[Xenophon]

Originally Posted by zerospinboson

[SNIP a bunch of statistics]
I'm more interested in intergenerational social mobility.
Also, I recall reading that while mobility through the top quintiles is fairly common, moving out of the bottom quintile is nearly impossible, for whatever reason.

There is certainly a lot of intergenerational mobility among the top four quintiles. So let's look at the bottom quintile. There's a bunch of research that suggests that the percentage of the bottom quintile who are there for the very long term (thinking single-generation here) is pretty small. So... How do we measure which quintile your previous generation came from? (I don't have a good answer for this, btw.)

If we restrict the question to the much smaller group who are in that bottom quintile for the long term (perhaps even their entire lives), we are certainly looking at the "hard-core poverty" end of things. People certainly do move out of that quintile (from one generation to the next), but I suspect that it is less frequent than one might like.

Anecdote time: My mother-in-law's parents were hard-scrabble farmers in the deep south of the US. The "white trash" stereotype almost fit, except that they were "hardworking hard-core poor", rather than "lazy shiftless hard-core poor." (No intent of perpetuating the stereotype -- it's just the quickest way to set the stage!) My MiL was first in generations of her family to go to college. Her younger brother did the same. Her cousins also moved out of that bottom quintile by different routes: One started a tiny business using a cart (and mule!) to bring inexpensive supplies to backwoods farms and built from there to a major convenience-store/gas-station chain (making more money than I ever will in the process); another joined the Army, got trained as a mechanic/pipe-fitter and wound up as managing all maintenance activity for the regional gas company. I'll spare you the rest of the list -- suffice it to say that although my wife's grand-parents (and their siblings and ancestors before that back into the early 1800s) were solidly poorest-of-the-poor, none of her cousins and second-cousins are in that bottom quintile nor are/were any of her mother's generation.

Originally Posted by zerospinboson

[SNIP more statistics]
[On my comments about doing OK by actually learning something through high-school...]
Sure, but by leaving those families to fend for themselves, you're dooming everyone of the next generation that springs from them as well, except those happy few that are motivated enough to know what they want at age 15.

Or we could state this a different way. Who decides how children "should be" raised. I certainly have strong ideas. So do you. So do lots of people. Problem is, we all disagree! So who decides? Parents? Courts? The city/state/federal government? Who makes the decisions?

The U.S. answer has traditionally been that decisions about child-rearing rest firmly with the parent themselves as long as those decisions stay clear of outright abuse. Other cultures have made other decisions; this is our tradition.

That doesn't mean, however, that I can't try to convince people that a change of attitude or approach might yield greatly improved results. And there're lots of ways to support better learning in the inner city (just for one example).

Originally Posted by zerospinboson

[on my comments about access to elite (and also less-than-elite) colleges]
Yeah, but available to how many? It's all well and good, this philantropy thing, but it doesn't really solve systemic issues.

In terms of "available to how many?" the answer is this: You're more likely to have trouble paying for college if your family is in the 3rd or 4th quintiles (the "middle class"). Financial aid for families in the bottom two quintiles is much much more generous than it is for middle class families. Of course, the top quintile needs the aid the least so the fact that they won't get any aid is of little importance. The key distinction is this: Government financial aid to students is about the same across the bottom 3 quintiles; it tails off rapidly in the fourth quintile. But the colleges and universities expect parents in the middle to bear a very significant part of the cost of tuition, room and board. This includes parents going deeply into debt to pay for "their share" of their children's education. By comparison, the schools recognize that families in the bottom two quintiles just can't cover any of that expense, so they don't ask them to -- they typically just waive whatever costs aren't covered by State and Federal aid. This isn't quite universal across all of US higher ed, but it's darned close!

Note that in all cases where there's any aid at all, the student will leave school with substantial student loans to pay off. That's not a variable here -- it's true of essentially all students unless their parents can just write a check for college (that would be part of the top quintile, not even all of it).

So if your family is in the bottom 40% economically, your biggest worry about college isn't paying for it -- that'll be taken care of. Your big worry is doing well enough in school to be admitted in the first place! And many Universities have very active outreach programs to help disadvantaged high-school students catch up with the necessary education for college admission. Again, not all colleges, but it's very widespread! Twenty-seven of the thirty-plus colleges and universities here in Pittsburgh do this (for example). My university has a (free!) summer program for hundreds (many hundreds) of disadvantaged students from the Western third of the state.

Originally Posted by zerospinboson

[On attitudes towards education among parents and children...]
And among which classes are these attitudes most common? those who already made it, or those who feel it's hopeless?
It's not about what I would do as a parent, it's about what a parent living in that bottom quintile (or the bottom 30-35%, if you believe the above quotes) would do to their children.

See my previous discussion on "who decides?" Do I get to decide that your kids must pursue college (rather than plumbing, or carpentry or being a mechanic)? Whose value system wins?

Originally Posted by zerospinboson

My whole point with this isn't that it's noble to want to help people, it's that not letting the govt do this means that the efforts will be unreliable for those who want it, and not mandatory for those who don't. Caritas is inefficient, if for no other reason than that it's too small-scale.
Access to primary/secondary education isn't a right, it's a duty.

Caritas is very efficient in several important ways. First, those of us who go out and volunteer and work for what we believe in give what we can afford for causes we wish to support. By comparison, when you mandate things via government action and pay for them via taxation, you take from everyone (semi-voluntarily at best!) and spend the $$ in directions that the taxpayers may well disagree with. See the idea of "tyranny of the majority" for just one principled objection to this. Secondly, the people who choose to take advantage of (for example) the adult education charity my wife volunteers for are there because they want to be. The time, energy, and money she puts in go to recipients who want it rather than to those who are being "forced to sit there in a boring class in school." Finally, if you wish to talk about "efficiency" I would point out that the cost to educate a student from near-nowhere to a GED through that charity is a tiny fraction of what is spent on the "education" that they didn't actually get in the public schools in the first place. We're talking waaaay less than 10% of the cost.

US average cost-per-student in public schools is $5000 per year, for 12 years if they don't drop out, for a total of $60K per student through the end of high-school. Pittsburgh public schools spend more than that. The Literacy Council spends under $2.5K to take a student from 2nd grade through GED. If you add in a nominal cost for volunteer labor (at average teacher salaries) it comes to around $5K.

Inefficient is the wrong charge! I'll grant the "small-scale" aspect. But in terms of financial efficiency they kick butt and take names.

Originally Posted by zerospinboson

[On my observation that you can learn, even in schools that suck.]
Yes, you can. The problem with teens, however, is that their brains aren't even fully grown yet, and specifically those areas of the brain that deal with "persistence", or the strength/will to motivate yourself to do something have not. (Has to do with myelination, which only finishes around your mid-20s.)
Why would you want to create extra barriers for children that probably already come from a bad household (something they can do nothing about)?
[SNIP some discussion of healthcare, because I'm not up to taking that on after working on the rest of this note]
Also, you're welcome

Your point about physical development of the brain is well taken. It's probably a large part of the reason why (as I wrote) "education outcomes are far more strongly influenced by family attitudes than by the outside world" (I'm curious why you snipped that bit, btw). Because (in some families) the family pushes the kid into working at learning when they wouldn't have done so on their own.

As for "creating extra barriers for children ... from a bad household"... I don't want to create extra barriers for them. I observe, however, that the typical government-run approach (in America, at least) amounts to "let's spend lots more money to do more of what already isn't working." So far that path has led to declining outcomes even as per-student expenditure has doubled (in real, inflation-adjusted dollars).

I don't claim to have a solution, however. So instead, I help attack a part of the problem where I can make a real difference -- teaching adults who were not well-served by the system when they were young. This lets them help their children (or sometimes grandchildren) with their schoolwork. It helps them value education more, because they see the difference it belatedly makes in their own lives (both in terms of better jobs and finances and also in terms of self-respect). And it shows that someone from "the other side of the tracks" cares enough to spend time and energy helping them improve their own lives.

Xenophon

P.S. Support your local literacy council!