Raise the Minimum Wage, Reduce the Achievement Gap
by Senator Pat Jehlen
Last month, the Senate voted to restore the minimum wage to its 1968 value, raising it to $11. (This newsletter is a version of my floor speech, with visual aids.)
This is not just good economics; it’s also one of the best ways to close the achievement gap, by reducing poverty.
We know that the scores on standardized tests correlate most highly with parents’ income and education. Massachusetts ranks high in both income and education. So it’s not surprising that we not only lead the nation but are at or near the very top in math scores world wide. In the 2011 TIMSS, Massachusetts students scored higher than every European country in 8th grade math, and second only to Singapore in 8th grade science.
Note: to see the charts more clearly, set “view” to zoom in.
Poverty and Test Scores in Massachusetts
The correlation of scores with socio-economic status is also demonstrated within Massachusetts. This chart shows the child poverty rate in the 10 districts with the highest MCAS scores (on the left), and those with the lowest.
American Students Who Aren’t Poor Score Well
This chart shows that American students in schools with 0-10% of students with free lunch score above all European countries. Schools that have 50% or more with free lunch score far below those in any European country. UNICEF says that, among 35 “developed” nations, the US child poverty rate is higher than any country except Romania.
Despite Millions of Dollars and Radical Change, Education Reform hasn’t reduced the achievement gap
The National Assessment of Educational Progress is the gold standard for measuring how students do in reading and math. You can’t teach to it, so it’s our best measure over time. This chart shows that, despite improvement in (for example) 8th grade reading scores, the gap between black and white children has barely changed in 20 years. No Child Left Behind, passed in 2001, enacted a regime of testing and “accountability” but doesn’t seem to have closed the gap as intended.
We haven’t closed the gap in Massachusetts either
Massachusetts has focused on reducing the achievement gap, but hasn’t succeeded. NAEP doesn’t break down state scores by income or race, but here’s a chart from Strategies for Children showing the percentage of all students scoring proficient in 3rd grade reading (orange), low-income students (pink), and non-low-income students (aqua).
Paul Reville, former Secretary of Education for Massachusetts, wrote in Education Week in June: “We were going to eliminate the correlation between zip codes and educational achievement and attainment. I’m sorry to say that, two decades later, it is clear that we’ve failed.”
But we once succeeded!
There was one period in history when we made dramatic progress in reducing the achievement gap nationwide: 1971-1980. During that period, students benefited from:
— School desegregation
— The first federal funds for education: Title 1, Headstart, bilingual aid, and aid to higher education
— Lower class sizes across the country
— The War on Poverty: Medicaid, Headstart, increases in food stamps and welfare benefits
— The percentage of families in poverty was cut in half
— The minimum wage was raised, and expanded to cover most workers; previously most were excluded.
Poverty
Raising families out of poverty is the most important thing we can do to close the achievement gap
Massachusetts has more income inequality than all but 6 other states, and the gap between high and low incomes is is growing faster than in rest of country. Raising the minimum wage is one step toward reducing that gap.
Government makes a difference
The “Gini Index” is the way economists calculate income inequality across the world. The dark blue lines in this chart from the Economist magazine show that the United States ranks number one among all developed nations in inequality.
But even more important, the chart shows it doesn’t have to be that way.
The light blue lines show the Gini Index as it would be in each country if there were no government programs to reduce inequality. Without counting government programs, the United States is no worse than many other countries – Sweden and the Netherlands, for example.
Where we stand out is in inequality after taking into account government programs to reduce inequality, like progressive taxation and government-provided childcare. Other countries do much, much more than we do.
So it’s not that we can’t fight poverty. It’s that we don’t. And that’s hurting our children.
Next Steps
The Senate’s vote to increase the minimum wage is one crucial step, but there is much more to do. The House still needs to pass the increase. And there are many other areas for legislative action, such as making the state’s income tax more progressive, providing education and training for people on welfare, and making sure that Massachusetts workers have access to earned paid sick time and parental leave.
Sources
Chart of school districts from DESE data by Sara Doherty
I have a big problem with legislators abrogating their responsibility to make decisions by putting it on autopilot.
All the kvetching about how long it’s been since it was last raised? Exactly whose fault is that? The Democrats have had a supermajority in the legislature for over 20 years.
You’re afraid that if you have to go on record somebody might run against you? Do you REALLY have so little confidence in your decisions that you are afraid to justify and explain them to your constituents?
Raise the wage. Crash the autopilot.
fenway49says
getting the right policy or making sure legislative Democrats have to deal with it every single year? Legislators are “making a decision” that the minimum wage should rise with the CPI because its purchasing power should not lose ground. If, for some reason, that decision seems to require revision, future legislation can accomplish that. To require annual votes when the CPI goes up virtually every year is just asking for time to be wasted.
Sure, shame on the legislature for not having raised it sooner. But the point about “Democratic” supermajorities is somewhat misleading. We all know this legislature, and particularly House leadership, has long skewed right of the Massachusetts Democratic Party’s activist base and its platform. Were your party more functional, some of the people who have been blocking this would be in it and you’d lose the ability to blame things on the “Democrats.”
geoffm33says
“Raising families out of poverty is the most important thing we can do to close the achievement gap”
It is not just the “most important” thing to do, but the logical thing to do. All kids that are on equal footing are equally teachable. When you address the achievement gap with anything but a focus on poverty, you may raise scores across the board, but the gap remains.
jconwaysays
It’s about time some Republicans backed this common sense conservative legislation. I never understood why so many oppose it nationally. The whole point of welfare reform was to get people off the rolls and back to work*, the only way it works is if the work they are doing actually pays them well enough to enable a basic standard of living. America is falling far short in that regard.
I can understand why a cooperative economy like Germany’s is fearful of a minimum wage (with some of it’s unions opposing that move) where it might actually depress wages. But here it can only raise them. And these companies can clearly afford to pay more, why not have them pay for COL increases for their own employees rather than having us pay for it?
I have a big problem with legislators abrogating their responsibility to make decisions by putting it on autopilot.
All the kvetching about how long it’s been since it was last raised? Exactly whose fault is that? The Democrats have had a supermajority in the legislature for over 20 years.
You’re afraid that if you have to go on record somebody might run against you? Do you REALLY have so little confidence in your decisions that you are afraid to justify and explain them to your constituents?
Raise the wage. Crash the autopilot.
getting the right policy or making sure legislative Democrats have to deal with it every single year? Legislators are “making a decision” that the minimum wage should rise with the CPI because its purchasing power should not lose ground. If, for some reason, that decision seems to require revision, future legislation can accomplish that. To require annual votes when the CPI goes up virtually every year is just asking for time to be wasted.
Sure, shame on the legislature for not having raised it sooner. But the point about “Democratic” supermajorities is somewhat misleading. We all know this legislature, and particularly House leadership, has long skewed right of the Massachusetts Democratic Party’s activist base and its platform. Were your party more functional, some of the people who have been blocking this would be in it and you’d lose the ability to blame things on the “Democrats.”
“Raising families out of poverty is the most important thing we can do to close the achievement gap”
It is not just the “most important” thing to do, but the logical thing to do. All kids that are on equal footing are equally teachable. When you address the achievement gap with anything but a focus on poverty, you may raise scores across the board, but the gap remains.
It’s about time some Republicans backed this common sense conservative legislation. I never understood why so many oppose it nationally. The whole point of welfare reform was to get people off the rolls and back to work*, the only way it works is if the work they are doing actually pays them well enough to enable a basic standard of living. America is falling far short in that regard.
I can understand why a cooperative economy like Germany’s is fearful of a minimum wage (with some of it’s unions opposing that move) where it might actually depress wages. But here it can only raise them. And these companies can clearly afford to pay more, why not have them pay for COL increases for their own employees rather than having us pay for it?