Tag Archives: education

Food Insecurity and Marital Status

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So far, in our blog series on the Gunderson and Ziliak Future of Children research report, we’ve outlined how 1 in 5 children in America are food insecure and how there are more reasons for this besides low household income. For example, caregivers’ mental and physical health, as well as child care arrangements, are contributing factors. Another piece of the puzzle is family structure.

I’ll start with some basic statistics. This table from childstats.gov shows the differences in the percentage of food-insecure households with children by family structure in 2011. Without taking any other contributing factors into account, female-headed households with no spouse present are more than twice as likely to be food-insecure than households headed by married couples (40 vs. 15 percent). Households headed by a father with no spouse present have a 28% prevalence of food insecurity, in between married couples and single mothers.

These differences aren’t surprising. But there’s more to the story.

Gunderson and Ziliak summarize several studies that give us clues about how marital status is related to food insecurity. For example, Balistreri found that children living with a single parent or with an unmarried parent in a more complex family (such as when the mother is cohabiting with a partner and there’s also a grandparent in the household) are at greater risk of food insecurity than children living with two biological parents or in a stepfamily. Also, Neeraj Kaushal and colleagues found that children living with their biological parents, whether married or cohabiting, have a lower risk of food insecurity. In contrast, Miller and colleagues found no substantive differences across family types after controlling for socioeconomic status and demographic characteristics. Regarding unmarried families, Nepomnyaschy and colleagues have shown that nonresident fathers’ consistent support, whether in cash or in kind, is associated with lower food insecurity; interestingly, inconsistent support was worse than no support at all.

Based on these findings, it’s important not to jump to conclusions about marital status and food insecurity. While married-couple households seem to be at least risk, this doesn’t mean a marriage certificate solves food insecurity, and that we should rush people into marriage. Family complexity, socioeconomic status, and nonresident fathers’ support also play a contributing role.

The Fragile Families Study and the work of Sara McLanahan, editor-in-chief of the Future of Children offer potential policy implications. In a recent article about unmarried parents, McLanahan and Jencks concluded that to prevent the negative outcomes associated with having children outside of marriage, women with lower socioeconomic status can be encouraged to postpone having children, giving them time to mature and increase their education and earnings. By extension, since women aren’t likely to marry men with poor earning capacity, men need to increase their capacity to provide for a family. Initiatives such as the promotion of effective birth control and education access seem promising. For currently unmarried families, Nepomnyaschy’s article underscores the importance of consistent child support in reducing the risk of childhood food insecurity.

A Two-Generation Solution to Education Disparity

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Education tends to pay off. Higher educational attainment is associated with higher earnings, lower unemployment and better health. In the Future of Children, Neeraj Kaushal explains that education also influences important lifestyle decisions such as marriage, sex, childbearing, and substance use.

Importantly, parents’ education not only affects themselves, but also affects the wellbeing of their children. Better-educated parents often pass down the tradition of education to their children along with its benefits. The intergenerational payoffs of education are persistent and perhaps even underestimated.

While some families benefit immensely from education, other families face structural obstacles to advancing their socioeconomic status via further educational attainment. Racial and ethnic disparities are apparent by education, and children with less-educated parents are less likely to succeed in school. Furthermore, Kaushal points out, the U.S. education system reinforces socioeconomic inequality across generations by spending more money on educating richer children than poorer children.

These challenges lend support to the idea of targeting education-related interventions toward less-educated parents and their children. This might be done via a two-generation approach in which parents and children are served simultaneously. While the theoretical basis for these programs is strong, the empirical evidence is only emerging. What we do know is that investing in parents is likely to have a lasting effect on children’s health and development, which in turn increases their wellbeing as adults. There is also evidence that adult offspring’s educational attainment influences the health and life expectancy of the parents, even after accounting for parents’ socioeconomic resources. This may be due to children’s knowledge of health and technology they share with their parents and having more financial means to support them. It’s arguable that investing in programs that aim to increase parents’ education and skills at the same time as they invest in children’s development could go a long way to reduce intergenerational inequality.

For more information about two-generation programs, see the Future of Children volume Helping Parents, Helping Children: Two-Generation Mechanisms.

The Promise of Two-Generation Programs

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This week, the Future of Children released a new issue titled Helping Parents, Helping Children: Two-Generation Mechanisms. As the executive summary says, “because the home environment is so important for children’s development, many people think that ‘two-generation’ programs, which serve parents and children simultaneously with high-quality interventions, can be more effective (and perhaps more efficient) than programs that serve them individually.” These programs generally entail parents enrolling in education or job training at the same time they enroll their children in high-quality child care. The issue explores six mechanisms, or pathways, through which parents and the home environment may influence children’s development–stress, education, health, income, employment, and assets–to discover how we might best use these mechanisms to bolster two-generation programs.

A recent story in the Washington Post, which highlights findings from our issue, describes the two-generation approach, especially as it relates to alleviating poverty. It features Future of Children Senior Editor Ron Haskins, who remarks that although it is too early to tell whether the two-generation approach is effective in alleviating poverty, it certainly shows promise. P. Lindsay Chase-Lansdale, co-author of one paper in the issue, describes in the story how it is unreasonable for the child to be the only point of intervention when a family is going through difficult times: “Those gains [from childhood intervention alone] may not be enough if a child is coming home to a family with great hopes, but is stressed by making ends meet, working multiple jobs, looking for work or facing food insecurity.” To lift a child out of poverty, the family likely needs help as well.

The quality of the home environment and parent-child relationships are crucial for children’s development because they have lasting effects into adulthood and carry intergenerational implications. We invite you to explore the two-generation mechanisms and programs found in this issue of the Future of Children.

Examining For-Profit Colleges

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My graduate school curriculum, in clinical social work, consistently emphasized “self-awareness,” or being conscious of one’s feelings, beliefs, biases, and overall state of being. I suppose a benefit of this training is that I’ve developed a habit of trying to recognize and challenge my own biases.

One bias I’ve had since childhood concerns the role of for-profit colleges. It likely originates from peers who made fun of certain teachers at our elementary school because they had attended for-profit universities. Back then, I thought they were institutions where students bought an easy low-quality degree. More recently, I’ve considered them overpriced, insufficiently regulated, and limited in educational effectiveness. Now an article by David J. Deming, Claudia Goldin and Lawrence F. Katz in the Postsecondary Education issue of the Future of Children that has given me a more nuanced view.

They explain that for-profit colleges have seen a large increase in enrollment during the past fifteen years. Possible explanations for this include overcrowding at community colleges, aggressive marketing strategies, a more career-oriented curriculum, and the ability to quickly expand program capacity for high-demand occupations. Importantly, they enroll a disproportionately high share of disadvantaged and minority students, and those who are less prepared for college.

To me, this doesn’t sound too bad. It seems that they help meet the demand for higher education, especially among the disadvantaged, and might even be considered innovative. But there’s more to the story.

Graduates of for-profit schools tend to have higher loan balances and default rates than comparable students at nonprofit schools, have lower earnings on average, are less likely to be employed six years after initial enrollment, and are less likely to believe their education was worth the cost. Additionally, a very high portion of for-profit revenue (sometimes close to 90%) is drawn from students’ federal financial aid. Partially due to the high cost to taxpayers and students, the federal government recently proposed stricter “gainful employment” regulations that could put schools with poor outcomes at risk of losing federal aid eligibility. If the regulations are implemented, some schools will likely need to restructure their programing to stay in business.

Deming and colleagues come to several conclusions. First, for-profits schools seem necessary to help meet the growing demand for higher education. Second, for-profit colleges generally work best with short, well-defined programs that are occupation-oriented. Finally, since longer programs have the potential to amount to great costs to students, they need to be well regulated. The authors recommend requiring counseling by an independent third party to ensure that prospective students understand financial aid packages and accompanying obligations, and to restrain aggressive and misleading recruitment practices.

Bias confirmed? Partially, since for-profit colleges tend to be more expensive and seem to need more regulation to help prevent negative outcomes. However, it was unfair of me to believe these were all low-quality degrees, especially given the strengths of for-profit education.

Financial Aid and Counseling Increase Community College Completion

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In a recent New York Times article, experts conclude that an academic post-secondary experience may not be for everyone and that for some youth, vocational training might be a better fit. While access to and preparation for college remain important goals for many youth, Bob Lerman suggests that more emphasis should be put on high school, post-secondary, and apprenticeship programs to give some options to youth who do not pursue college but still must be prepared to enter the workforce. Community colleges are one place that offers vocational training programs.
While enrollment in such programs has gone up in recent years, however, an article in The Future of Children’s issue on Transition to Adulthood points out that many students struggle to stay in school and attain degrees and certificates. Students often face competing pressures on their time, such as work and family obligations, and these institutions often lack adequate resources to support such students.
More research needs to be done on how to best assist students, but a couple areas that seem promising are better, more personal counseling and more effective provision of financial aid. Early results from a randomized control trial of struggling students at a community college in California showed that a mandatory program on skills such as time management and note-taking coupled with counseling and tutoring requirements boosted academic performance and course credits earned. Some less rigorous evaluations also suggest that individualized programs helping students adjust to the demands of community college increased their success.
Financial aid studies have looked at both sources providing money upon enrollment and those offering stipends as rewards for achievement once in school. Recent legislation has increased the maximum size of Pell grants, federal payments toward education based on family need. However, application for these grants and other student aid requires the FAFSA, a complicated financial form. . A recent study offered randomly selected families help completing the form, and students in these families were more likely to enroll in college and received larger financial aid packages. This suggests that simplification of, and assistance with this process could benefit families for whom finances are a major obstacle for secondary education.
Other programs have looked into how to keep students in school and improve their performance while there. Scientifically rigorous trials at a community college in Louisiana and a four-year public university in Canada showed significant improvements in grades and persistence when students were offered financial benefits conditional on maintaining reasonably high grades. These suggest a reward system could keep students on the path toward certificate or diploma completion.

Many more students are enrolling in higher education programs, particular community colleges, than have in the past. The skills taught and certificates and degrees obtained can increase their earnings and employability, particularly if they stay in school longer. New evaluations continue to provide insight into how to further these goals, but we can start by offering more support services and simplifying the financial aid process.

Accountability from Teachers Union Can Spark Reform

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A recent Op-Ed in the New York Times and a Boston news radio program covered Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), and her proposal for how the union can evaluate teachers more thoroughly. She addressed topics sensitive among many teachers – the use of student performance as a factor in evaluations and the procedures to remove teachers who are ineffective or guilty of misconduct. Breaking with precedent, Weingarten favors using student test scores to assess teachers and agrees that steps to remove ineffective teachers should be eased.

The AFT’s support for these reforms is a positive step in a complicated process. An article in The Future of Children volume Excellence in the Classroom focuses on the role of teachers, and it argues that unions, school administrators, and policymakers should work together to reform school systems. “Reform bargaining” has gained traction in recent years, with the support of both AFT and another major union, the National Education Association (NEA).

“Reform bargaining” was illustrated by the Toledo, Ohio, school district in the early 1980s, when the union and policy makers designed a program to improve teachers’ effectiveness. Under that plan, the first year of teaching was treated as a “trial year.” More experienced but ineffective teachers were required to enter an intervention program, after which even tenured faculty members were let go if they did not show sufficient improvement. The union evaluated the teachers, investing itself fully in the program and helping it succeed. The national ventures promoted by AFT president Weingarten closely reflect this initiative.

Although holding teachers more accountable is a good start, policies linking teachers to student performance must be carefully constructed. Schools may have vastly different student populations, resources, and administrative situations, all of which can create barriers to student achievement, so teacher performance must be viewed in context. Second, educators are concerned that faculty will teach to standardized tests, narrowing content covered in class and giving more superficial treatment to topics, resulting in students being less able to apply and connect material more broadly. These factors make it important to use caution in rating teachers by student achievement, including making it only one component of a broader evaluation.

Research from the FOC volume supports the type of reform recently embraced by AFT, but these measures are only the start of true education reform. Policy makers must work with teachers to clearly articulate goals for teacher quality and to devote resources toward achieving them. Flexibility, peer review, and attention to student needs are key components in this process. The AFT’s movement toward greater accountability must now be met with further commitments by both teachers’ unions and administrators.

Should Teachers Pursue Master’s Degrees?

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In an increasingly competitive global economy, high-quality education for American students has become critical for the nation’s future. Most agree that a key to achieving this aim is recruiting and retaining effective teachers, as detailed in an FOC policy brief on the quality of teaching. How to define capable teachers remains controversial. Some have proposed mandating master’s degrees; in contrast, others suggest completely eliminating incentives for continued graduate work. From the New York Times blog Room for Debate to The Future of Children’s Excellence in the Classroom issue, many question the value of teacher education in its current form and seek alternatives.
Education course work has long been part of initial teacher certification and ongoing professional development as a way to increase a teacher’s capacity and value. Although only 16 percent of teachers in their third year of teaching hold master’s degrees, 62 percent of teachers with over 20 years of experience have earned them. Schools encourage this process by providing higher pay incentives and allowing substitution of these courses for recertification requirements.
Lately, however, degree programs have been subject to scrutiny. In theory they ensure that teachers have sufficient subject area knowledge, experience with teaching, and abilities to promote learning through effective and innovations means. Often, however, these programs have been criticized for teaching irrelevant and non-transferable skills, lacking intellectual rigor, or failing to build new knowledge or abilities.
A recent The Future of Children volume examined whether these programs are valuable and have positive effects on student achievement. Research on master’s degrees and teacher quality has generally been inconclusive, according to The Future of Children article “The Effect of Certification and Preparation on Teacher Quality.” This ambiguity reflects the difficulty in 1) establishing whether programs cause improvement in teaching, 2) taking into account the inequity of teacher distribution (with better teachers migrating by choice to higher quality schools), and 3) isolating the effects of graduate degrees on students of different grade levels. As Heather Hill documents in her article “Learning in the Teacher Workforce,” however, some improvement in math scores has been shown for teachers with graduate degrees in math. So far this finding has not been replicated in other subject areas, but it offers potential for more research.
While graduate work has the potential to prepare teachers and increase their students’ performance, recent analysis suggests that it is not currently meeting these goals. Although more research is needed, studies so far suggest that schools should seek teachers with and encourage the pursuit of graduate degrees in the teacher’s primary area of instruction. Programs such as the master’s in education should submit themselves to more rigorous testing to find what skills and knowledge can help teachers positively influence their students’ learning. Higher quality graduate programs and a more thorough understanding of their effects on student learning will lead to better education for our children.

School Reform 101: Effective Teachers in the Classroom

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The cover story of this week’s Time Magazine “How to Fix America’s Schools,” features Michelle Rhee, the relatively new and sometimes polarizing chancellor of the Washington, D.C. school district. Rhee has declared that the key to reform is good teachers, and her methods for stacking the school system with good teachers are controversial: shutting schools, firing principals, trimming school administration bureaucracy, and, most significantly, dismissing teachers she deems unacceptable and replacing them with new and improved models. One of her most contentious proposals is to pay teachers who elect to give up tenure higher pay – salaries could reach $130,000 – based on effectiveness as measured by test scores and class room evaluation.

While this proposal has divided teachers and raised the ire of the union (which rejected Rhee’s proposal), research does support Rhee’s basic contention that good teachers equal good schools. According to a recent Future of Children volume, Excellence in the Classroom, that addresses improving teacher quality, what happens inside the classroom may be the most important factor in closing racial and social class gaps in learning. “Indeed, teachers are so important, that, according to one estimate, a child in poverty who has a good teacher for five years in a row would have learning gains large enough, on average, to close completely the achievement gap with higher-income students.”

In light of the findings in the volume, a Future of Children policy brief offers a five part plan to boost teacher quality.

  1. Rethink entry requirements for teaching. Teachers should meet initial certification but then required to follow rigorous procedures and requirements for tenure or promotion.
  2. Implement a strategy to identify effective teachers. Use test scores as one, but not the only measure of efficacy. In addition to student gains on tests, principal and parent evaluations and possibly other tools developed by all stakeholders should be used.
  3. Promote only effective teachers. Target professional development to nurture skills and make up for deficiencies, particularly in the early stages of a teacher’s career. If the extra help doesn’t help a deficient teacher improve, dismiss the teacher.
  4. Give bonuses to teachers who teach disadvantaged students or in fields that are difficult to staff.
  5. Promote professional development linked directly to teachers’ work. Not the current model of professional development, but a new and improved model that is several days long; subject specific; and aligned with school goals and curriculum.

— Based on “A Plan to Improve the Quality of Teaching in American Schools,” by Ron Haskins and Susanna Loeb. For more information, go to Excellence in the Classroom, eds. Cecilia Rouse and Susanna Loeb, Volume 17, Number 1, Spring 2007.