There are public schools in Pennsylvania and across the country that have been able to effectively mitigate the impact of poverty on student learning, noted education scholar Pedro Noguera said during his testimony, which began Thursday and concluded Friday.
Noguera, the dean of University of Southern California’s Rossier School of Education, is a sociologist and an expert on education policy, specifically strategies and interventions that can improve educational outcomes for children experiencing poverty. Poverty, particularly concentrated poverty, has profound effects on student learning — but these effects can be addressed in schools, Noguera said.
"I have strong confidence that with the right supports, schools can do a great deal to compensate for the effects of poverty,” Noguera said.
One example of successful intervention, he said, is Abington School District. The suburban district, just outside of Philadelphia, has worked to ensure that low-income students receive enrichment during the summer and during the school year. The district has made consistent progress in reducing academic performance disparities based on race and socioeconomic status, Noguera said.
Unlike the vast majority of Pennsylvania school districts, Abington is adequately funded according to benchmarks in state law. In the district, 20% of students are economically disadvantaged, and 30% of students are Black or Hispanic.
In Pennsylvania, 435,000 children live in poverty; that represents 17% of the state’s children. More than one in four children come from cost-burdened households, where 30% of household income or more is spent on housing. And Pennsylvania also educates a disproportionate number of its students of color in schools with large numbers of students in poverty, compared to other states, Noguera said.
Noguera said 42% of Black children in Pennsylvania live in communities with concentrated poverty, as do 35% of Latino children in the state. The national average of students living in concentrated poverty is 19%, he said.
In many schools with high numbers of students in poverty, children often arrive at school with some of their basic needs unmet. Without sufficient resources, Noguera said, schools can become “overwhelmed” by these needs, detracting from their ability to provide effective instruction. But this is not inevitable.
“The research is very clear that under the right conditions and with the right supports, we can educate all kinds of children,” Noguera said, “including children from low-income or impoverished households.”
Small class sizes, Noguera said, make a difference particularly for economically disadvantaged students and students in earlier grades. Court has heard testimony from school leaders and teachers in several petitioner districts describing class sizes over 25 for students in their kindergarten through third grade classrooms. Early intervention, Noguera said, “is the most effective way to avoid large numbers of students entering high school who are unprepared and unable to graduate.”
Schools with high numbers of students in poverty often also have high levels of absenteeism. Noguera cited research showing that social workers can make a significant difference in student attendance, by serving as case managers for individual students that struggle with attendance. Social workers can then identify and address specific individual contributing factors for poor attendance in ways that are not feasible for classroom teachers, he said.
Supports like school counselors also become even more important for students in poverty, Noguera said. Students whose parents have a college education typically receive more help at home with homework and in the college application process. However, Noguera said, students in high-poverty districts typically have a much higher student-to-counselor ratio than students in affluent districts. In the School District of Philadelphia, for example, Superintendent William Hite testified that schools with fewer than 800 students are allocated only one counselor.
"My belief is that, while schools cannot eliminate poverty, schools can play a role in compensating to the effects of poverty so that education can play a greater role in promoting social mobility and ending intergenerational poverty," Noguera said.
Noguera has conducted research showing that highly qualified and experienced teachers improve academic outcomes, like college enrollment, for low-income students and students of color.
However, Pennsylvania has some of the largest disparities in the country between students of color and their white peers in access to important education opportunities, Noguera said.
The Pennsylvania Department of Education, he noted, acknowledged gaps in access to effective teachers in their 2019 comprehensive plan under the federal Every Student Succeeds Act. The department wrote: “Overall, students in poor and high minority schools are more likely to be served by unqualified, inexperienced, or out-of-field teachers, principals, and support staff."
Noguera pointed to a number of other interventions that are widely understood to be effective at eliminating barriers to learning for students experiencing poverty, such as school nutrition programs, pre-kindergarten, and expanding learning time.
Implementing many of the interventions identified as effective for students in poverty requires sustained investment of additional resources, Noguera said, to hire additional school counselors, reading and math specialists, teachers, and other staff, and to provide training for teachers to allow them to provide effective and rigorous instruction. But, Noguera emphasized, these investments pay dividends.
“My opinion is that with the right supports, with greater access to resources – and the resources should be targeted into the research-based interventions that I've described – that we could see greater progress achieved in the state of Pennsylvania,” he said.