Poverty by America: The most interesting education point

There's a lot of idealism in the later chapters of Matthew Desmond's Poverty, By America. "Why don't we just get people to do all these things that will make it better?" I'm not going to tear into it because I'm reading for the stuff I can take away, not the stuff I'll leave behind. I'm going to focus on page 164, where he mentions an absolutely fascinating educational experiment that I need to read more about: Early in this century, Montgomery County, MD randomly assigned poor families to different public housing units, some in poor areas and some in more affluent areas. The county also massively pumped resources into its poorest schools. (One should always be skeptical of claims that resources were showered on the poor. However, Matthew Desmond seems to be at least as skeptical of these claims as anyone else would be, so I am inclined to believe him.)

Desmond notes that poor kids in affluent areas did better than poor kids in poorer areas, even if the schools got more money.

Now, I haven't examined the literature on this yet (but two key articles cited by Desmond are here and here), so I can't say anything about this with certainty, but I'll wager that two things happened, both of which I see evidence of on a daily basis on a campus that is very proudly, vocally dedicated to serving the most disadvantaged, to a degree that would give another Matthew a stroke:

1) All poverty relief and social services are delivered via "leaky buckets." There are lots of people who get their cuts. Yes, some amount of overhead is inevitable, necessary, and even (in small doses) beneficial. That grain of truth is the excuse used by every rent-seeker along the way. They insist that we need various administrators to plan and organize. We need specialized case workers to monitor each kid. The school lunch program needs several layers of planning to determine whether they bought the most nutritious brand of sugary pudding. We need assessment of all these various activities. And of course we need oversight to make sure that none of this money is wasted on pointless bloat!

So much for offering the salaries that will lure the best teachers, or making sure classrooms have roofs that don't leak and enough supplies that teachers don't have to spend their own money. (Though if they want to get reimbursed I'm sure there's a process available, one with 26 different steps to make sure no money is wasted. The Deputy Associate Superintendent for Administrative Efficiency has hired specialized staff to carry out all 26 steps!)

So who knows whether any of that high spending materialized in ways that could even begin to improve the classroom. Pretending to improve education for the poor is basically a massive jobs program for well-meaning college grads.

2) Meanwhile, you know what happens in affluent districts? Well, it probably isn't a showcase of pure efficiency. Affluent suburbs are perfectly capable of hiring paper-pushing grifters, even if they'll never hire as many as the districts trying to Save The World.

Still, in those more affluent classrooms there are kids who have more stable homes, and parents with the bandwidth and know-how to push them. The median kid in the class is ready and able to go farther, and the teacher teaches accordingly. Doesn't mean that all of those kids are geniuses who will actually reach great heights--many of those tokens of achievement that the schools spit out are their own form of grift that affluent college-educated parents push their kids to seek along their road to a cushy job Saving The World. Some of those kids are being prepared to preach the latest bullshit about Equity and Inclusion so they can prove that they are the most deserving applicant for some do-gooder job.

Still, the teacher teaches to the middle. And the middle in that affluent suburb is higher than the middle in a poorer district. And most of the kids below that middle are at least trying to reach that middle. They might not quite get there, but they're mostly aiming for it, and the standard that they might just fall short of is higher than the standard that they might exceed in a different setting. Offering challenges matters. There's no magic or mystery about putting a poor kid next to a more affluent peer. Some will emulate the affluent peer, and others will feel alienated from the peer. All that teachers and school leaders can do is play the odds, and the odds are that calibrating challenges to a higher but still reasonable and attainable median will result in more kids at least getting close to that higher goal. Some will always be left behind (and one can only hope that spoiled Harvard prick Teddy Kennedy is roasting in hell for pretending otherwise), but most will at least come close to a higher but reasonable median if that's what they're presented with.

None of this is nuclear rocket surgery. You don't need a PhD to see it. Two functioning eyes will do. Hell, one of my eyes is pretty mediocre. One and a half working eyes. That's it. That's what you need.