Philippine Basic Education

During the past few years, we have narrowed the learning gaps associated with family income. Parents in low-income households have increased their engagement in their children's learning. Parents are reading to their children more than ever. Visits to libraries, zoos and museums have become less lopsided as a function of family income. Unfortunately, COVID has changed this trend significantly. Not only are these visits not advisable during a pandemic, families, especially those who are socio-economic disadvantaged, are under significant stress during the past months.  Above copied from Bassok D, Finch JE, Lee R, Reardon SF, Waldfogel J. Socioeconomic Gaps in Early Childhood Experiences: 1998 to 2010. AERA Open. July 2016. doi: 10.1177/2332858416653924 A snapshot from Tulsa, Oklahoma shows that parents, children, and their teachers are feeling the impact of this pandemic on their financial, physical and mental health. Here is just one measure: Above copied from Tulsa SEED Study The...

Horace Mann, one of the first great advocates of public education, wrote in 1848, " Education then, beyond all other devices of human origin, is the great equalizer of the conditions of men, the balance-wheel of the social machinery ." As pointed out by Adam Harris at the  Atlantic ,  there are "schools that are bringing poor kids into the middle class". I guess it is easy to cite a particular instance in which a child born in a low socio-economic family is able to climb up to a higher income bracket later in life. And in most cases, this feat is indeed made possible by education. Unfortunately, anecdotes are often exceptions to the rule. Citing one or two or even a hundred cases is not enough evidence to show that schools are indeed equalizers. Recent research demonstrates that schools in the United States are in fact not equalizers. Without looking at the evidence, it is tempting to hypothesize that schools are great equalizers if one assumes that inequity is m...

Low scores in standardized tests are known to correlate with the level of poverty in a community. In the Philippines, where most pupils enrolled in public elementary schools come from poor families, the question is whether schools near slums perform worse than schools in less indigent neighborhoods. In the case of Quezon City in the Philippines, this is apparently true. A study published in GeoJournal   finds that schools that lie closer to hot spots of poverty in the city score 3 points lower in the national math test than schools in less impoverished areas. This is not surprising. However, the study finds another factor that strongly correlate with math scores so much more than the number of squatters near the school. This factor is the presence or absence of a clinic inside a school. With a recent tweet from the Department of Education in the Philippines, the government may just have hit a good target for improving basic education in the Philippines.   The researc...

Educational systems should aspire for two things: quality and equity. Although the Philippines has not participated recently in international exams, there are existing measures by which one can still compare the Philippines against other countries. And in a study that examines educational systems in 67 low and lower-middle income countries, the overall picture is not encouraging. Philippine basic education seems to suffer in both quality and equity, and these challenges, as stated numerous times in this blog, exist at the primary level of basic education. Pauline Rose, Ricardo Sabates, Ben Alcott and Sonia Ilie from the Research for Equitable Access and Learning (REAL) Centre, University of Cambridge, have collected the most recent data (2016) from 67 low and lower-middle countries, examining learning outcomes for primary school children from both rich and poor families. The results are summarized in the following figures: Above copied from Overcoming Inequalities Within Countr...

Children from low income families do poorly in standardized math exams. Children who are either Hispanic or Black in the United States also do poorly compared to Asian Americans and Whites. There is an achievement gap that can be traced to race and socioeconomic status. The  Integration Project at the Center for New York City Affairs  has now provided us a tool to see these gaps for its 220,000 pupils in grades 3-5 in one graph: Courtesy of the New School’s Center for New York City Affairs On the vertical scale of the axis are the scores in the 2016 State math test (a score of 3 means the student is performing at grade level), and on the horizontal scale are the estimated income of the student's family. We see mostly purple and orange (Asians and Whites) with both high math scores and high family income. Blacks and Hispanics, represented by yellow and green circles are mostly in the lower left side of the graph characterized by low scores and low family income. Students...

The statistics are widely known, a child growing up in a poor family has heard tens of million words less than a privileged child. This advantage translates to a poor child working his brain a lot harder just to keep up with his or her more fortunate classmates. The inequity sadly does not cease at the beginning of formal schooling. Children from poor families tend to enroll in the same school with income segregation of neighborhoods. Lacking resources and facing mounting challenges, schools that serve low income families are often unable to provide what these children desperately need to thrive in their classrooms. In addition, due to mounting pressure to perform well in standardized tests in reading and math, equally important subjects such as music, arts and physical education are often sacrificed. Such policy actually goes against what we now know from research in neuroscience. For example, " Music lessons may boost poor kids' brainpower, study suggests " by Linda Car...

It has been four years since Nelson Mandela left us, but his words on education and poverty remain as true challenges to mankind: "There are two ways to break out of poverty. The first is by formal education, and the second is by the worker acquiring a greater skill at his work and thus higher wages." The challenge remains essentially because the barriers through these avenues are not easily dismantled. One obvious reason is not fully understanding how poverty and poor learning outcomes are really coupled. Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela 1918-2013 Recognizing that poverty makes education more challenging is the first step. Realizing what privilege entails and how it influences future achievement and performance is the next step. And one must fully grasp the gravity of these facts in order to appreciate what steps are then necessary to address the challenge. Yes, everyone has an opinion. And anecdotally, we can always point out so many examples to illustrate that it is pos...

In 2013, the Department of Health in the Philippines shared data that showed diseases of the heart as the top cause of deaths in the country. Infant mortality is significant but the main causes are pneumonia, bacterial infection, and other respiratory diseases. Acute respiratory infection is the most common disease in 2014 in the Philippines. Yet, the Aquino administration worked with haste even without a congressional budget appropriation to launch a massive dengue vaccination with still ongoing clinical trials. The question of lack of prioritization is undeniable. But enough about Dengvaxia, such neglect is evident is so many government policies including especially those that pertain to public education. And the reason is simple. People are either not seeing what the real problems are or they merely have an agenda that is different from actually solving the problem. Above copied from the Philippines' Department of Health Above copied from the Philippines' Department ...

"For whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them." It sure sounds biblical since it is from Matthew 25:29. And within that context, this saying is about faith. But one can argue that this likewise applies to knowledge. As our knowledge increases, our capacity to learn becomes greater. With little knowledge, the potential to acquire understanding becomes smaller. Inequity in education does seem natural. It is therefore clear why establishing equity in our schools requires commitment and effort. This becomes even more obvious when we consider the fact that we often make schools even more discriminatory. Research, for instance, in the United States reveals that disadvantaged students are frequently assigned inexperienced and ineffective teachers.  The work published in the American Educational Research Journal  looks at two states, Washington and North Carolina, over the past two decades...

To state that there is currently a great inequity in education in the Philippines is accurate. Sadly, my alma mater, Ateneo de Manila University stands as a glaring testament to this gross bias. While 90 percent of families in the Philippines can be considered low-income, one obviously will not find 90 percent of the students enrolled in Ateneo coming from poor families. Poor basic education in both elementary and high school prevents a lot from even entering college. To make matters worse, unlike in the United States, elite universities such as the Ateneo have campuses for both elementary and high school. In the Philippines, catering to the priviliged therefore starts very early. Schmitt Hall, home of the Department of Chemistry, where I spent most of my time during college, above photo copied from the Ateneo de Manila website Below is a socioeconomic classification of the Philippines in 2009. Above copied from 1985-2009 Family Income Distribution in the Philippines present...

Poverty profoundly affects education. Poverty's grip on education manifests on the first day of school. Children from poor families are less prepared in kindergarten. Learning gaps are already substantial and are only bound to grow. Recent research in the United States on kindergarten preparedness mirrors the gaps observed in later stages of basic education highlighting the importance of addressing the effects of poverty on education during the early childhood years. Academic gaps based on socioeconomic status are only expected to persist if we keep ignoring the significance of a holistic approach in early education. Investments in preschool education have increased in the United States. Parents are now much more aware in their vital role of preparing their children for school. Yet, academic gaps measured at the beginning of formal schooling remain associated with socioeconomic status (SES): Above copied from Emma Garcia and Elaine Weiss, Economic Policy Institute, September...

The following is a guest post from Mike Tomelden, who directs a school feeding program in the Philippines, Good Men Feeding Program. It is always easier to appreciate a post by seeing photographs of the children in need. So we start here with the children and end with a brief description of Tomelden's project (More information is provided on the Facebook page, The Reading, Literacy and Feeding Program ): Love To Learn  by Mike Tomelden Grade 1 Previous weight: 34.2 lbs. Current weight: 38.2 lbs. Grade 2 Previous weight:  30.36 lbs. Current weight:  32.2 lbs. Grade 2 Previous weight:   38.5 lbs. Current weight: 42.5 lbs. Grade 2 Previous weight:     42.2 lbs. Current weight:   55 lbs. Grade 2 Previous weight:  39.38 lbs. Current weight: 52.0 lbs. Grade 3 Previous weight:  43.6 lbs. Current weight:  50 lbs. Graduates of the Let’s Read program and beneficiaries o...

Children growing up in a poor family experience times when their basic needs are not met. Not having enough money to buy food and clothes can have a significant impact on a child's performance in school. In the United States, there is a Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP (formerly called "Food Stamps") which provides financial assistance to poor families so that they can meet their nutritional needs. A family of four, for instance, can receive as much as $640 per month. In most instances, this amount is not really adequate for the entire month such that during the final days of the month, the chance of nutritional deficiencies becomes higher. Recent research shows that the academic performance of children correlates with the benefits cycle such that performance is poorer when the "Food Stamps" have run out. When a math exam is administered 26 days after SNAP benefits are received, students' scores are lower: Above based on data provid...

A measure of college readiness, ACT scores, shows just how much multiple doses of disadvantage can affect academic achievement. It really gets worse if a child comes from a poor household, if a child's parents did not go to college, and if a child comes from a minority group. A child who does not meet any of these conditions (54% college-ready) is six times more likely to be ready for college than a child who is poor, black, and whose parents did not go to college (9% college-ready). These results show that the major problem basic education in the United States faces is indeed inequity. The scores point to a serious and lingering problem in US schools: a well established disparity in quality and resources between schools that serve mostly poor and minority children and schools that do not. Above copied from The Condition of College and Career Readiness 2017 The situation is worse if one considers readiness in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). A non-di...

List prices of homes in Fairfax county in Virginia depend a lot on the zip code. The median price in 22180 (Vienna, VA) is $1.4 million while in 22003 (Annandale, VA), it is $600 K (Data from Metropolitan Regional Information Systems, Inc.). Madison High School in Vienna has 9% of its students coming from low income families while Annandale High School has 52% of its students coming from poor households. What school a child attends is decided by the zone that child lives in. Salvatore Saporito of the College of William & Mary recently examined how the shape of a school zone relates to enrollment segregation by income. His paper published in the American Education Research Journal shows that "school districts with the most irregularly shaped zones have less income segregation than school districts with compact zones." When something is irregularly shaped, it is usually a sign that someone has spent extra effort in drawing the boundary lines. Take, for instance, the Falc...