Why Government Money Can't Fix Poverty

it's not all about money I think it's a scapegoat we had more money we could hire this or do this it's become fashionable to say oh it's a waste it's a cesspool the problem is in what happened once the money got Camden I think people often forget how poor the city is there's just a sense of hopelessness that this is just a cycle that I'm stuck in there's not many streets in Camden you can drive down that you don't how is this houses in New Jersey houses right next to a Collingswood or a Cherry Hill or a hat infield you can go on one Street and it looks like there are 14 houses and 12 are abandoned and closed up Camden New Jersey is the poorest small city in America but it's also a case study in how government programs have proven tragically ineffective at ameliorating poverty state and federal taxpayers have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on various revitalization projects in Camden over the years but the money never ended up where it was supposed to and nothing changed by far the largest initiative to combat poverty with government largesse has been directed at Camden's public schools New Jersey spends about 60% more on public education per pupil than the national average or about $19,000 in 2013 in Camden per pupil spending was more than 25 thousand dollars making it one of the highest spending districts in the nation and yet all that extra money hasn't changed the fact that Camden schools are among the worst in the state known for their bismal test scores high rates of in-school violence dilapidated buildings and high dropout rates the story of how Camden became one of the nation's best funded and worse performing school districts begins in the early 1980s when a small nonprofit called the education law center filed a landmark lawsuit called Abbott V Burke at the time poor cities in New Jersey like Camden we're getting about 25 percent less funding for their schools the New Jersey's more affluent suburbs Rutgers law professor Paul Trachtenberg was one of the legal architects of avid Birk so he had the winners and the losers and typically the winners were white suburban students and the losers were the growing number of black students living in in cities and the disparities in what was spent on their education and in the quality of the school buildings and the school programs and the class size was dramatic it's not all about money Saul Cooperman was the state education commissioner under New Jersey Governor Tom Kane and he fought Abbott V Burke on the grounds of the school districts in cities like Camden were rife with mismanagement waste and corruption schools were money pots so it was patronage on a huge scale and also contracts you could set up corporations to go for contracts you could subcontract that out and though I saw some good people in urban schools ah mostly I saw politicized problems at the top but Trachtenberg along with Maryland Moore Hauser a former nun and civil rights activist who litigated avid fever framed the issue in stark moral terms more and more of these kids are disadvantaged how can you not give the kids money they didn't want to go in and see what the exact problem was and was it a money problem I don't want to make this ad hominem but you've got in Tom Kane and Saul Cooperman two white suburban guys who knew pretty much zero about urban education we've created this kind of Mythology which is very handy for white suburban Heights to say well we don't want to send money to those corrupt inefficient ineffective places children of color are citizens just as fully as are their counterparts in wealthy suburbs there's no person I know who doesn't believe that Maryland Moore Hauser was a saint and there's no person I know who doesn't think that the goal of equalizing funding in the districts wasn't the right one pursue the problem is in what happened once the money got there Saul Cooper moons warnings would turn out to be prophetic after the abbot money started flowing out of Trenton in the late 1990s the state launched an ambitious school construction program targeted at fixing the dilapidated school buildings in Camden and the other so-called abbot districts and what we found was that less than half of the proposed schools got built and a billion dollars of money got lost the audits of the of the conditions afterwards were very clear people were paying out their friends the cost overruns were unbelievable they're the same things that still go on jobs and contracts jobs and contracts that's money that doesn't go to kids mismanagement and corruption also continue to weigh on the day-to-day operations in Camden and many of the other Abbott districts a 2008 audit of Camden's district office found a chaotic management culture a lack of standard accounting practices and questionable use of state funds such as 13 million dollars spent over two years on travel expenses for school staffers to attend education conferences the state Supreme Court also mandated that New Jersey fund universal preschool in Camden in the other Abbott districts so that thing has been good I think the problem is that people sell pre-k as the answer to k12 dysfunction and if you don't fix k12 you waste the gains of pre-k it's become fashionable to say oh it's a waste it's a cesspool its money down the rat hole all these not very complimentary phrases but the state is the ultimately responsible actor for education so that being the case to the extent there are failures in the administration of schools in the proper use of money it's the state that's ultimately responsible and that that's undeniable as a matter of law it is easy to say that is the state's responsibility because it just absolves every district of their complete and utter fiscal and educational failure for kids over the last 30 years a lack of resource is not a problem I actually despise that argument um I think it's it's a scapegoat we need more money if we had more money we could hire this or do this it's just a band-aid to the problem why not address the real issue which is what's broken right in front of you Bridget Kusano Rosa is the principle of freedom prep one of ten charter schools in Camden just as the Abbott money started to flow in the late 1990s New Jersey's first charter schools began opening and they've demonstrated that it's possible to do an effective job of educating kids from poor backgrounds with significantly less money charters get about 70% of the funding per pupil as traditional public schools but they're also more insulated from the corrupting influence of politics for one thing they have to pay for their school buildings out of their own budgets freedom prep is located on the fifth floor of a hospital you find a way to make it work you cut out things that are incidentals that don't matter and pushing a child to college if you put the focus on your teachers and your scholars education everything else you can figure out is money important yes the teachers must be well paid or you can't recruit teachers to work in Camden New Jersey City or Elizabeth but if you're paying the teachers well and I submit you look at urban salaries and they are paid very very well as are the principals and superintendents so that's not a money issue there are no quick generalizations and the proof of the pudding is hasn't changed because of the money my father was a homeless drug addict before I get from walking tall I wasn't supposed to make it out I wasn't supposed to graduate high school I wasn't supposed to go to college [Applause]

Channel: ReasonTV

Views: 432,147

Keywords: Camden (City/Town/Village), Paul Tractenberg, Marilyn Morehauser, Derrell Bradford, Charter Schools In The United States (School Category), School Choice (Literature Subject), Libertarianism (Political Ideology), Abbott v. Burke, The Educational Law Center, New Jersey, Reason (Magazine), Reason TV, free minds

Id: f0JorXgqxiU

Length: 8min 35sec (515 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 26 2015

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

I think this title is misleading. I was expecting them to show how spending 25k per student did nothing to help the students. However, according to the video, a lot of that money never reached the students and/or schools and was loss to corruption. I think it is unfair to draw the conclusion that the money did/or didn't help when so much of it was lost and spent with gross negligence.

[u/[deleted]]

In 2010, Mark Zuckerberg donated $100 million to Newark public schools. It was frittered away on $1000 a day consultants with no discernible progress on student achievement.

[u/bobloblawslovelog]

I think a lot of the problem lies with two major issues. First, society's ignorance of the importance of a strong home life with supporting parents and a community that values education. Second, the fact that we have a flawed schooling system that barely rewards the best teachers, doesn't encourage great candidates to begin a career in education, and doesn't teach practical skills to improve current methods of training teachers.

[u/[deleted]]

Breaking news: A 20% bump in education spending with no proper oversight alone is not enough to solve deep seated economic, cultural and social problems.

[u/fencerman]

This documentary really takes the wrong approach:

First, how much you spend per student DOES matter - if schools are dilapidated and under-funded, if you can't attract talented teachers, or other funding problems exist then that's going to undermine everyone attending those schools. The US in general does have a school funding problem, mainly with rich municipalities vs poor ones, and the differences in property tax they enjoy.

Second, HOW you spend money matters - sometimes you need better teachers, sometimes you need free lunches and in-school counseling, sometimes you need more lab equipment, it depends. That's why engaged school boards and parents make a difference.

Lastly, you can only make so much of a difference depending on the out of school environment that students experience; if the local economy is depressed, parents are working long hours at low paying jobs, and there isn't any chance for career advancement, then what you do in schools alone is going to have a limited effect.

Of course, to solve that last problem takes some very progressive policies too; parents need to have stable, well-paying jobs, job security, safe housing and a lot of other things that the government needs to take the lead on.

The title is simply wrong; it's not a matter of "government money fixing poverty" or not, when you're only taking one action to try and deal with poverty. It's a matter of needing to understand the nature of poverty and take multiple steps to reduce its effects in a number of ways.

[u/[deleted]]

Washington D.C. spends nearly $30,000 annually per pupil (in 2012, almost certainly more now) and has a 59% graduation rate.

These are the people who are taking over the health care system.

[u/Youthinkyouresosmart]

I'm a teacher in Chicago; not the best nor the worst neighborhood but I'm constantly reminded that I don't have the luxuries of a computer or tv in the classroom or even an A/C unit. A few extra thousand dollars a year to buy my students books and pencils out anything really without reaching into my own pockets would be wonderful. My school has an "art cart" which I've never seen my students use. Besides that, the only other activities my school has is music and gym.

My point is, spending the money on the students directly does offer some reprieve from the misery that is a poor school, but the greater problem lies in the home. My students learn world history from me for 80 minutes and if you're in my homeroom, you see me for an additional 2 hours a day. Outside of school, my kids go home to god only knows what. I'd that $25,000 went to the home, that would be something to see.

If I was the superintendent, I'd create a program for the parents where they learned English, basic U.S. law, civic rights, cold psychology; anything that would help the parents understand how this world works. They'd be paid a stipend so the kids don't come home to an home and the parents can one just one less shift a day so they can be just that: a parent to the kids.

My responsibilities far exceed being a teacher to these kids but I don't have the money or the time to be a father figure, social worker, mentor. The parents need to be held accountable and they need to be there for their kids because I can't.

[u/operationopera]

Ask Russia, or read about it

[u/riprock69]

In a completely rational society, the best of us would be teachers and the rest of us would have to settle for something else - Lee Iacocca