FNED 546 Weekly Blog Assignment #3 – What “Counts” as Educational Policy? Notes toward a New Paradigm by Jean Anyon

 

QUOTES REFLECTION

In her article from The Harvard Educational Review, Jean Anyon looks at the failure of ongoing efforts to improve the status of urban education in the United States, and suggests ways to improve this issue.

Anyon views the core problem of urban education as “…how job, wage, housing, tax, and transportation policies maintain minority poverty in urban neighborhoods, and thereby create environments that overwhelm the potential of educational policy to create systemic, sustained improvements in the schools” and suggests that “…policies to eliminate poverty-wage work and housing segregation (for example) should be part of the education policy panopoly as well…” Pg. 66

Anyon’s belief is that the struggle of urban education is inexorably tied to minimum wage statutes that still keep citizens under the poverty level, as well as affordable housing and transportation policies that segregate people of color out into urban areas rather than help them “bridge the gap.” Without even discussing educational policies,  Anyon tackles the problem of a livable wage in the United States, saying “A raise in the minimum wage that brought workers above poverty would improve the lives of at least a fifth of U.S. workers (Economic Policy Institute, 2004). Paying women the same amount as men are paid for comparable work would, according to one analysis, reduce poverty by 40 percent.” Pg.78

The Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation published research in March 2001 that asserted that small income supplements to working parents (amounting to about $4,000 per year) improved children’s elementary school achievement by about 10 to 15 percent of the average variation in the control groups. I believe the key issue here is that it’s difficult to mount enough political leverage to institute the changes necessary to create a fiscal upheaval that solves the issues Anyon points out. She says “…economic strength and political leverage is not all that is required to transform urban education. Good schools require not only good neighborhoods but – as equity-seeking educational reforms have promised – also the detracking of minority and working-class youth, a culture responsive to students, and assistance to teachers in their struggle to surmount the wall of resignation and defiance that separates many students from the educational enterprise.” Pg. 84

It’s a significant task, but the overall benefit to our communities and our nation is greater still.