Achievement gap is attributable to out-of-school factors

From Group Urges More Money to Aid Poor in School by Winnie Hu. A classic example of difficult decision-making, trade-offs, noble goals and hard-headed reality. What do you do in terms of fairness to enable children to more effectively participate in the productivity and bounty of this country when they are disadvantaged by the decisions made by their own parents.

As troubling, how do you pay for it. Increased spending on those in need is one solution (though problematic from an effectiveness perspective) but where do you raise that money from? Ideally, from a pure productivity perspective, you would issue a bond to be recouped by the improved productivity of the affected children in the future. That's just not practical, independent of some of the ethical issues.

The most straightforward mechanism is to raise the money from existing households that are already productive. But that, in economic terms, is simply raising the cost of being effective, and whenever you raise the cost of something, you get less of it. In order to prospectively raise the productivity of some, you are reducing the productivity of others. In that sort of trade-off, your risk and cost-benefit numbers have to be rock-solid in order to make an effective decision; yet those number are usually not much more than hopes and wishes - they aren't real numbers.

“Expanding comprehensive educational services for poor children is an essential investment even in these tough budgetary times, given how much of the achievement gap is attributable to out-of-school factors like poverty,” Ms. Weingarten said. “Economic opportunity and educational opportunity are inextricably linked, and we have no choice but to invest in our kids’ and nation’s future.”

We do have choices but they are neither obvious or pleasant.