We’re thrilled to introduce the second cohort of Fordham Fellows and the reborn Fordham Fellows blog to the edusphere. As you may recall, even before there was Flypaper there was the Fordham Fellows blog, which had a good run from September to December of 2007. We’ve retooled the Fellows program for this year, and it will stretch all the way through May. Our Fellows—Laura Bornfreund, Catherine Cullen, Ben Hoffman, Nora Kern, and David Powell—are a talented crew, and will be learning the ropes of education policy in their positions at Common Core, Education Sector, Fordham, the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, and the National Council on Teacher Quality, respectively.

Their first assignment was to read the “broader/bolder” and “education equity” manifestos to start wrestling with the big debates in education. And they have some fair insights and good questions, like this one:

What is it about the Broader, Bolder Approach that makes Checker Finn “convinced that many of [the signatories] are trying to change the subject, diverting attention...while letting schools and educators off the hook”? What’s the basis for the assumption that health and family services must always be excuses and never tools?

I can’t speak for Checker, but I suspect it’s his experience and familiarity with the folks behind the “broader/bolder” manifesto that gives him pause. Lawrence Mishel and Richard Rothstein of the Economic Policy Institute—the group leading this charge—have long argued against accountability in education. They’ve also tried to knock down the success of KIPP and its peers because they demonstrate that schools can in fact close the achievement gap, even when the larger social safety net has holes. (And did I mention that they get money from the teachers unions?) Surely there are some supporters of accountability on the list of signatories—and the manifesto itself takes pains to express vague support for the idea in theory—but the energy is coming from people who are strongly against reform. I suspect that’s why Checker—and others, like Kevin Carey—can’t help but read between the lines.

It’s an absolutely beautiful, sunny day in downtown D.C. this Friday, but I can’t seem to shake this article that I was reading this morning on the metro into work. It’s not about Michelle Rhee’s school reforms, or alternative certification, or pay for performance, or teacher quality, or school choice, or student achievement, or any of those very important things we pontificate about here at Fordham. It’s about homeless kids. It was in a pile of articles on education that our interns gather for us each day and I started to breeze by it for something “meatier” on the aforementioned topics. But then I stopped and read.

The article centers upon homeless schoolchildren in Ohio and Michigan. We learn that Ohio had a 12 percent increase in student homelessness between 2005 and 2007, with over 13,000 kids experiencing homelessness at some point in that timeframe. Michigan had about 18,000 homeless children during the last school year, a 16 percent rise from 2006-2007. Toledo has seen a tripling of homeless kids in the last two years, Cleveland a 60 percent increase. Heavy foreclosures from our current housing crisis are apparently driving the increases. But poverty, breakdowns in families, youth runaways, drug-addicted parents, the lousy economy—a multitude of factors contribute to putting kids on the street.

I feel compelled to pause at this point to say that I’m not raising this issue as a means to advocate that K-12 schools need to be curing all of society’s ills. Or that they need to meet all of the needs of kids that parents can’t or won’t. We’ve been hearing a lot about that lately and I’m not addressing that here.

I’m simply saying that I’m sad about this. Really sad. And I have no answers to put forth. And I have no policies to advocate. And I’m not angry, and I’m not complaining, and I’m not pointing fingers today. I’m just reflecting upon the reality that we have kids living everyday in cars, motels, or street corners. Yes, some are “luckier”—they live in shelters or jostle back and forth between foster homes. The article actually mentions a teenager with special needs who was evicted from his foster home halfway through his senior year. The district superintendent remarked that “We were able to find him somewhere to live—and he graduated.” Supposedly a happy ending, but I wondered where that “somewhere” was.

I’m not saying that the situation is hopeless. I know there are many folks and organizations out there doing all they can to help. But these are just kids and they’re living a life of instability. I can’t quite wrap my head around the fact that they have no home to go to after the school bell rings. They don’t have a bed, or a computer, or a kitchen table at which to do homework—much less consistent meals. Ironically, a child psychologist commented that the routine of the school experience helps tremendously when kids lack it in other parts of their lives. So, school becomes the safe haven. Well, that’s some solace I guess.

But I’m carrying a burden today for kids I don’t even know and, like I said, just can’t seem to shake it.

Coby writes:

Many KIPP schools are better than most urban schools because they alleviate more of the burdens of poverty. There should be more such schools.

But KIPP is able to alleviate many of poverty’s burdens in large part precisely because it has the support of, as I wrote, committed parents, students, and staffs. Sure, we want more schools like KIPP. But we have to realize that there are, for example, only so many teachers who will work 12-hour days, be on-call until 9 p.m., and willingly accept a measly salary for their efforts. KIPP’s brand of paternalism is the right kind—one that surrounds students with a high-achieving culture—and other schools would do well to adopt parts of it. But to embrace educational paternalism, history suggests, is to embrace the creation and spread of lousy programs (e.g., Head Start) that are a waste. At the national level, the concept will be corrupted and money wasted.

Coby’s last point is right, but only on a small scale:

But ultimately, I’d argue, the level of paternalism a school offers its students should be left to the school to decide, and parents can decide whether or not to send their kids there.

Update: Another, perhaps simpler way of saying this is that KIPP doesn’t buff out poverty’s deepest dents and doesn’t try to. Students who come to KIPP already have those dents buffed out; they and their parents are already in a positition that allows KIPP’s incentives to work. If not, they’ll leave or be kicked out.

I’m not quite sure I understand Liam’s objection to my earlier post on the economics of poverty. He says

KIPP and its ilk work for lots of reasons, but it’s safe to say that they wouldn’t be nearly so successful without committed parents and students and staffs—advantages that most urban schools don’t have.

Well, that was my point. Many KIPP schools are better than most urban schools because they alleviate more of the burdens of poverty. There should be more such schools. There are several reasons most urban public schools lack these advantages, but foremost among them is that governments have a near-monopoly on education, and they make all kinds of rules to maintain the status quo, making it difficult for schools like KIPP to peddle their innovative wares in many cities.

As always, I sympathize to some degree with Liam’s concerns that schools who “try to do more than they’re capable of doing, more than they’re designed to do... risk ignoring their most basic function, which is to teach kids.”

But ultimately, I’d argue, the level of paternalism a school offers its students should be left to the school to decide, and parents can decide whether or not to send their kids there.

Coby’s post is thought-provoking. At what point does despair negate the effect of incentives?

A small problem with Coby’s analysis, though, is that schools cannot, on their own, buff out the dents. KIPP and its ilk work for lots of reasons, but it’s safe to say that they wouldn’t be nearly so successful without committed parents and students and staffs—advantages that most urban schools don’t have.

What’s more, when schools try to buff out the dents—try to do more than they’re capable of doing, more than they’re designed to do—they risk ignoring their most basic function, which is to teach kids.

This Boston Globe article from a couple Sundays ago highlights the thinking of philosopher Charles Karelis, who teaches at George Washington University. Karelis argues in his book, The Persistence of Poverty: Why the Economics of the Well-Off Can’t Help the Poor, that being poor causes people to think differently about life, to the point where traditional economic theory can’t properly explain the incentives that motivate the poor to act in certain ways:

Karelis argues that being poor is defined by having to deal with a multitude of problems: One doesn’t have enough money to pay rent or car insurance or credit card bills or day care or sometimes even food. Even if one works hard enough to pay off half of those costs, some fairly imposing ones still remain, which creates a large disincentive to bestir oneself to work at all.

“The core of the problem has not been self-discipline or a lack of opportunity,” Karelis says. “My argument is that the cause of poverty has been poverty.”

The upshot, for Karelis, is that poverty relief programs can “actually make [poor people] more, not less, likely to work, just as repairing most of the dents on a car makes the owner more likely to fix the last couple on his own.” He himself favors the Earned Income Tax Credit.

What might this mean for schools in deeply impoverished neighborhoods? For one, you can imagine that college-prep schools like KIPP, which offer much more support to their students than most public schools, would have a better chance of, to carry on Karelis’s analogy, buffing out a lot of the dents.

On the other hand, schools that simply try to teach kids the 3 R’s and send them packing at 3:30 pm may be doing the equivalent of installing a new rear-view mirror on a rusting hulk. The point is: the poor aren’t just middle-class folks without money. They think differently, and they need different kinds of support. KIPP and similar school models get that.

An interesting press release popped up in my inbox today. An excerpt:

With 13 million children living in poverty in the United States, US Airways has made a bold step to help end the cycle of poverty through a new cause partnership with Reading Is Fundamental. Today, US Airways and RIF are launching the “Fly with US. Reading with Kids.”

Here are a few highlights about the campaign:

• Inflight Customized Books – For the month of March, a customized Maisy children’s book will be in the seatback pocket of every domestic flight. With half storybook/half activity book, passengers will be encouraged to take the book and share it with a child.
• Lending Libraries – Customized, aviation-themed children’s libraries (75 books) will be set-up in all 21 US Airways Clubs where children can read while they wait for their flight. The Maisy book will also be distributed in 2008 in all kids’ activity packs.
• Read with Kids Reading Challenge – Customers and employees will log on to rif.org to track the hours they read for a chance to win US Airways’ travel prizes like a Disney Vacation. It’s a great site with a variety of inactive games and activities for kids. The challenge will last for three months. Visit RIF.org to participate.

Now, I love to see private businesses rolling out programs aimed at educating kids. I fondly remember participating in Pizza Hut’s BOOK IT! program when I was a lad. But this is not a well-crafted press release.

“With 13 million children living in poverty in the United States” we should put more books on airplanes and enroll kids in online reading programs?! Airplanes and computers are but two of the luxuries denied most poor kids. I’d take a different angle if were U.S. Air’s marketing team.