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Tackling poverty along with reading and arithmetic
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Kai Ryssdal: Education is the great equalizer. It's historically the path out of poverty in this country. But how do you get poor kids to do well in class if they're not getting enough to eat at home? Or they need glasses? Or their parents can't help them with their homework at night?
What if you took care of a lot of the stuff that's supposed to happen outside school in school?
In the second of two stories on education and poverty, Marketplace's Amy Scott takes us to a school in Cincinnati trying to do exactly that.
Amy Scott: Charles Marsh has a sore throat.
Dilruba Rahman: Go ahead and stick your tongue out. Ah.
Charles Marsh: Ah.
Rahman: Big "ah."
Charles: Aaaah.
Charles is a fourth-grader at Oyler School in Cincinnati's Price Hill. And today, instead of leaving school to see a doctor, he's walked down the hall to the health clinic, where nurse practitioner Dilruba Rahman takes a look.
Rahman: So guess what Charles...
She tells him he has strep.
Charles: I do?
Rahman: Yeah, but it's OK. I called in some antibiotic for you, it's going to be at the Walgreens. And as soon as you go home, start taking it and you can come to school tomorrow...
Most of the kids at Oyler are considered poor. Without this clinic a lot of them would get their basic care in emergency rooms. Instead they come to Rahman for vaccinations, checkups and when they're sick. And she bills Medicaid.
Oyler doesn't just have a health clinic. A dental van provides regular checkups. A vision clinic will open next year.
Craig Hockenberry: We tried to create this vision of a one-stop shop.
Craig Hockenberry is principal at Oyler.
Hockenberry: So if a parent walks through our door right now and has a child that's sick, needs glasses, has a mental health issue, we don't have to send them anywhere else.
The school has three full-time therapists and a psychiatrist who can prescribe medications. Lower Price Hill, where most of the kids live, is one of the toughest neighborhoods in the city.
Hockenberry says children at Oyler are dealing with stresses most of us wouldn't believe.
Hockenberry: Rape, murder, incest, incarceration -- anything that you can imagine that goes along with poverty, and a lot of it went untreated. And over time, we were able to get children into counseling, and we saw our suspensions and a lot of our behaviors go down.
In the late 1990s the Ohio Supreme Court found the conditions of public schools in the state unconstitutionally bad. Leaders in Cincinnati decided to rebuild its schools as community learning centers, schools that would be hubs of their neighborhoods, with an array of social services and after school programs.
Today, the district has one of the largest networks of community schools in the country. Darlene Kamine directs the Community Learning Center Institute. She says when she brought the idea to Lower Price Hill about eight years ago, she was floored by the response.
Darlene Kamine: The room was packed, standing room only and out into the hallway, with people who were quite angry.
At the time, Oyler only went through eighth grade. Parents wanted a high school. The neighborhood is mostly urban Appalachian -- that is people, mostly white, with roots in the Appalachian Mountains.
Kamine says the culture is so insulated parents didn't want to send their children to high schools outside the neighborhood. So after eighth grade, most students dropped out.
Kamine: Children from this neighborhood were in fact not graduating from high school. In the Census data, there was no evidence that anybody in this community had gone to college at the time.
So they decided to rebuild Oyler School as a community learning center that went all the way through 12th grade. Today it has about 750 students. The school serves breakfast, lunch and an afternoon snack. After school programs include nutrition and computer classes and dance. Oyler has college and career counselors, hundreds of volunteer tutors.
Most of this is provided by nonprofits that operate rent-free in the school using their own funding. Every obstacle that poverty presents -- absent parents, asthma, hunger -- the school fights back with some service.
Jami Harris: Fridays are totally the worst day of my week, because I have to decide which of our kids are hungrier.
Coordinating all of these services is an ex-bank manager named Jami Harris. Bracelets jangling, she walks several miles a day, back and forth down the hallways, corralling kids. On Fridays, she sends the neediest students home with food to get them through the weekend.
Harris: We've got some beef stew, we've got red beans and rice, usually cereal, a pudding, a fruit cup.
School leaders say this community approach is making a difference. Students are doing better on state tests. Six years ago, Oyler was considered an "academic emergency" by the state. Now it's making "continuous improvement."
Rachel Tapp: I think the biggest impact is that the kids are here.
Rachel Tapp teaches fifth and sixth grade math. She says when she started at Oyler 10 years ago, attendance was phenomenally low.
Tapp: And now, if they have a need, it's filled within the school and usually outside of the academic time. So they're in their seats and they're learning so much more of the time.
This spring, Oyler will graduate its third class of seniors. One of them is Matthew Applegate. He didn't think he could afford college. But an Oyler mentoring program taught him how to get financial aid.
Matthew Applegate: That's always been a big goal for me, was to go to college. My family has never been real big in college and I want to change that.
Remember just 10 years ago, almost no one from Oyler finished high school. This year, out of 38 seniors, 36 are on track to get their diplomas. All of them have been accepted to college.
In Cincinnati, I'm Amy Scott for Marketplace.
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Vazir, thank you for taking up Bettylo's response. I see what you are saying; there can always be the risk of a certain percentage of the population taking the "hand out" rather than using the opportunity as a "hand up". And yes, it would be a good follow-up report to not only see the perceptions the parents hold, but also the children themselves.
In many ways, the Oyler model comes close to the Harlem Promise Zone initiative. This program has more history behind it as it has been around for at least a decade (or there abouts). I think you will find some interesting stats on their website hcz.org You may be inspired (as I am) by the results of this educational mindset. I am interested because I, myself, am considering opening up a charter school based on this model. That's why I am so passionate about trying to understand the opposing point of view. It's important to know where everyone stands, not to prove a point, but to approach the task with knowledge that can help everyone come together and advance society as a whole.
Again, thanks for your insight. Keep it coming if you see value in it.
Perhaps in another report attention was or will be paid to the attitudes of parents of the Oyler school youngsters. How do they treat the program: passive acceptance? as an entitlement? active involvement in decisions that affect their children?
I believe I may understand Bettyl08's remark about "price." She raises a concern about the extent to which the parents are involved, as I do above. In addition, she appears to be concerned about the inculcation of initiative in the youngsters, namely are they being conditioned to expect society to provide certain benefits at no obvious cost to them?
We are shown that the students develop initiative and persistence with respect to mastering the curriculum, but since that is the focus of the piece, nothing is said about the values inculcated by the curriculum itself or by the teachers.
Implicit in her remarks is the question "does the end justify the means?" Perhaps the undeniable successes of the program at Oyler have muted the concerns Betty108 and I raise.
Liberty has a price. I'm not suggesting that we leave these children or their families to fend for themselves. What I am suggesting is that liberty is worth emphasis in the public school curriculum. Unfortunately many citizens don't fully understand what the American Experiment is all about. Seen in this light 'it takes a village' is not an American anthem.
I'm not surprised that the majority sees nothing wrong with this model. You have been conditioned. "Concentrated power has always been the enemy of liberty." Reagan.
WOW, I am stunned at the comments I have read! Some were so inspiring I wanted to shout for joy (db123) others seemed so disconnected I wanted to cry (bettylo8). So now it's my turn to put in some thoughts.
I see this from many perspectives. The one perspective that permeates all my thoughts is grounded in my faith. #1 - How would I preceive this situation if I were one of the children or parents? From the child's point of view I would want to know there was an extended group of people who had my back. The school is trying to provide that trust to help these children feel like they matter and are worth the effort everyone is demanding of them! Next, I have been there, raising my son alone on less than minimal wages, juggling three part time jobs and trying to keep him safe, healthy and happy. LUCKILY, his father was not a dead-beat dad, which helped. Many are not that fortunate. I struggled with what I was dealt and my son, now 31, is doing great. But there were many times I wasn't sure how I was going to pay rent. With the cost of gas and food, etc., at the levels they are now I feel we all need to help each other in whatever way we can. Which gets to point #2, aren't we suppose to act in community for the "GOOD OF ALL"? How is telling someone else what they need to do (take a day off work to take your child to the doctor) a better plan than providing services that are convenient for both child and parent (services in the school) a grander idea? I was fired from a job when my son was 2 yrs. old for taking too much time off to care for him when he had chicken pox! Not to beat an old horse, but I am in strong agreement with the philosophy, "It takes a village".
Oyler School, like the Harlem Promise Zone, have the right idea about caring for our vulnerable children (that's ALL children if you are narrow-minded and just thinking in terms of socio-economic status). These schools need to be our new educational blueprint (hello Washington, yes I am talking to you!). They help children strive for excellence and prove to them that society cares about them in the process. It also helps schools TEACH! Statistics validate, children learn and retain better when they are healthy and have proper nutrition - the sleep part needs to come from the home. So we have to support PARENTS as well and give them tools tool! Radical, out-of-the-box thinking but the old-school method has failed. We do need to do things differently - EVERYTHING EVOLVES, including the way we school.
I guess we just have to agree to differ. I prefer society to implement policies that give the parents the opportunity to demonstrate responsibility to their kids. The vast majority seems to prefer society to implement policies that demonstrate to the kids the benefit of the state.
This is an incredibly inspiring story, and the work happening across the entire Cincinnati Public School district with the community learning centers is changing individual lives and bettering communities. Kids are gaining access not just to resources like health care and food, but also are having the opportunity to learn music and art and many other activities beyond the boundaries of the school day (which ends as early as 1:45) that have been slashed by school districts over time due to budget cuts (something that doesn't just affect kids in poverty). Also the COMMUNITY part of community learning centers means that there are activities and resources for parents and even non-school affiliated members of the community. And private citizens, corporations and non-profits are engaged in the life of the schools instead of siloing education as something for teachers to handle from 8-3. While of course this story was about poverty and how we can level the playing field for learning so that we actually have an educated American population through incredible programs like what is going on at Oyler, community learning centers are also about providing community hubs for lifelong learning and investment in our communities and children. Bravo to the folks at Oyler and all the other incredible institutions like it.
Parents do need to be more responsible but children should not have to pay for their lack of responsibility with their young lives, health and opportunities. While we encourage our communities to find ways to help parents to see the need for and work on being more responsible it seems to make a lot of sense to put these types of community learning centers in place where they are needed. We tear our hair trying to figure out why our school aren't working and end up discouraged and throwing up our hands and accepting the way things are. In this report we are given another way to look at the problem, one that is attempting to do better for our children. Can't we applaud and hope that others will follow? What is it with you naysayers? I'm still hopeful.
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