A Math Problem

As I've been reflecting on my previous post, in which I claimed poverty, not flawed teachers, is the primary problem affecting the U.S. educational system, a math problem kept popping into my head:

8.07 X 40 X 52 X 18 = 302,140.80

(Minimum wage in Washington) times (40 hours per week) times (52 weeks in a year) times (18 years of responsibility for a child)

The current price of raising a child from birth to the age of eighteen, according to the U.S. government, is $204,060. Now, let's imagine a single parent home. In this home, there are three children and one mother. The mother hasn't graduated from high school. She holds a minimum wage job as a checker at a local convenience store. Even if she works full time, without ever taking a vacation or a sick day, for the next eighteen years, she will never meet the monetary requirement of raising one child at what the government considers an average standard. She has three children. Washington's minimum wage is the highest in the country. If she lived in Kansas, she'd be making $2.65 an hour. In Arkansas, $6.25. In Nebraska, $5.85 (the federal minimum wage). You heard me--the federal government believes the minimum amount of money one would have to make would be $5.85 an hour ($219,024 for 18 years of work).

We could compound her children's struggles by adding some of the other problems those in poverty often face. Perhaps she drinks or uses drugs to ease the pain of her poverty or to escape the stress she feels. Maybe she is frequently fired or laid off from the minimum wage jobs she is qualified to do. It's possible that she could have medical problems that cause the bills to build up. Heaven forbid one of the children should become seriously ill. Any number of unexpected events could put a strain on the family's already tight finances. The car could break down. The landlord could evict them. A relative could die leaving nothing but a funeral expense.

Are schools really to blame for the education crisis the country is facing? Do we really need more rigid standards? Will standardized testing really solve all our problems? Is it the schools we need to reform?

Will a child who comes to school hungry, who wears clothing (patched and torn) passed down through two older siblings, who's never been read a bedtime story, who is teased and humiliated when she arrives at school, and who has already witnessed her mother overdose on meth be likely to be prepared when the time comes to take a standardized test? Or will her priority be figuring out how to survive another day?