California's 'high-poverty' high schools shortchange kids on learning time

California students who attend high-poverty high schools lose nearly a month of learning each school year due largely to “institutional challenges” — including a lack of facilities, student and teacher absences and emergency lockdowns, according to a UCLA study released this week. 

The study, conducted by UCLA education professor John Rogers and postdoctoral scholar Nicole Mirra, found that students who attend high-poverty high schools miss out on an average of 22.3 days of learning each year. 

The study determined which schools were “high-poverty” based on the percent of students receiving federal school lunch subsidies. Schools where 75 percent or more of the student body received such aid were characterized as " high poverty."

Lost class time became a hot-button issue for the California's education system when in August, students and activists at Thomas Jefferson High School in Los Angeles — which the study considers high-poverty — protested scheduling mistakes and errors in class assignments that resulted in lost learning time.

The Los Angeles Unified School District board voted in October to spend $1.1 million to resolve the school's issues, in part by lengthening the school day.

“The bottom line is that educators in many high-poverty schools do their work within a context of instability … created in part by poor school conditions: For example, insufficient access to qualified teachers,” Rogers said.

Although teacher absences were one factor used in the study to calculate the amount of class time lost, Rogers and Mirra said they “believe in what the teachers do.”

Teachers at high-poverty schools spend the same amount of time preparing for class and offering feedback as their counterparts at more affluent institutions, according to the survey of 800 California teachers, conducted in November and December 2013.

“I think our data definitely shows that teachers are trying to do more … all of these pressures are like cracks in the hourglass,” Mirra said.

Socioeconomic factors also affect students’ learning time, the study found.

Issues such as “unstable housing, hunger and lack of access to medical or dental care” impact students’ time in classrooms, said the studies authors, who presented their findings on Tuesday.

Teachers at high-poverty schools “spend substantially more time” offering social or emotional counseling to students than their counterparts at more affluent institutions, they added. Disadvantaged teachers also spend an average of one hour more each week carrying out supervision, janitorial and clerical tasks.

“Time is often being pulled in many different directions to try to achieve the goals schools have for their students,” Mirra said.

The purpose of the study, Rogers said, was to address the number of social and economic factors precluding students from receiving a proper education.

“Part of what we're trying to do is make tangible that which is intangible,” Rogers said, “to see the inequalities that are just beneath the surface.”

“The only way to create truly equitable and excellent schools is to insure we have equity in our broader political economy,” he added.

Noting that 2014 marks the 60th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision on Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, in which the justices decided to desegregate schools, Rogers commented that in some cases “we have become even more segregated” by class and race.

By pushing for “housing, health care and other policies that encourage class and race integrated communities,” Rogers said issues of inequality in the education system could be resolved.

“There’s a lot of work that also needs to be done outside of schools,” he added.