Low-quality schools perpetuate poverty? Poverty perpetuates low-quality schools.

 

The question of whether poverty *causes* the problem of low-quality schools in the US or low-quality schools *cause* (or perpetuate) poverty is certainly relevant to the connection between economic inequality in the US and the huge disparity in the quality of public schools.

A new essay in the New York Times Magazine looks at why poverty in the US persists despite ongoing spending on anti-poverty programs at the federal level. The essay barely mentions schooling (and, I think, therefore ignores one of the causal factors relevant to the discussion), but because of that it offers an interesting context for the discussions we've been having (and will continue to have) about the relationship between US public schools and other aspects of our political economy.

The essay points the finger at "exploitation" of the poor by landlords, vendors, employers, and pretty much everyone in the US. Not only do many "anti-poverty" programs end up supplementing the revenue taken in by providers of services to the poor, but it also subsidizes the costs of some services (such as banking) for the rest of society. This emphasizes that MANY people in our society actually *benefit* from the persistence of poverty, and, because of this, the political will to *change* the system in ways that could decrease economic inequality is absent in national and many state policy environments. 

Middle-class people, for example, are able to get "free checking" accounts and to take out short-term loans (including from their credit cards) at affordable interest rates because poor people are paying exorbitant bank fees and "payday loan" interest rates that are more than 300% per *week*. (To add to this, middle and upper class parents believe that the schools that their children attend are of good quality, while believing that the *overall* quality of US schools is low, and yet rarely want to pay extra taxes so that the poor people in their states can have better schools.)

In a system where those with political power (and there's no question that wealthier people in the US have more political power) don't have an incentive to make the system more fair and equitable, the system will continue to be UNfair and UNequitable, and those who are victimized ("exploited" according the the essay) will continue to be victimized/exploited in the future.

Some other countries in the world have been able to keep their own economic inequality well below that of the US, although typically Americans believe that these countries have fallen into "socialism" and therefore have less "freedom," "rights," and "choice" than do people in the US.

(This directly relates to the surge "right to work" rules in many American states, which reduces the influence of labor unions, which have historically helped lower-income people by increasing their wages. Certainly some middle-class people, like public school teachers, benefit very much from having strong labor unions, but so do workers at places like McDonald's and Amazon. Who LOSES money when unions are strong? Corporations and the people who invest in them.)

Why Poverty Persists in America https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/09/magazine/poverty-by-america-matthew-desmond.html?unlocked_article_code=TgTi2FUIdlesoZ3PfhF3FlpYZ9BVgrqix3AzZ5KykWHKxq1eIt9wx2tGIlXTTZ34vhV8ov0LRm4Q8GAWjBpyHBHANYxVd-4oSdkwkrkALHxQNkg2pUoF0aMsQlBz9-fUHzgFCqprDjyQPai6ZxWrGo-QwC6QE1m0GYxVMmJaZ16IwCqx9PeIHsz3h9JKlH22mfdl1a6aGishw2MyIU6oqlGHE6Sr62GYMWIzzqIHq7NZCAYHrL-Z_YLlIanewOSBQLF0ffF3EzZR2SEeFLEHdSnu6wYBubkAk8UuWvGnJdGZJpVT7J-rE-2QhDxRKu5z4n9Xd9vBeHUS5ioi13y9IehwRdWIj5JhO2hTr3I