<p><a href=“Ever higher society, ever harder to ascend”>Ever higher society, ever harder to ascend;
<p>I thought this was an interesting read. I don’t remember seeing it on this board yet. Rich get richer, poor get …</p>
<p>Interesting article. Discouraging, too. I noted this section, which some kids on the Financial Aid threads should read, as they are complaining that poor kids have all the advantages when it comes to financial aid:</p>
<p>"America’s great universities are increasingly reinforcing rather than reducing these educational inequalities. Poorer students are at a huge disadvantage, both when they try to get in and, if they are successful, in their ability to make the most of what is on offer. This disadvantage is most marked in the elite colleges that hold the keys to the best jobs. Three-quarters of the students at the country’s top 146 colleges come from the richest socio-economic fourth, compared with just 3% who come from the poorest fourth (the median family income at Harvard, for example, is $150,000). This means that, at an elite university, you are 25 times as likely to run into a rich student as a poor one. </p>
<p>One reason for this is government money. The main federal programme supporting poorer students is the Pell grant: 90% of such grants go to families with incomes below $41,000. But the federal government has been shifting resources from Pell grants to other forms of aid to higher education. Student loans are unrelated to family resources. Federal tax breaks for higher education benefit the rich. State subsidies for higher education benefit rich and poor alike. At the same time, colleges are increasingly using financial aid to attract talented students away from competitors rather than to help the poor. "</p>
<p>A chance. Yes you need to work a little harder and ignore your deadbeat schoolmates but it’s done every day. The fact that fewer people are making the effort reflects more on them than anything else.</p>
<p>A lot of interesting trivia, but I don’t think it really prooves anything. I don’t suppose much has changed in the year since the article was published.</p>
<p>barrons, low income students with the same desires and discipline as the wealthy would not have the same chance of getting into a top ranked school for a number of reasons. Private schools often have classes to help tutor students for the SAT and when they don’t the wealthy can afford private classes. Our public highschool used to have an after school program but it was cut along with several counselor positions a while back. </p>
<p>Lower income students are more likely to be holding down a job after school out of necessity which does cut into their study time. Their access to the Internet and the use of valuable tools inter alia: a computer and printer is less.</p>
<p>The ability of any family to work their way through the forms is a challenge, to do it with parents who do not speak or read English proficiently and without the advantage of online applications is breath taking. Our local guidance counselor never heard of ED requirements or the CSS Profile. Like many public school counselors his caseload of 500 students overwhelmed him with just making sure they were going to meet graduation requirements. He had never had personal contact with the admissions’ people at the private schools we were interested in and seemed to be focused on state schools. That is how I found CC, using my home Internet to do research, something a low income parent might not be able to do.</p>
<p>Low income students are also less inclined to have parents how understand the difference between the local community college (you could keep your job and stay at home) and an expensive LAC. They certainly don’t have the alumni status that helps some students through the process.</p>
<p>Even the ability to get to interviews is greatly reduced for many poor students. Private schools often have college reps speak at their school. It is insulting for you to imply that the reason these schools aren’t taking the poor is because the poor don’t work hard enough.</p>
<p>My goodness, the poor don’t work hard enough barrons? Tell that to t he people havng to hold three jobs, the minimum wage, working full time is less than 20,000 a year</p>
<p>I am saddened that people like Barrons have so little understanding of the world</p>
<p>Do you ever get gas, shop at walmart, get pizza delievered, those are often kids working through college</p>
<p>My Nieces all worked almost fulltime while going to college</p>
<p>I am offended for them that you would call those that are not rich lazy</p>
<p>Go get a fulltime job, get paid less than 7 an hour, and go to school</p>
<p>Mr B., if you haven’t seen this and you have the time…
Click on Robert Reich 04/05/05</p>
<p><a href=“Webcast and Legacy Course Capture | Research, Teaching, and Learning”>Webcast and Legacy Course Capture | Research, Teaching, and Learning;
<p>Skip the first 6 minutes.
You need real player or an mp3 player.</p>
<p>dstark - thanks for the link. Reich explains far more cogently than I the thesis I’ve been preaching on these forums about the danger of the increasing concentration of wealth and income at the very top of the economy, which seems to have started around 1980. </p>
<p>I strongly recommend to all of the parents frequenting this forum the investment of an hour to listen to the talk (and look at the charts), regardless of your personal political affiliation. Whether the issue you find most pressing today is global warming, the NSA tapping your phones, or terrorists slipping anthrax into your coffee, I believe that the growing gap between the ultra-wealthy and the middle class - and the societal issues that will spin off from that gap - will be the overwhelming problem for our children’s generation, and not just for those who are below the curve, but for every member of that generation.</p>
<p>(Barrons might give some thought to the discussion regarding the loss of empathy between people of different economic strata which occurs when the gap gets too wide. It may already be too wide for Barrons.)</p>
<p>What scares me is that so many don’t think about the future for our children, they think about heaven and hell for themselves and show little compassion for those that are trying and those that we will leave behind</p>
<p>It is amazing that. Not very nice to me, and even though I am not sure about my religious faith anymore, I still ask, WWJD or WWBD</p>
<p>I have worked all sorts of odd jobs to pay for part of my college as my parents had no money for that. The rest was covered by loans and scholies. Such fun things (for around minimum wage mostly) as tar melter, car washer, cheese packer, candy packer, waiter, contruction gofer, and more I can’t even remember. We used to shop at Kmart a lot (and 2 guys from Harrison for you old NJ natives)and going to get clothes at Robert Hall was like going to Nordstrom today. I still like a bargain so I actually do go to WalMart for some things. But not sheets.</p>
<p>
New Jersey has pretty much proven that reason number one is not the issue - the poorest districts (known as Abbot districts) have been funded at a level equal to the richest districts for quite a number of years now and the results are dismal. Reason number 2 is very real, however, based on my fiance who teaches in one of the Abbot districts.</p>
<p>The same thing happened in Kansas City. Lavish court ordered school spending without much impact.</p>
<p>barrons and funding father continue to amaze me. You honestly have no clue. I teach a three hour Saturday review class about twice a month, during the six sessions I held this school year about 15 students came voluntarilly each time. They were not required to come, but they know these classes help. The only other incentive is about $20 worth of danish, coffee cake, fruit and juice that I provide out of pocket. They work hard during these Saturday classes and during my after school study sessions. (and no I have not been paid for this time or food, although the principal said she would try to get me something)The most common reason students give me for not being able to make it is that they have to work on Saturdays. These kids range from 13 - 15 years old and they work every weekend laying carpets or helping their families sell items at roadside/farmers market stands. Others are responsible for child care as their parents are out of the house working.</p>
<p>Not all poor people meet your shiftless/ lazy perception. We do not spend the same in poor schools as we do in wealthy ones even when public funding is identical, because low income schools cannot provide the same resources as your friendly well to do neighborhood PTA. Our school has no bus and our parents all work so no one can drive our kids to the math competitions, the wealthy schools have their soccer moms driving. Behavior problems are sent to our school from the wealthy school but they do not accept our problem students back. Why? Political clout of the families. In the past, our custodians were sent to the wealthier school nearest us, to help clean up their campus before school started and again before parent night… you just don’t get it.</p>
<p>“New Jersey has pretty much proven that reason number one is not the issue - the poorest districts (known as Abbot districts) have been funded at a level equal to the richest districts for quite a number of years now and the results are dismal.”</p>
<p>So if, over time (say three generations), you fund schools in rich districts at rates 2-3X that of the poor districts, and then, for some much shorter period of time, “equalize” the funding, why would you expect the results NOT to be relatively dismal? “Equalize the funding” over the next three generations (funding “poor” schools at a level 2-3X that of the wealthy ones), and then come back and tell us about the results.</p>
<p>I would LOVE to see the lavish spending. Let me see: average school spending in the rich district at $16k. So new spending in low-income districts over the next 50 years at $32-$48k, rising at 2-3X that of the wealthy districts. Very interesting experiment…</p>
<p>Add a little to compensate for the initial infrastructural disadvantage. ;)</p>
<p>Mini, I think barrons understands lavish, so he must be talking about public school funding each child with the equivalent of the tuition at Phillips Exeter ($25,000 day students) and no more than 12 students sitting at those famous oval tables. I bet that could get us to equality in a few decades.</p>
<p>Actually, it takes a little more. $25k is enough for wealthy students, who have wonderfully enriched home environments to return to, the benefits of foreign travel, home libraries, maybe even a couple of horses.</p>
<p>But it’s the proportions that count, as performance results are relative. Not only do the poor school districts have to be lavish, they have to be 2-3X as lavish as the rich ones. Not forever, though. Just a brief time. Three generations would be about right, just as an experiment, you understand.</p>
<p>I completely forgot about the polo ponies, the german butler and the french nannie.</p>
<p>I am reminded of the old story about the kid from Beverly Hills who was told to write about the poor.
"There once was a family that was so poor, their butler was poor, as were the maids and gardener; even the Chauffer and cooks were poor…</p>
<p>I went to a little old country public school in NJ before the spending was equalized. It certainly was not lavish in spending but if you did the work you got a good education. My parents never made more than around $12,000 and I was in college before they finally had a new car–Chevy of course. All three kids are college grads and doing OK.<br>
We can have this little discussion 30 years from now, if we are all still around, and I’d doubt you’ll see much changed despite equal spending. It takes equal motivation and desire. But keeping feeling sorry–it does a lot of good. Not.</p>
<p>Mr. B, I’m sure that your anecdote is correct, let me share mine: </p>
<ul>
<li><p>a class of “gifted and talented” fifth grade students where most don’t read at the 5th grade level and where one was promoted into this class who could barely read at the 3rd grade level.</p></li>
<li><p>a 4th grade teacher who promoted the above student along with many other of her under-qualified students to the G&T class who was rewarded for her excellance in teaching (they were getting all A’s after-all) with a job as an assistant principal.</p></li>
<li><p>A child who lives directly across the street from the schoool who was allowed to skip school “because it was raining too hard”</p></li>
<li><p>A child who was allowed to skip 6 days of school during the 3 weeks of December</p></li>
</ul>
<p>-A child who was taken out of school for 2 weeks so that he could attend a family re-union</p>
<p>-A child whose father attended parent/teacher conferences (with the child) so that he could verbally abuse the teacher for disciplining his daughter, during which he told the daughter that she did not have to listen to the teacher. The confrontation became so intense that security had to be called to have the father removed. Two days later he repeated his attack on the principle at which time the police had to be called. He then manufactured a charge of racism against the teacher.</p>
<ul>
<li>tenured teachers and the union president who council new teachers to “not rock the boat” enforcing discipline or expecting scholastic excellence.</li>
</ul>
<p>These are just some of the things that go on that you apparently have no clue. They have nothing to do with the amount of funding that the schools get.</p>
<p>I have a few comments about the article. Mostly, I think that this is a complex issue, that really cannot be reduced to slogans and political posturing, on either side. From my experience, this country offers incredible socio-economic mobility. My parents immigrated, with the equivalent of a 10th grade education, and my father worked in a steel mill to support his five children. We all attended an at-risk high school, where more than half the students were not caucasian and the majority were low-income. Yet all five of us managed to attain at least one college degree, and several of us have master’s degrees. Granted, we were fortunate to live in a state with a wonderful public university (California) and were able to work our way through college, typically as commuter students.</p>
<p>My husband’s situation is similar; his father labored in the oil fields of east Texas, and H was also a first-generation college student. He earned a Master’s degree through a fellowship program after we were married, while working 30-40 hours a week. </p>
<p>So, neither of us had the kind of ‘silver spoon’ background which would make it possible for us to move up the social ladder. Yet we now have one son at an Ivy league school and another at a private HS. When S1 received several acceptance from highly selective schools, I could only imagine how my parents, now deceased, would have felt – it was just something they never could have imagined. Based on our experience, it is possible to move out of the kind of low-income settings described in the article, but I think it may take more than one generation to really do so.</p>
<p>Finally, the article states, “Federal tax breaks for higher education benefit the rich.” I don’t completely agree. Right where these tax breaks fade out, and a family bears the total burden of private tuition, there is a crunch zone. I think many middle class families are caught in this crunch. I know that someone will come back with data regarding what is truly middle class, but if you live in a high-cost-of-housing area, and have more than one child in private school, there’s just not enough money. Every car repair is a catastrophe.</p>