Tennessee Politicians Make Excuses, Seek to Avoid Reality of Poverty

A recently released study on student achievement confirms what any teacher will tell you: Poverty matters. In fact, it matters a great deal. It seems the only people who don’t realize this are those making education policy — and Tennessee’s policy makers are among the worst at denying the reality of the situation.

Here’s more from the Washington Post:

High concentrations of poverty, not racial segregation, entirely account for the racial achievement gap in U.S. schools, a new study finds.

The research, released Monday, looked at the achievement gap between white students, who tend to have higher scores, and black and Hispanic students, who tend to have lower scores. Researchers with Stanford University wanted to know whether those gaps are driven by widespread segregation in schools or something else.

They found that the gaps were “completely accounted for” by poverty, with students in high-poverty schools performing worse than those from schools with children from wealthier families.

This isn’t actually news — but it is interesting to have such a comprehensive academic study confirming the importance of addressing poverty as a key driver of improving education outcomes.

I’ve written about this on a Tennessee-specific level before, especially as it relates to state testing and the ACT:

An analysis of TCAP performance over time indicates that those school systems with consistently high levels of poverty tend to have consistently low scores on TCAP. Likewise, those systems with the least amount of poverty tend to have consistently higher scores on TCAP.

One possible explanation for the expanding achievement gap is the investment gap among districts. That is, those districts with lower levels of poverty (the ones scoring higher on TCAP) also tend to invest funds in their schools well above what the state funding formula (BEP) generates. The top ten districts on TCAP performance spend 20% or more above what the BEP formula generates. By contrast, the bottom 10 districts spend 5% or less above the formula dollars.

In other words, money matters. Districts with concentrated poverty face two challenges: Students with significant economic needs AND the inability of the district to generate the revenue necessary to adequately invest in schools.