When Ebenezer Scrooge opened his heart and his bank account to the poor but deserving Cratchit family in Charles Dicken' s A Christmas Carol, he did more than solve all their problems -- he also led us to believe that you solve social problems the same way you deal with individual ones: Find the simple solution and go with it. The trouble is, complicated problems -- like drug abuse or welfare dependency don't have simple solution. And the more factors contribute, the less likely we are to find a magic bullet.
This is the case with educating poor children. It's true that schools could do a much better job of educating many, many more of these kids, and we must continue working to raise achievement levels. But many other systems affect the kind of education kids get - housing, transportation, health care - and it's dangerously shortsighted to think otherwise. This is an important message of Harold L. Hodgkinson' s new study, The Same Client: The Demographics of Education and Services Delivery Systems.
Looking at housing. There is, Hodgkinson tells us, little low-cost housing for poor families (8 million low-income renters are competing for 4 million low-rent housing units), and no more is being built. As a result, poor families often have to pay a disproportionate percentage of their income for housing: In 1989 nearly half the families living in poverty paid more than 70 percent of their annual incomes in rent. And when we talk about poor families, there's a good chance we're talking about the working poor. For example, Conditions of Children in California, a recent report by PACE, a university-based research center, indicates that 52 percent of California children living in poverty come from families where at least one parent is working.
What does the scarcity of housing for poor families mean for school-age children? For one thing, Hodgkinson says, they certainly don't have a place to study. In a one-bedroom apartment, which is what we're probably talking about, "the child's 'room' is likely to be a convertible sofa" in a noisy living room next to a noisy kitchen. Could a highly motivated child triumph over these conditions? Sure, but what do you think the odds are? And what will happen if the wage-earner loses her job and the family can't pay the rent for a couple of months? Being evicted -- or living in a household where this is a constant possibility -- is a good predictor of failure in school.
Our transportation system, Hodgkinson says, also can have a serious impact on the families of poor children and on the families' involvement in their children's education. Transportation in the U.S. is based on the fact that most people get around by car: In 1980, 85 percent of people used private transportation to get to work, and only 6.4 percent used public transportation. So what happens when you don't have a car?
"Without a car," Hodgkinson points out, getting to work "can be a most excruciating combination of buses and subways .... If the ride consists of four buses in sequence, one miss can mean a major delay ... [This is] followed by the reverse at the end of the day." (The enormous growth of jobs in the suburbs, which are poorly served by public transportation, will certainly intensify this problem in the coming decade.) And while the parents are making their long way home, their latchkey kids are probably alone in the apartment.
Problems with transportation can lead to problems at work and can set up the chain reaction that ends with losing your job, perhaps the place you're renting and the relative stability that most children need if they are going to be successful in school. But even if the poor family manages to escape this kind of problem, the logistics of public transportation can affect parents' involvement in their children's education. How likely, Hodgkinson asks, is it for a parent with a four-bus commute to come to a mid-day conference with a teacher - or to take another bus trip to go to an evening conference?
Our health-care system also affects education because it fails to care for poor children. Hodgkinson points out that, although children can be immunized against childhood diseases, too many of our children are not -- less than half the percentage of children in the U.S. than in Spain or France. And problems that affect children and our education system often begin before birth. Hodgkinson tells us that 25 percent of pregnant women in this country get no prenatal care. This results in an infant mortality rate that is higher than that of 18 other industrialized nations and in a greater number of handicapped children. Of the 11 percent of school children who are classified as handicapped, Hodgkinson surmises, one third would have had a lesser handicap or none at all if their mothers had had adequate prenatal care. Since handicapped children can cost as much as $100,000 a year to educate, the implications for the system as well as for the individuals are obvious.
Of course, pointing to problems in other systems can sound like a way of getting schools off the hook. It isn't. Schools have to take students as they come and do the best possible job with them. But the figures Hodgkinson presents in The Same Client make it clear that giving poor children the education they need is more than a matter of improving our schools -- essential though it is. It's an enterprise in which all the systems that affect these kids must join.
May it come to pass this New Year.