite differently than is customar-
ily done in the USA) explained about 17% of the variation in scores for
the USA (OECD, 2010). But socioeconomic status explained less than 10
percent of the variance in outcomes in counties such as Norway, Japan,
Finland, and Canada. Although in some nations a family’s social class
had a greater effect on tested achievement, it is also quite clear that in
some nations the effects of familial social class on student school achieve-
ment are about half of what they are in the USA. Another way to look at
this is to note that if a Finnish student’s family moved up one standard
deviation in social class on the PISA index, that student’s score would
rise 31 points on the PISA test, which has a mean of 500 and a standard
deviation of 100. But if that same happy family circumstance occurred in
the USA, the student’s score would rise 42 points, indicating that social
status has about 30 percent more of an effect on the test scores among
American youth than in Finland.
The PISA data were also looked at for the percent of children in a
nation that came from disadvantaged backgrounds and still managed
to score quite well on the test. That percent is over 80% in Hong Kong,
over 50% in Korea, over 40% in Finland, but not even 30% in the USA.
Somehow other nations have designed policies affecting lower social
class children and their families that result in a better chance for those
youth to excel in school. The USA appears to have social and educational
polices and practices that end up limiting the numbers of poor youth
who can excel on tests of academic ability.
TCR, 115, 120308 The Effects of Poverty and Schooling
7
How does this relation between poverty and achievement play out? If
we broke up American public schools into five categories based on the
percent of poor children in a school, as in Table 1, it is quite clear that
America’s youth score remarkably high if they are in schools where less
than 10% of the children are eligible for free and reduced lunch. These
data are from the international study of math and science trends com-
pleted in 2007. The data presented are fourth-grade mathematics data,
but eighth- grade mathematics, and science data at both the fourth and
eighth grades,, provide the same pattern (Gonzales et al., 2008). If this
group of a few million students were a nation, it would have scored the
highest in the world on these tests of mathematics and science. Our youth
also score quite high if they are in schools where between 10 and 24.9%
of the children are poor. These two groups of youth, attending schools
where fewer than 25% percent of the students come from impoverished
families, total about 12 million students, and their scores are exceeded
by only four nations in the world (Aud et al., 2012).
Our youth perform well even if they attend schools where poverty rates
of youth are between 25 and 49.9%. And these three groups of students
total about 26 million students, over half the U.S. elementary and sec-
ondary public school population. It is quite clear that America’s public
school students achieve at high levels when they attend schools that are
middle- or upper-middle-class in composition. The staff and cultures of
those schools, as well as the funding for those schools, appears adequate,
overall, to give America all the academic talent it can use.
Percent of Students at a School Whose Families are in Poverty
Less than
10%
10% to
24.9%
25% to
49.9%
50% to
74.9%
More than
75%
Score on TIMSS 583 553 537 510 479
Table 1. School Level Of Family Poverty And TIMSS Scores, Where The U.S. Average
Was 529 And The International Average Was 500 (Gonzales et al., 2008)
On the other hand, children and youth attending schools where more
than 50% of the children are in poverty – the two categories of schools
with the highest percent of children and youth in poverty – do not do
nearly as well. In the schools with the poorest students in America, those
where over 75% of the student body is eligible for free and reduced lunch,
academic performance is not merely low: it is embarrassing. Almost 20%
of American children and youth, about 9 million students, attend these
schools. The lack of academic skills acquired by these students will surely
determine their future lack of success and pose a problem for our nation.
Teachers College Record, 115, 120308 (2013)
8
The schools that those students attend are also funded differently than
the schools attended by students of wealthier parents. The political pow-
er of a neighborhood and local property tax rates have allowed for apart-
heid-lite systems of schooling to develop in our country. For example,
48% of high poverty schools receive less money in their local school dis-
tricts than do low poverty schools (Heuer & Stullich, 2011). Logic would
suggest that the needs in the high poverty schools were greater, but the
extant data show that almost half of the high poverty schools were re-
ceiving less money than schools in the same district enrolling families
exhibiting less family poverty.
Table 2 presents virtually the same pattern using a different inter-
national test, the PISA test of 2009 (Fleischman, Hopstock, Pelczar, &
Shelley, 2010). When these 15-year-old American youth attend schools
enrolling 10% or fewer of their classmates from poor families, achieve-
ment is well above average in reading, and the same pattern holds for
science and mathematics. In fact, if this group of American youth were a
nation, their reading scores would be the highest in the world! And if we
add in the youth who attend schools where poverty levels range between
10 and 24.9% we have a total of about 26 million youth, constituting over
half of all American public school children whose average score on the
PISA test is exceeded by only two other developed countries. Given all
the critiques of public education that exist, this is a remarkable achieve-
ment. But the students in schools where poverty rates exceed 75% score
lower, much lower than their wealthier age-mates. In fact, their average
scores are below every participating OECD country except Mexico.
Percent of Students at a School Whose Families are in Poverty
Less than
10%
10% to
24.9%
25% to
49.9%
50% to
74.9%
More than
75%
Score on PISA 551 527 502 471 446
Table 2. School Level Of Family Poverty And PISA Scores In Reading, Where The U.S.
Average Was 500 And The International Average Was 493 (Fleischman et al., 2010)
The pattern in these data is duplicated in Australia (Perry & McConney,
2010). And this pattern is replicated in other OECD countries, though
not always as dramatically. The pattern seen in our country and many
non-OECD nations exists because of a hardening of class lines that, in
turn, has been associated with the development of ghettos and hyper-
ghettos to house the poor and minorities (Wacquant, 2002). The hard-
ening of class lines results also in some overwhelmingly wealthy white
enclaves. The neighborhood schools that serve these ghettos and hyper-
ghettos are often highly homogenous. Currently, white students attend
TCR, 115, 120308 The Effects of Poverty and Schooling
9
schools that are between 90% and 100% minority at a rate that is under
1%. But about 40% of both Hispanic and black students attend schools
that are 90% to 100% minority (Orfield, 2009). A form of apartheid-lite
exists for these students, and to a lesser but still too large an extent for
Native Americans as well.
The grouping of poor minorities into schools serving other poor mi-
norities seems frequently to produce social and educational norms that
are not conducive for high levels of school achievement. For example,
radio station WBEZ in Chicago (WBEZ, 2010) recently reported that
of 491 Illinois schools where the students are 90% poor and also 90%
minority, only one school, a magnet school enrolling 200 students, was
able to demonstrate that 90% of its students met or exceeded basic state
standards. In most states “basic” is acceptable, but not a very demand-
ing standard to meet. Still, this school beat the odds that quite realisti-
cally can be computed to be about 491 to 1 in Illinois. Schools with the
kinds of demographics these schools have rarely achieve high outcomes.
Nevertheless, there is a widespread and continuing myth in America that
schools that are 90% minority and 90% poor can readily achieve 90%
passing rates on state tests if only they had competent educators in those
schools (cf. Reeves, 2000). This apparently can happen occasionally, as
seems to be the case in Chicago, but like other educational myths, this is
a rare phenomenon, not one that is commonplace.
The believers in the possibilities of “90/90/90,” as it is called, are part
of a “No Excuses” group of concerned citizens and educators who want
to be sure that poverty is not used as an excuse for allowing schools that
serve the poor to perform inadequately. But the “No Excuses” and the
“90/90/90” advocates can themselves become excuse-makers, allowing
vast inequalities in income and high rates of poverty to define our soci-
ety without questioning the morality and the economic implications of
this condition. Ignoring the powerful and causal role of inequality and
poverty on so many social outcomes that we value (see below), not merely
school achievement, is easily as shameful as having educators use poverty
as an excuse to limit what they do to help the students and families that
their schools serve.
Our data on school performance and segregation by housing prices
ought to be a source of embarrassment for our government, still among
the richest in the world and constantly referring to its national commit-
ment to equality of opportunity. Instead of facing the issues connected
with poverty and housing policy, federal and state education policies are
attempting to test more frequently; raise the quality of entering teach-
ers; evaluate teachers on their test scores and fire the ones that have
students who perform poorly; use incentives for students and teachers;
Teachers College Record, 115, 120308 (2013)
10
allow untrained adults with college degrees to enter the profession; break
teachers unions, and so forth. Some of these policies may help to improve
education, but it is clear that the real issues are around neighborhood,
family, and school poverty rates, predominantly associated with the lack
of jobs that pay enough for people to live with some dignity. Correlated
with employment and poverty issues are the problems emanating from a
lack of health care, dental care, and care for vision; food insecurity; fre-
quent household moves; high levels of single-parent homes; high levels
of student absenteeism; family violence; low birth weight children, and
so forth.
Another way to look at this is by interrogating data we already have.
For example, if national poverty rates really are a causal factor in how
youth perform on tests, then Finland, one of highest-achieving nations
in the world on PISA tests, with a childhood poverty rate of about 4%,
might perform differently were it instead to have the US childhood pov-
erty rate of about 22%. And what might happen if the USA, instead of
the appallingly high childhood poverty rates it currently has, had the
childhood poverty rate that Finland has? A bit of statistical modeling by
Condron (2011) suggests that the Finnish score on mathematics would
drop from a world-leading 548 to a much more ordinary (and below the
international average) score of 487. Meanwhile, the U.S.’ below-average
score of 475 would rise to a score above the international average, a score
of 509! A major reduction of poverty for America’s youth might well im-
prove America’s schools more than all other current educational policies
now in effect, and all those planned by the President and the Congress.
THE EFFECTS OF POVERTY AND INEQUALITY ON SOCIAL
INDICATORS
Poverty can exist without great inequalities, but in societies where in-
equalities are as great as in ours, poverty may appear to be worse to
those who have little, perhaps because all around them are those who
have so much more. So relative poverty, that is poverty in the midst of
great wealth, rather than poverty per se, may make the negative effects of
poverty all the more powerful. This is a problem for the USA because the
USA has the greatest level of inequality in income of any wealthy nation
in the world (Wilkinson & Pickett, 2010). This hurts our nation in many
ways. For example, when you create an index composed of a number of
factors reflecting the health of a society, including such things as teen-
age birth rate, infant mortality rate, ability to achieve in life indepen-
dent of family circumstances, crime rate, mental illness rate, longevity,
PISA performance, and so forth, a powerful finding emerges. The level
TCR, 115, 120308 The Effects of Poverty and Schooling
11
of inequality within a nation—not its wealth—strongly predicts poor per-
formance on this index made up of a multitude of social outcomes! In the
USA this finding also holds across our 50 states: Inequality within a state
predicts a host of negative outcomes for the people of that state.
Indicator 1. Child Well-Being
As measured by UNESCO, children fare better in Finland, Norway, or
Sweden, each of which has a low rate of inequality. But child well-being
is in much shorter supply in England and the USA, each of which has
high rates of inequality (Wilkinson & Pickett, 2010). Schools, of course,
suffer when children are not well taken care of. The problems associated
with inequality and poverty arrive at school at about 5 years of age, and
continue through graduation from high school, except for the approxi-
mately 25% of students who do not graduate on time, the majority of
whom are poor and/or minority (Aud et al., 2012).
Indicator 2. Mental Health
The prevalence of all types of mental illness is greater in more unequal
countries, so the USA with its high rate of inequality has more than
double the rate of mental illness to deal with than do Japan, Germany,
Spain, and Belgium. The latter countries each have relatively low rates
of income inequality (Wilkinson & Pickett, 2010). How does this affect
schools? The prevalence rate for severe mental illness is about 4% in the
general population, but in poor neighborhoods it might be 8% or more,
while in wealthier neighborhoods that rate might be about 2%. Imagine
two public schools each with 500 youth enrolled, one in the wealthy sub-
urbs and one in a poor section of an inner city. As in most public schools,
administrators and teachers try to deal sympathetically with students’
parents and families. The wealthier school has 10 mentally ill families
and their children to deal with, while the school that serves the poorer
neighborhood has 40 such families and children to deal with. And as
noted, almost 50 percent of these schools get less money than do schools
in their district that are serving the wealthier families. Thus inequality
and poverty, through problems associated with mental health, can easily
overburden the faculty of schools that serve poor youth, making it harder
to teach and to learn in such institutions.
Indicator 3. Illegal Drug Use
Illegal drug use is higher in countries with greater inequalities. And the
USA is highest in inequality among wealthy nations. So rates of illegal
Teachers College Record, 115, 120308 (2013)
12
drug use (opiates, cocaine, cannabis, ecstasy, and amphetamines) are
dramatically higher than in the northern European countries, where
greater equality of income and lower rates of poverty exist (Wilkinson
& Pickett, 2010). High-quality schooling in communities where illegal
drugs are common among youth and their families is hard to accom-
plish. That is especially true when the commerce in the neighborhood
the school serves is heavily dependent on drug sales. This occurs in many
urban and rural communities where employment in decent paying jobs
is unavailable.
Indicator 4 and Indicator 5. Infant and Maternal Mortality
The tragedy associated with infant mortality occurs much more frequent-
ly in more unequal countries than in more equal countries. Thus, the
USA has an infant mortality rate that is well over that of other coun-
tries that distribute wealth more evenly than we do (Wilkinson & Pickett,
2010). Recent data reveal that 40 countries have infant mortality rates
lower than we do (Save the Children, 2011). American children are twice
as likely as children in Finland, Greece, Iceland, Japan, Luxembourg,
Norway, Slovenia, Singapore, or Sweden to die before reaching age 5. A
woman in the USA is more than 7 times as likely as a woman in Italy or
Ireland to die from pregnancy-related causes. And an American woman’s
risk of maternal death is 15-fold that of a woman in Greece (Save the
Children, 2011). The average overall American rate is much worse in
poor states like Mississippi. And the rate of those tragedies is even higher
still for African Americans and other poor people who live in states like
Mississippi. Comparisons with other nations make it quite clear that our
system of medical care is grossly deficient.
But here is the educational point: Maternal and infant mortality rates,
and low birth weights, are strongly correlated. Every low-birth-weight
child has oxygen and brain bleeding problems that produce minor or
major problems when they show up at school five years later. So in-
equality and poverty—particularly for African Americans—are affecting
schooling though family tragedy associated with childhood deaths, and
through low birth weights that predict poor school performance.
Indicator 6. School Dropouts
In the USA if you scale states from those that are more equal in income
distribution (for example Utah, New Hampshire, and Iowa) to those
that are much more unequal in the distribution of income (for example
Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi) a strong trend appears. Dropout
rates are much higher in the more unequal states (Wilkinson & Pickett,
TCR, 115, 120308 The Effects of Poverty and Schooling
13
2010). Poverty and a lack of hope for a good future take their toll on
youth in the more unequal states and students drop out of school at high
rates. This costs our society a great deal of money through increased
need for public assistance by these youth, the loss of tax revenues from
their work, and the higher likelihood of their incarceration. Inequality
and the poverty that accompanies it take a terrible toll.
Indicator 7. Social Mobility
Despite the facts, the USA prides itself on being the nation where a person
can be anything they want to be. But if that was ever true, and that is debat-
able, it is now less true than it has been. In reality, social mobility is great-
er in nations that have greater equality of income than our country does
(Wilkinson & Pickett, 2010). We now know that the correlation of income
between siblings in the Nordic countries is around .20, indicating that only
about 4% of the variance in the incomes of siblings could be attributable
to joint family influences. But in the U.S., the correlation between the
income of siblings is over .40, indicating that about 16% of the variance
among incomes of siblings in the U.S. is due to family (Jantti, Osterbacka,
Raaum, Ericksson, & Bjorklund, 2002). These data support the thesis that
the Nordic countries are much more meritocratic than the U.S.
Family, for good or bad, exerts 4 times the influence on income earned
by siblings in the U.S. than in the Nordic countries. Sibling income also
provides evidence that class lines in the U.S. are harder to overcome to-
day than previously. Sibling incomes have grown quite a bit closer in the
U.S. over the last few decades, indicating that family resources (having
them or not having them) play an increasing role in a child’s success in
life. Data informs us that only 6% of the children born into families in
the lowest 20% of income (often about $25,000 a year or less) ever get
into the top 20% in income (about $100,000 or more per year). Now,
in the USA, our parents are a greater determiner of our income in life
than either our weight or our height. That is, your parents’ station in
life determines your station in life to a much greater degree than we
ever thought. Despite our myths, it turns out that among the wealthy na-
tions of the world, except for Great Britain, we have the lowest level of
income mobility – that is, the highest rate of generational equality of in-
come (Noah, 2012). Income heritability is greater and economic mobility
therefore lower in the United States than in Denmark, Australia, Norway,
Finland, Canada, Sweden, Germany, Spain, and France. “Almost (argu-
ably every) comparably developed nation for which we have data offers
greater income mobility than the United States” (Noah, 2012, p. 35). Yet
we are the nation with the most deeply ingrained myths about how we
are a self-made people!
Teachers College Record, 115, 120308 (2013)
14
Indicator 8. School Achievement
At least one reason for this lack of movement in generational income is
the increasingly unequal schooling provided to our nation’s middle- and
lower-class children. Sean Reardon (2011) has built a common metric
for test data from the 1940s through to the mid-2000s. He convincingly
shows that the gap in scores between youth whose families are in the 90th
percentile in income, and youth whose families are in the 10th percentile
in income, is now dramatically greater than it was. In the 1940s the gap
between rich and poor youth (youth from families in the 90th percentile
versus youth from families in the 10th percentile in income) was about
.6 of a standard deviation on achievement tests. This is a large differ-
ence, but still, the curves of achievement for poorer and richer youth
overlap a great deal. Many poor students score higher than many rich
students, and many rich students score lower than many poor students.
But in recent times—the 2000s—the gap between youth from the 90th
and youth from the 10th percentile families has grown wider. Now the
difference between children from these two kinds of families is about
1.25 standard deviations, with much less overlap between the two groups
of young Americans. Since we live in a world where income and income
stability are highly correlated with education, these data mean that more
of the better-off children will succeed and more of the less-well-off youth
will fail to make a good living. The rich are getting richer (in education-
al terms, which translates into annual salary), and the poor are getting
poorer (in both educational opportunities and in the income that accom-
panies educational achievement). Our nation cannot stand as we know
it for much longer if we allow this inequality in opportunity to continue.
Indicator 9. Teenage Birth Rate
Despite the fact that the birth rate for teens in the United States is going
down, we still have the highest teenage birth rate in the industrialized
world. That is surely related to the strong relationship between income
inequality in a society and teen pregnancy rates (Wilkinson & Pickett,
2010). The USA has, by far, the highest level of inequality among wealthy
nations. So, not surprisingly, the USA also has by far the highest rate of
teenage pregnancy. Poverty, the result of great inequality, plays a role in
this, as demonstrated with some California data (Males, 2010). In Marin
County, one of the wealthiest counties in America, with a poverty rate
for whites in 2008 of about 4%, the teenage birth rate per 1,000 women
ages 15-19 was 2.2. In Tulare County, one of the poorest counties in
the USA, Hispanic teens had a poverty rate of about 41% in 2008, while
the teenage birth rate was 77.2 per 1,000 women ages 15-19. While that
TCR, 115, 120308 The Effects of Poverty and Schooling
15
difference is astounding, among Tulare County black teens, with a simi-
lar poverty rate, the teenage birth rate was about 102 per 1,000 women
between 15 and 19 years of age. Inequality and poverty are strongly as-
sociated with rate of teenage pregnancies.
But poverty has relationships with other characteristics of families, and
among them is a higher rate for impoverished youth to experience abuse,
domestic violence, and family strife during their childhood (Berliner,
2009). Girls who experience such events in childhood are much more
likely to become pregnant as teenagers, and that risk increases with the
number of adverse childhood experiences she has. This kind of family
dysfunction in childhood has enduring and unfavorable health conse-
quences for women during the adolescent years, childbearing years, and
beyond. And this all ends up as social problems, because teenage preg-
nancy is not only hard on the mother, it is hard on the child, and it is also
hard on the school that tries to serve them.
Indicator 10. Rates of Imprisonment
Imprisonment rates are higher in countries with more unequal income
distribution (Wilkinson & Pickett, 2010). The USA, with its high rate of
inequality, also has, by far, the highest rate of imprisonment among the
wealthy countries, but also appears to have more prisoners per capita
than almost every other country in the world. We punish harshly, and the
poor and poor minorities are punished a lot more, and for longer times,
than are their white and wealthier fellow citizens. Michelle Alexander
(2010) vividly describes the new “Jim Crow” laws that incarcerate poor
black youth at much higher rates than wealthy white students, even when
the laws that were broken were identical. Human Rights Watch (2000,
2002) identifies the USA as unique in its desire to punish, and particular-
ly to punish by social class. Their data show that in many states whites are
more likely to violate drug laws than people of color, yet black men have
been admitted to prison on drug charges at rates 20 to 50 times greater
than those of white men. They found, as well, that Hispanics, Native
Americans, and other people of color who are poor, are incarcerated at
rates far higher than their representation in the population.
For example, a decade ago in Connecticut, for every 11 white males
incarcerated, there were 254 black men and 125 Hispanics, suggesting
a strong bias in sentencing (Human Rights Watch, 2002). While some of
these males were family men, and their imprisonment hurt their fam-
ily, many of the poor and minority people incarcerated were women,
and their imprisonment was much more likely to hurt their children’s
chances for success. In 15 states, black women were incarcerated at rates
Teachers College Record, 115, 120308 (2013)
16
between 10 and 35 times greater than those of white women, while in
eight states, Latinas were incarcerated at rates between 4 and 7 times
greater than those of white women. And if we hope that youthful offend-
ers would be helped by sentencing to prison, we must wonder why six
states incarcerated black youth under age 18 in adult facilities at rates
between 12 and 25 times greater than those of white youth. Similarly, in
four states, Hispanic youth under age 18 were incarcerated in adult facili-
ties at rates between 7 and 17 times greater than those of white youth. In
these states, particularly, rehabilitation and education seem not to be the
goal of the state. Rather, the goal seems to be the development of a per-
manent criminal class for black and Latino youth. It is not far-fetched to
point out that in a nation with a large and growing private prison system,
a permanent prison class ensures permanent profits!
As tragic as the biases seen in the ways U.S. law is administered in many
states are, the after effects for incarceration may even be worse! That is
because, once released, former prisoners find it difficult or impossible
to secure jobs, education, housing, and public assistance. And in many
states, they cannot vote or serve on juries. Alexander (2010) rightly calls
this situation as a permanent second-class citizen a new form of segre-
gation. For the men and women who hope to build better lives after
incarceration, and especially for the children and youth in their families,
family life after paying back society for their crimes seems much more
difficult than it should be.
POLICIES FOR IMPROVING EDUCATION AND INCOME EQUALITY
It is hard to argue against school reformers who want more rigorous
course work, higher standards of student performance, the removal of
poor teachers, greater accountability from teachers and schools, higher
standards for teacher education, and so forth. I stand with them all! But
in various forms and in various places, all of that has been tried and the
system has improved little—if at all. The current menu of reforms simply
may not help education improve as long as we refuse to notice that pub-
lic education is working fine for many of America’s families and youth,
and that there is a common characteristic among families for whom the
public schools are failing. That characteristic is poverty brought about
through, and exacerbated by, great inequality in wealth. The good news
is that this can be fixed.
First, of course, is through jobs that pay decently so people have the
dignity of work and can provide for their children. To do that we need
a fair wage, or a living wage, rather than a minimum wage. This would
ensure that all workers could support themselves and their families at a
TCR, 115, 120308 The Effects of Poverty and Schooling
17
reasonable level. The current minimum wage is set at $7.25 an hour, and
would net a full-time worker under $15,000 per year. That is not much
in our present economic system. The U.S. government sets the poverty
level at $22,050 for a family of four in most states. But for a family to
live decently on $22,050 is almost impossible. At this writing, fair wages/
living wages might well require more like $12.00 an hour in many com-
munities. That would certainly raise the price for goods and services, but
it would also greatly stimulate local economies and quite likely save in the
costs for school and the justice system in the long run.
Our nation also needs higher taxes. You cannot have a commons, that
is, you cannot have teachers and counselors, librarians and school nurses,
coaches for athletics and mentors in technology, without resources to pay
them. Nor can you have police and fire services, parks and forest service
personnel, bridges and roads, transportation systems, medical care, ser-
vice to the elderly and the disabled, and so forth, without taxes to pay for
jobs in these areas. Schools, parks, health care, public support of trans-
portation, police and fire protection, et cetera, are either basic rights that
citizens in a democracy enjoy, or not. If the former, then government
needs to employ directly or through private enterprise the people to
provide those services. Either of those two strategies, government jobs or
government support for private jobs that help to preserve the commons,
requires revenue.
Despite the distortions in the press and the vociferous complaints by
many of its citizens, the facts are clear: The USA has an extremely low tax
rate compared to any of the OECD countries, the wealthier countries of
the world. Only two countries pay a lower rate of taxes relative to Gross
Domestic Product, while 29 countries pay more in taxes, and countries
like Denmark, Finland, France, Italy, Norway, and Sweden, pay about
75% more in taxes than we do to support civic life (Citizens for Tax
Justice, 2011). This provides the citizens of those countries such things as
free preschools medical, dental and vision care; support for unemployed
or single women; no food insecurity among the poor; free college if you
pass the entrance examination; and so forth.
Beyond the low tax rate, the USA also has many highly profitable cor-
porations that pay less than nothing in taxes. That is, they not only pay
no taxes, they get rebates! Table 3 shows that much more tax revenue
should be obtainable from U.S. corporations if we would elect politicians
who understand that the commons will disappear if corporations are not
contributing to its maintenance.
Increased tax revenues could provide more public sector jobs to help
both our nation and our schools do better. Some of the money raised
for the betterment of the commons could be used for high-quality early
Teachers College Record, 115, 120308 (2013)
18
childhood education for the children of poor families. Replicable re-
search teaches us a near-certain method to reduce the population of
poor youth that end up in jail. That is reliably accomplished by provid-
ing poor children with access to high-quality early childhood education.
Nobel Laureate economist James Heckman studied the Perry Preschool
program, in which children from poverty homes attended a high-quality
preschool. The effects of that program in adulthood are remarkable.
A high-quality preschool, of course, requires “up-front” tax dollars to
be spent, but ultimately saves society billions of dollars. Heckman and
colleagues (Heckman, Seong, Pinto, Savelyev, & Yavitz, 2010) showed
a 7% to 10% per year return on investment based on increased school
and career achievement of the youth who were in the program, as well as
reduced costs in remedial education, health care, and avoidance of the
criminal justice system. Similarly the Chicago Child Parent Center Study
(Reynolds, Temple, Robertson, & Mann, 2001) was estimated to return
about $48,000 in benefits to the public, per child, from a half-day public
school preschool for at-risk children. In the Chicago study, the partici-
pants, at age 20, were more likely to have finished high school—and were
less likely to have been held back, need remedial help, or to have been
arrested. The estimated return on investment was about $7.00 for every
dollar invested. In the current investment environment these are among
the highest returns one can get. Sadly, however, America would rather
ignore its poor youth and then punish them rather than invest in them,
despite the large cost savings to society in the long run!
Another policy proven to improve the achievement of poor youth is to
provide small classes for them in the early grades. There is ample proof
that this also saves society thousands of dollars in the long run, though
it requires extra funding in the short run. Biddle & Berliner (2003) re-
viewed the famous randomized study of small class size in Tennessee, the
Milwaukee STAR study, some reanalyses by economists of original re-
search on class size, a meta-analysis, and reviews of classroom processes
associated with lower class size, and found that class sizes of 15 or 17 in
the early grades have long-term effects on the life chances of youth who
come from poverty homes and neighborhoods. Instead of firing teachers
and raising class sizes, as we have done over the last few years because of
the Great Recession, we should instead be adding teachers in the early
grades to schools that serve the poor. Using those teachers to reduce
class size for the poor will result in less special education need, greater
high school completion rates, greater college attendance rates, less incar-
ceration, and a more just society, at lower costs, over the long run.
Another policy with almost certain impact is the provision of summer
educational opportunities that are both academic and cultural for poor
TCR, 115, 120308 The Effects of Poverty and Schooling
19
youth (Cooper, Nye, Charlton, Lindsay, & Greathouse, 1996). Youth of
the middle class often gain in measured achievement over their summer
school holiday. This is a function of the cultural and study opportunities
that their parents arrange. Youth from the lower classes have fewer such
opportunities and so, as a group, they either do not gain in achievement,
or lose ground over the summer. Small investments of dollars can fix
that, leading to better school achievement. This is why we need more
money invested in the commons now, so our nation will be a more equi-
table one in the future.
Another educational reform policy, like imprisonment, is based on a
punishment-oriented way of thinking, not a humane and research-based
way of thinking. This is the policy to retain children in grade who are not
performing at the level deemed appropriate. As this paper is being writ-
ten, about a dozen states have put new and highly coercive policies into
effect, particularly to punish third graders not yet reading at the level
desired. Although records are not very accurate, reasonable estimates are
that our nation is currently failing to promote almost 500,000 students
a year in grades 1-8. Thus, from kindergarten through eighth grade it
is likely that about 10% of all public school students are left back at least
once, a total of about 5 million children and youth. Research informs us
that this policy is wrong for the overwhelming majority of the youth who
we do leave back. Research is quite clear that on average, students left
back do not improve as much as do students who are allowed to advance
to a higher grade with their age mates. Furthermore, retention policies
throughout the nation are biased against both boys and poor minority
youth. Moreover, the retained students are likely to drop out of school
at higher rates than do their academic peers who were advanced to the
next grade.
Of course mere advancement in grade does not solve the problem of
poor academic performance by some of our nation’s youth. But there is a
better solution to that problem at no more cost than retention. Children not
performing up to the expectations held for their age group can receive
tutoring, both after school and in summer. On average, the cost to a
school district is somewhere about $10,000 per child per year to educate
in grades K-8. That $10,000 is the fiscal commitment made by a district
or a state when it chooses to leave a child back to receive an additional
year of schooling. That same amount of money could be better used for
small group and personal tutoring programs over a few years to help the
struggling student to perform better. This is precisely the method used
by wealthy parents of slow students to get their children to achieve well in
school. As Dewey reminded us many years ago, what the best and wisest
parents want for their children should be what we want for all children.
Teachers College Record, 115, 120308 (2013)
20
Thus, that same kind of opportunity to catch up in school should not
be denied to youth who come from poorer families. And for the record,
Finland, whose school system is so exceptional, shuns retention in grade.
It retains only about 2% of its students, not 10%, using special education
teachers to work with students who fall significantly behind their age
mates, ensuring that for most slow students there are chances to catch up
with their classmates, without punishing them.
Other policies that would help the poor and reduce the inequities
we see in society include reducing teacher “churn” in schools. Lower-
class children experience more of that, and it substantially harms their
academic performance (Ronfeldt, Lankford, Loeb, & Wyckoff, 2011).
Policies to help experienced teachers stay in schools with poorer students
also need to be developed. New teachers rarely can match a veteran of
five or more years in accomplishing all the objectives teachers are re-
quired to meet in contemporary schools.
A two-year visiting nurse service to new mothers who are poor costs
over $11,000 per family serviced. But results 10 years later show that in
comparison to matched families, both the mothers and the children who
were visited were significantly better off in many ways, and the cost to the
local community was $12,000 less for these children and families over
those 10 years. Even greater benefits to the community are expected in
the future (Olds et al., 2010). In essence, there is really no cost at all for a
humane and effective program like this, but humaneness, even when cost
effective, seems noticeably lacking in many of our communities.
Related to the visiting nurse study is the high likelihood of success
by providing wrap-around services for youth in schools that serve poor
families. Medical, dental, vision, nutrition, and psychological counseling,
if not accessible by the families in a community, need to be provided so
the children of the poor have a better chance of leaving poverty in adult-
hood. These programs have become increasingly of interest since both
the social sciences and the neurosciences have now verified, through
studies of brain functioning and cognitive processing, that the stress as-
sociated with extreme poverty reduces a child’s ability to think well. Stress
and academic problem solving ability, and stress and working memory,
correlate negatively. Thus, the cognitive skills of many poor youth are
diminished, making life much harder for them and their teachers. The
greater the physical and psychological stress experienced during child-
hood, the higher the likelihood that a child will not do well in school
or in life. Noted earlier, however, is that the American media loves the
story of the child from awful surroundings—war, famine, family violence,
drug use, crime, and so forth—who grows to become a respected pillar of
the community. But that is the exception, not the rule! Educational and
TCR, 115, 120308 The Effects of Poverty and Schooling
21
social policies need to be made on the basis of the general rule, not on
the occasional exception, dramatic and noble as that exception may be.
Adult programs also need to be part of schools so the school is part
of its community: health clinics, job training, exercise rooms, commu-
nity political meetings, technology access and training, libraries, and so
forth—often help schools to help poor families. It is not good for chil-
dren, their adult caretakers, or a school district if the public schools are
seen as remote, alien, foreign, hostile, or anything other than a commu-
nity resource. What seems evident is that America simply cannot test its
way out of its educational problems. Our country has tried that and those
policies and practices have failed. It is long past the time for other poli-
cies and practices to be tried, and as noted, some fine candidates exist.
CONCLUSION
During the great convergence in income, from World War Two until
about 1979, American wealth was more evenly spread and the econo-
my hummed. With the great divergence in income, beginning in about
1979, and accelerating after that, American wealth became concentrated
and many factors negatively affected the rate of employment. The result
has been that despite our nation’s great wealth, inequality in income in
the USA is the greatest in the Western World. Sequelae to high levels of
inequality are high levels of poverty. Certainly poverty should never be
an excuse for schools to do little, but poverty is a powerful explanation for
why they cannot do much!
Although school policies that help the poor are appropriate to recom-
mend (preschool, summer programs, health care, and so forth), it is likely
that those programs would be less needed or would have more power-
ful results were we to concentrate on getting people decent jobs and re-
ducing inequality in income. Jobs allow families, single or otherwise, to
take care of themselves and offer their children a more promising future.
Too many people without jobs do bad things to themselves and to oth-
ers. Literally, unemployment kills: The death rates for working men and
women increase significantly as unemployment increases (Garcy & Vagero,
2012). The death of adult caretakers obviously affects families, particularly
children, in profound ways. Government promotion of decent paying jobs,
and a low unemployment rate, is a goal around which both Conservatives
and Liberals who care about the American education system ought to
unite. That is the single best school reform strategy I can find.
But more than that, it is part of my thinking about rights we should ex-
pect as citizens of our country, in order that our country thrives. President
Franklin Delano Roosevelt articulated these rights as he addressed the
Teachers College Record, 115, 120308 (2013)
22
nation, shortly before he died (Roosevelt, 1944). His experience with
both the Great Depression, the rise of fascism, and the second world
war led him to offer Americans a second bill of rights that would help
promote what was originally offered to Americans a century and half
before—the right of our citizens to pursue happiness. Roosevelt said that
Americans have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual
freedom cannot exist without
economic security and independence. Necessitous men are not
free men. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff
of which dictatorships are made. [It is now self-evident that the
American people have] the right to a useful and remunerative
job . . . the right to earn enough to provide adequate food and
clothing and recreation; the right of every family to a decent
home; the right to adequate medical care and the opportunity
to achieve and enjoy good health; the right to adequate protec-
tion from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and
unemployment; The right to a good education.
I think we need to fight as hard for our second bill of rights as we did
for our first. Among the many reasons that might be so is that the per-
formance of our students in our schools cannot be thought about without
also thinking of the social and economic policies that characterize our
nation. Besides the school policies noted above, and the need for decent
jobs, if we had a housing policy that let poor and middle-income children
mix in schools, that might be better than many other school improve-
ment strategies designed specially to help the poor. This is a policy that
works for Singapore, a nation with great inequalities in wealth and great-
er equalization of achievement outcomes between its richer and poorer
students. If we had a bussing policy based on income, not race, so that no
school had more than about 40% low-income children, it might well im-
prove the schools’ performances more than other policies we have tried.
This is the strategy implemented by Wake County, North Carolina, and
it has improved the achievement of the poor in Raleigh, North Carolina,
the county’s major city, without subtracting from the achievements of
its wealthier students (Grant, 2009). My point is that citizens calling for
school reform without thinking about economic and social reforms are
probably being foolish. The likelihood of affecting school achievement
positively is more likely to be found in economic and social reforms, in
the second bill of rights, than it is in NCLB, the common core of stan-
dards, early childhood and many assessments after that, value-added as-
sessments, and the like. More than educational policies are needed to
improve education.
TCR, 115, 120308 The Effects of Poverty and Schooling
23
I think everyone in the USA, of any political party, understands that
poverty hurts families and affects student performance at the schools
their children attend. But the bigger problem for our political leaders
and citizens to recognize is that inequality hurts everyone in society,
the wealthy and the poor alike. History teaches us that when income
inequalities are large, they are tolerated by the poor for only so long.
Then there is an eruption, and it is often bloody! Both logic and research
suggest that economic policies that reduce income inequality throughout
the United States are quite likely to improve education a lot, but even
more than that, such policies might once again establish this nation as a
beacon on a hill, and not merely a light that shines for some, but not for
all of our citizens.
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Teachers College Record, 115, 120308 (2013)
26
DAVID C. BERLINER is Regents’ Professor Emeritus in The Mary Lou
Fulton Teachers College of Arizona State University. His research in-
terests are in the study of teaching and educational policy. Among his
recent publications are: Berliner, D. C. (2012). Narrowing Curriculum,
Assessments, and Conceptions of What it Means to be Smart in the
US Schools: Creaticide by Design. In: Ambrose, D. & Sternberg, R. J.
(Eds.). How dogmatic beliefs harm creativity and higher-level thinking. NY:
Routledge/Taylor & Francis; and Berliner, D. C. (2011) Rational re-
sponses to high-stakes testing: The case of curriculum narrowing and the
harm that follows. Cambridge Journal of Education. 41(3), 287-302.
