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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I'm sure this discussion will go astray very soon, so let's enjoy it while it lasts: Yes, please, [b]what evidence is there of any link between FARM rates and any one student's ability to succeed?[/b] Of course, FARM rates are correlated with lower average % achievement by the simple arithmetic fact that poverty correlates with achievement and that therefore both averages of that distribution correlate, too. That's a no-brainer; no need to prove that point. What I want proven is that the FARM rate in a classroom has a negative impact on any one student, especially on an otherwise predicted-to-well individual, as exemplified by PP. And I'd like that in a non-anecdotal fashion please.

Anecdotally I can prove the opposite to you. My mid-upper income and PhD-holding household's child sort of benefited from an environment in which many poor and thus struggling children needed extra help. Many more resources, more opportunities, and more attention came her/his way.[/quote]

Here's one from Montgomery County: http://www.tcf.org/assets/downloads/tcf-Schwartz.pdf

"Building on the strength of the random assignment of children to schools [because families were randomly assigned to different public housing developments, I examine the longitudinal school performance from 2001 to 2007 of approximately 850 students in public housing who attended elementary schools and lived in neighborhoods that fell along a spectrum of very-low poverty to moderate-poverty rates. In brief, I find that over a period of five to seven years, children in public housing who attended the school district’s most-advantaged schools (as measured by either subsidized lunch status or the district’s own criteria) far outperformed in math and reading those children in public housing who attended the district’s least-advantaged elementary schools."

The study does not address the opposite scenario--when a child from a well-off family attends a high-poverty school.  But http://www.prrac.org/pdf/annotated_bibliography_on_school_poverty_concentration.pdf does.  In the introduction to its list of studies, it says that "Mary Kennedy in 1986[b] found that the relationship between school poverty concentrations and student achievement averages is stronger than the relationship between family poverty status and student achievement.[/b] Kennedy reported that nonpoor students attending schools with high concentrations of poverty are more likely to fall behind than are poor students who attend schools with low concentrations of poverty.  Numerous studies substantiate Kennedy’s findings; and at this point there is no question that school poverty concentration has a detrimental impact on student achievement."

It's good that your child has had a good experience.  A lot probably depends on the needs and temperament of individual students, how good teachers are at differentiating, the personalities and skills and poverty levels of the parents (there's a big difference between two parents and a kid living off $40,000 and a single mom with 2 kids who gets $428 a month in TANF, but they both qualify for FARMs).  Empirically, though, low-poverty schools are better for rich kids and poor ones.  DC doesn't have enough rich kids to make every school low-poverty even if all kids went to public school and were willing to be equally distributed at schools around the District.  One way to solve this is to help more families leave poverty.  But that's hardly a simple thing to achieve.

[/quote]

PP (or you) said only wealthy AA families will be negatively impacted with high FARM classmates. Do you have any 30 year old studies to prove that?[/quote]

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