Lessons from the War on Poverty May Help Fix Education

The first challenge is agreeing that the problem in education is simple: Too many kids aren’t being educated

In 1990, more than one-in-five Minnesota children lived in poverty. By 2020, the rate had fallen to less than one-in-20, a decline of 78%. Minnesota is out-pacing even the strong gains the nation has made in reducing the number of children living in poverty.

This spectacular success story likely would come as a surprise to partisans on both the progressive left and the conservative right who fought legislative battles over welfare in the 1990s and beyond. Start with the liberals. They roundly criticized President Bill Clinton’s 1996 plan “to end welfare as we know it.”Clinton’s legislation included controversial provisions that tied welfare benefits to employment that were opposed by many progressives.

As it turns out, Clinton had a point, especially when employment at low wages was supplemented by public support. Clinton’s 1993 Earned Income Tax Credit did just that, giving low-income families significant tax incentives to work.

While conservatives generally cheer the work-for-benefits mandates they long have championed, there is more to the story. Government programs play an essential role in reducing poverty, a fact many conservatives won’t acknowledge. The refundable child tax credits and other benefits for low-income families in the Covid recovery programs were key to reducing the federal rate of poverty to 5.2% in 2021. Making access to health care under the Affordable Care Act has reduced the number of children without health coverage to a record 2% and for many stopped the downward economic spiral that a health crisis can start.

All these efforts - conservative and liberal - and a strong economy have driven the national rate of children living in poverty to a record low of 5.2% in 2021.

The takeaway from the fight against poverty is this: simplify the problem, and solutions more readily are available. The fundamental challenge facing people in poverty is that they are poor. They don’t have enough money to make the kind of decisions financially stable people take for granted. It’s not that poor people are lazy, morally bankrupt or incapable of working and earning.  It’s that they don’t have enough money.

When reforms started to combine public support with personal responsibility, spectacular gains in solving the challenges were possible. Democrats and Republicans were able to agree that many welfare programs weren’t working for beneficiaries or for the taxpayers who supported their cost. Programs were expensive and often were recycling poverty, not giving people a meaningful leg up. Eventually, Democrats and Republicans brokered agreements that took some from the left and some from the right. Not perfect, but the results have been impressive by any standard.

This is not a declaration of victory in the war against poverty. Inflation takes a terrible toll on those who can least afford it, and likely will cause poverty rates to increase. The Covid-related increases in the refundable tax credits that contributed so much to the latest round of reductions in poverty have been reduced or eliminated. The lack of affordable housing remains a national crisis and health care, even with Obamacare, remains financially out of reach for many.

There also is the harsh reality of what constitutes poverty. Federal guidelines for 2022 consider a family of four to be living in poverty only if their income is less than $27,750. Even with the benefits that supplement that income, it’s no easy task for a family of four to keep their heads above water on less than $28,000.

Still, there are some takeaways from the successes that can be applied to today’s challenges, starting with education. The problem with education in Minnesota is that too many kids are leaving high school inadequately prepared for success in their lives. Look at the statewide results of the 2022 Minnesota assessment tests. The scores are, in a word, abysmal. Fewer than half the students - just 45% - who took the test are proficient in math and only 51% meet the proficiency standard in reading.

The disparity between white students and students of color - the “achievement gap”- is even more alarming. Among Black students, only 20% are proficient in math and 31% in reading. Similar gaps exist between whites and Native American and Latino students. 

Too many students are leaving school without the basic skills needed to succeed in life. That’s today’s education problem in a nutshell. It’s not Critical Race Theory or other arrows in the Republican culture wars quiver. CRT isn’t taught in any Minnesota public K-12 school. What also isn’t taught is the reality of how systemic racism continues to be pervasive in today’s society. Republicans who rightly bemoan the erosion of civics education in today’s public schools should recognize that if today’s students aren’t tomorrow’s adults who are well-informed on the real challenges of our society and economy, progress on issues important to partisans of all stripes isn’t likely.

And Democrats have to give up on the notion that money alone will solve all the ills of today’s schools. Yes, teachers should be paid more (much more) and public schools in the poorest neighborhoods should have the same resources as those in the wealthiest communities. But funding without accountability provides no measures for improvement.

Too often, Democrats and Republicans talk past each other. They use their narrow perspectives on education as clubs to hammer opponents, not the beginning of finding  solutions. Angry conservatives rally around what shouldn’t be taught (book bans and “Don’t say gay” legislation) and ignore that too many students aren’t being taught enough of anything.

For their part, Democrats demonize anyone who proposes holding public school funding to high standards. It’s hard to escape the TV ad Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz is airing against his Republican opponent Scott Jensen. The ad features audio from a radio interview in which Jensen responds to a question about whether he would support more or less funding for public education. “Less money. I think it’s a black hole,” says Jensen.

What the ad doesn’t include is the rest of Jensen’s statement: “We’re just dumping money and we’re not getting results,” he told the interviewer. “Our achievement gaps are increasing. They’re not going down.”

Jensen could have made his case more articulately and there is good reason to suspect that Republicans do want to starve public education to advance an agenda that favors private schools and home schooling (in fact, Jensen’s education reform proposal prominently features both claims on public dollars).

But Jensen is right that Minnesota is not getting the results students deserve from public schools. Holding public schools to clear measures of accountability- not as a means to punish, but as a tool to improve - is not unreasonable.

If Republicans and Democrats would stop using education as a political talking point to rally their partisan constituencies, perhaps solutions are possible. Start with a simple acknowledgement that for too many Minnesota kids, the problem with education is that they aren’t being educated.

Solutions likely require a combination of investment in teachers and public schools,  marketplace innovation (including support for the gains many private schools are achieving) and higher standards. The last point is essential. Yes, Minnesota high school graduation rates are up, but by many measures fewer graduates are proficient in basic skills. Dumbing down standards is not a solution.

Republicans and Democrats found some common ground to address poverty. Unfortunately, cuts in Covid-related economic recovery incentives for low-income families make the reductions in childhood poverty more likely to erode than to advance.

Strengthening the academic outcomes for all students may be the best long-term investment in reducing poverty and building a stronger society that policymakers could make. And the solutions start with a realistic and simple definition of the problem: too often, education isn’t educating.