How does the Kansas State Board of Education and Education Commissioner Randy Watson avoid having their feet held to the fire with constantly unacceptably low student achievement? One way that has been very effective for them is to deflect the blame. And what serves as their protective armor? Is it not enough money? Given the showering of cash provided by the last two lawsuits, Montoy and Gannon, that horse is out of the barn. No, it’s the one they can always count on: poverty.
While presenting the lowly and stagnant 2024 state assessment scores during his annual report to the state board Watson stated unequivocally: “Poverty is by far the hardest cycle to break.” While real poverty is an issue, he overplayed his hand in two ways: (1) he incorrectly conflated poverty with free and/or reduced lunch status and (2) failed to mention that the system he oversees contributes to the perpetuation of poverty.
Poverty and qualifying for free or reduced lunch are not equivalents
During Watson’s presentation to the board, he shared this graph as part of an overall summary of student demographics. The line of blue circles represents the percentage of students who qualify for free or reduced lunches. In error, Watson kept referring to these students as being in “poverty.” He relayed that as if to say: “Hey, these kids are too poor to learn, what do you want us to do about it?”
There are many problems with that kind of attitude. First and foremost, any student can learn, given the right environment and motivation. I have first-hand experience of that having been a public school teacher in Kansas for 17 years. To believe that “poverty” is a foundational disqualifier is stereotyping at a reprehensible level. Secondly, qualifying for free or reduced school lunch is not a proxy for “poverty.”
I am reminded of a response by then state senator John Vratil at a special meeting on
education several years ago. When presented with free/reduced lunch data as ‘poverty’ data, Vratil’s response was, again paraphrasing, “Are we to believe that half the students in Kansas live in poverty?” Does anyone who knows anything about the demographics of this state believe that?
Well, the education establishment does for two reasons: (1) more kids in “poverty” means more money for the schools and (2) they believe that it is inherent that overcoming “poverty” is a summit too lofty, which thusly provides the system cover for continuing to ‘educate’ students with a failing model.
Blame is better to give than receive.
For the record, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis economic data, in 2022 the percentage of Kansas school-age children (5-17) in poverty was 12.6%. Not exactly half, is it?
Why such a discrepancy between those who are quality fo free/reduced lunch and poverty? Well, qualifying for free or reduced lunch in Kansas is not a litmus test for poverty. There are several ways to be eligible for free/reduced lunch including those that are not based on income, such as being in foster care or the new method of tying free lunch to Medicaid, among others. And speaking of income-based qualification, for a family of four in 2024 the poverty level ceiling is $31,200. The ceiling for qualifying for free lunch is $40,560, the ceiling for reduced lunch is $57,720.
It goes without saying that the real number living in poverty is much different than the one presented by the Kansas State Board of Education.
The public school system is complicit in intergenerational poverty
It sounds provocative to make such a statement because we are always told that public education lifts people out of poverty. While that might be the noble intention of the system, let alone the teachers working in it, the evidence is quite to the contrary. And here’s that evidence.
First, the existing public school system, particularly in Kansas, contributes to the perpetuation of poverty because families have virtually no choice but to attend schools in which they are geographically assigned. They are stuck. To wit:
- The charter school system in Kansas is a joke – the law has been on the books for 30 years and there are 9 charter schools. And each of those is owned and operated by the districts themselves, so they act as nothing more than pull-out schools within a district.
- The Tax Credit Scholarship program is limited in scope – just over a thousand students statewide participate.
- The new “open enrollment” law that is designed to allow students to move to a different district is flawed at the most fundamental level because:
- it allows students to move only to a different public school, and
- the districts are given an out by limiting the number of “available” seats that interlopers can claim.
Second, resources that have been given to the public school system to combat academic failure have not been targeted to those students. The state’s at-risk program, funded to the tune of more than a half-BILLION state tax dollars per year, has NOT been directed at students at risk of academic failure. The program, in terms of improving the outcomes of low achieving students, has ben an abject failure.
Schools are, by law, directed to target that money to students who are at risk of academic failure. The ‘failure’ has been on the part of the schools. Both KPI research and two Legislative Post Audit (LPA) reports have shown that at-risk money is essentially marbled into the schools general operating budgets and not targeted toward those in need of remediation.
Poverty is frequently cited as a reason for poor academic performance, as Commissioner Watson wants us to believe. But what about the effects of propagating poverty through an inadequate education by way of being stuck in an underperforming school?
It’s time for solutions, not excuses.
