Effects of Inequality and Poverty vs. Teachers and Schooling on America’s Youth
Below are my annotations from the article "Effects of Inequality and Poverty vs. Teachers and Schooling on America’s Youth"- by David C. Berliner (can be read here)
Questions:
Where was the 20% found to be the amount a school effects a student’s score on an achievement test?
What is the evidence to support the use of “few would” or “vast majority?” The use of few and majority may make the reader to assume the following is common knowledge if so many believe in it.
Reactions:
The author uses many statistics without explaining where they are being taken from which does not make them supportable. The author also makes claims with citations but still does not support the claims.
The claim made by the author regarding how an eighteen year old teenager has spent 10% of their life in school and an astronomical 90% of their lives in a possibly toxic family environment is outrageous. The author says to do the math so I did. If you assume that a school year is ten month with thirty days in each month and each day is an eight hour school day a student will spend 2,400 hours in school each year. During that year assuming the child gets a full eight hours of sleep 365 days a year they will spend 2,920 hours sleeping leaving 3,440 hours with “family”. Furthermore, if you expand these numbers for a thirteen year school career (K-12) a student will spend 1,300 days in school, 1,581.6 days sleeping, and 1,863.3 days with their family. I do not see where the 90-10 populated from.
Connections:
The statements made by the author on page 6 regarding how funding high poverty schools is less than that of schools that have a lower poverty percentage I found to be a miss representation for as future teachers we know that Title 1 schools or schools in low socioeconomic areas receive more total funds for their schools.
Restatements:
The author is using the issue of class difference formed from a capitalistic society in order to make a claim that it is keeping children from learning. I still do not see what support the author has truly supplied to back up any kind of connection. Throughout the article the author references Finland and their 4% child poverty rate to the United States’ 20%, however the population of Finland in 2013 shows to be under 5.5 million while the population of the United States in 2014 shows to be over 318 million. I find it very misguiding to use a country who population is under 2% of that of the United States.
Applications:
I find it hard to see how I might use any of the “ideas” the author pushed in this article for I do not agree with most of what he is saying or how he is saying it. The author makes claims without giving evidence to support. He habitually used countries with a small population to compare with the United States. A way that I could possibly use parts of this article in my practice is to show a modern take on socialism.
