What does this mean? Things are way worse for the poor here than this study even acknowledges. If you're poor in America, your best chance at a good education is by raffle.
http://media.collegeboard.com/digitalServices/pdf/research/2...
I ask because it is well known that math ability is correlated with educational achievement, and level of education is known to be correlated with income. Putting these two together, I would suppose that math ability is correlated with income.
Joking aside, I'm basing that on the fact that not every high-paying job requires math skills, and not every rich person got rich because of math.
http://media.collegeboard.com/digitalServices/pdf/research/2...
http://washington.cbslocal.com/2014/04/07/study-no-link-betw...
You can downvote me but you still have no evidence for your beliefs.
School spending is not the only spending involved. A large cost, roughly equivalent to spending, of the family is that which is spent on providing a loving, supportive, positive, non-absent relationship within the family. This costs time away from work. This costs money cultivating relationships with intelligent people. This provides affluent children with more positive influences, positive role models, and less stress that lends to more focus on learning. They tend to invest more in their children, but its not to say that a wealthy family will invest as much as a poor family with more of a focus on education. The list goes on and on. Its not as if you need to be affluent to provide or invest in these things, its just more conducive.
The claim that low-income students suffer because they are less likely to have families that enrich them is probably not as true as you seem to think.
http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2010/11/the_science_of.h...
1. I think you're wrong about the lack of correlation and, as nickff points out, better math ability is correlated with higher income, but
2. Math ability does not affect income.
Correlation is not causation. The better math ability is a side effect of higher income in my opinion, not vise-versa.
But I'm not really worried about national average, state average, even school average: there just needs to be the opportunity to succeed for individual students, wherever they're located.
(Implicit in the above is the opinion that for loads of national political issues, the biggest thing stopping "the masses" from being informed is that they simply don't care.)
What makes us unusual is how wide the spectrum is, even if the average is bad.
Is it politics? Teachers unions? Getting good admin people? What's holding back these places from getting ahead?
As a comparison, my sister lives on the outskirts of a large metro area and their school has been teaching STEM for almost 10 years now.
Personally, I think the problem is that the public school system can't work well enough in poor areas. I think those children need a completely different education system to work for them (longer hours, after school programs, school uniforms!, etc).
They also are learning about programming and other really technical stuff I was surprised to hear about. The other thing which was nice to hear is how they foster kids to learn and enjoy math - something I missed out on until I was in college and had a professor who really gave me a sense of how wonderful mathematics can be, not just a means to an end.
There is no motivation for someone to teach in inner cities beyond a sense of civic duty. I live in a city with terrible (unaccredited) schools. Students in those schools are often openly hostile to teachers and faculty. Administration is often on the verge of a breakdown due to the pressure to "turn things around." Why would anyone want to teach there? I know I didn't want to.
If you think it's a travesty that talented and bright teachers want to avoid inner cities then you should do it yourself. That's what I say to anyone who brings this up. Often I will be told, "But that's where you're needed!"
"So are you," is my response.
>>> If you think it's a travesty that talented and bright teachers want to avoid inner cities then you should do it yourself.
I can't argue with you there.
Politics is involved through school boards where an understanding of education is not really considered a job requirement. And at state and national levels it's difficult to fix problems that are uniquely local.
Teachers Unions can create the wrong incentives in a district.
Good Admin people are hard to find and bad ones make the working environment unplatable for good teachers.
Add in money as well for some districts.