Education Week - May 11, 2016 - 22

COMMENTARY

Relative
Motion in
Education

By Arthur H. Camins
s my morning train passed through
the tunnel, a faster-moving train on a
parallel track grabbed my attention as
it passed on my left, going in the same
direction. For a few moments, I experienced the discomfiting feeling that I had
spontaneously reversed direction, moving away from, rather than toward, my
final station. Reason told me that I was still headed to my
destination, but I turned to my right and peered through
the darkness at the stationary tunnel wall just to check. My
sense of forward motion returned. Physicists explain this
phenomenon as relative motion. Speed and direction are
measured in relation to a reference point. Contrary to the
adage, perception isn't always everything.
Stick with me. This is a metaphor for education policy and
social justice.
In education, it is vital to remember frames of reference.
We need to know about both faster- and slower-moving
trains. We need to be clear about what we left behind, where
we want to go, and with whom. We need to be cognizant of
who is traveling on which track and not forget to take into
account the complex education transport system.
An external observer of my morning train, or any passenger grounded in reality, would have known that rela-

Getty

tive to the departure point, both trains moved continuously
forward.
So it is with education-with one big difference. External
critics often ignore the fact that some trains have more powerful engines, ride on tracks with less friction, hold a larger
supply of fuel, and carry different passengers. However, unlike physicists, policymakers often forget to consider frames
of reference. They ignore a fundamental principle of science.
Scientists use models to investigate and explain the natural
world, but understand that models have limits. Designers of
current education improvement, on the other hand, tend to
focus blame on teachers and principals while ignoring other
significant parts of the system. It is like blaming the driv-

ers, conductors, and passengers for the speed and arrival
time of the slower train.
Many current education policymakers try to explain complex phenomena such as disparity in education outcomes
with reference to only some parts of the system, such as
teachers' or students' persistence. They ignore other contributing factors, such as unemployment, family and neighborhood stability, differential access to health care, and
inequitable school funding. When they look exclusively at
narrowly defined scores on standardized tests, everything
seems like backward motion. When some critics of American education look at seemingly faster-moving school systems such as those in Finland or Ontario, they only notice

Education Policy Should Address Student Poverty
By Helen Ladd, Pedro Noguera,
Paul Reville, & Joshua Starr

ducation policy in the United States has
taken a turn in a new direction, and
anyone with a stake in public education should celebrate this. Policymakers increasingly recognize that stresses
related to student poverty-hunger,
chronic illness, and, in too many cases,
trauma-are the key barriers to teaching and learning. And calls for tending not only to the
academic but also the social, emotional, and physical
needs of children are gaining ground across the country.
Indeed, the inclusion of the whole-child perspective in
the Every Student Succeeds Act shows that this mindset
has moved from the margins to the mainstream.
This is a far cry from where we were as a country in
June 2008, when a diverse array of education, health,
economics, faith, and civil rights leaders-including
two of us, Helen Ladd and Pedro Noguera-created the
Broader, Bolder Approach to Education to advance an
education policy agenda that addresses the barriers poverty poses to children's educational success. Eight years
ago, we urged policymakers to implement quality earlychildhood-education programs, health and nutrition supports, and enriching after-school and summer options for
students. Research shows that these supports are critical
to boosting achievement and helping students graduate
with the skills to succeed in college, careers, and life.
Although it was backed by substantial scholarly evidence, many dismissed the agenda as radical. An opposing camp led by civil rights organizations and highprofile district leaders called the initiative's focus on
mitigating the effects of poverty an "excuse" for weak

[We must]
ground school
improvement
efforts in
community
input so that
key voices are
heard, valuable
assets are
leveraged, and
critical needs
are met."

22 | EDUCATION WEEK | May 11, 2016 | www.edweek.org/go/commentary

accountability and bad teaching. Their perspective has largely driven education policy, resulting
in more high-stakes testing and a "no excuses"
mindset for most reform efforts.
But it is clearer every day that their strategy
hasn't worked. Gaps in achievement have persisted and even grown. For example, stagnation or
declines in scores on the National Assessment of
Educational Progress, or NAEP, among Englishlanguage learners and racial and ethnic minority students have highlighted growing deficits for
those students relative to their more advantaged
peers. And as Detroit, Newark, N.J., and other
high-povery urban districts that emphasized
the use of student test scores to make key decisions show, poverty and structural racism stand
in the way of substantially improving academic
and social outcomes and limit the success of attempts to improve teaching. The good news is that
when poor children have the same opportunities
as their better-off peers-high-quality prekindergarten, enriching after-school activities, reliable
health care, and nutritious meals-their teachers
can teach more effectively, and they can achieve
at higher levels.
Our increasing national understanding of the
importance of such opportunities has led to a shift
toward better education policy. High-quality prekindergarten is a top priority for the Obama administration, and cities from Boston to New York
to San Antonio are demonstrating how to make
it happen. New York City increased the number of children served in quality, full-day pre-K
programs from 13,000 to over 70,000 in just two
years. With growing numbers of students coming
to class hungry, the community-eligibility provi-

sion in the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010
has helped high-poverty schools not only make
lunch available to all students in high-poverty
schools, but also serve them breakfast and even
dinner. And in teacher-powered schools, those
closest to the classroom-teachers, parents, and
students themselves, who were sidelined just a
few years ago-are taking on a more central role
in shaping school policy.
The challenge we now face is to transform
these examples into a cohesive response to the
widespread injustice and poverty that continue
to hold schools and students back. Racial inequities-such as hugely disparate rates of expulsion
between black and white students and the lack
of college-preparatory coursework in high schools
serving students of color-are endemic. And for
the first time since the federal government began
subsidizing school meals, over half of all U.S. public school students now qualify for free or reducedprice lunch.
We need a refreshed policy agenda that builds
on this momentum to broadly define public education as a public good that directly mitigates
poverty's impacts and prepares all students for
college, careers, and civic engagement by supporting learning from birth year-round.
This means providing schools with the resources
to both meet the full range of student needs and
attract middle-class families to reduce segregation, which has been on the rise since desegregation efforts were dismantled in the 1980s. It means
designing accountability systems that help teachers improve their craft and make working in highneeds schools more attractive. Massachusetts and
New Jersey have long been leaders in providing eq-

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Education Week - May 11, 2016

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