Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Quota system would dilute school's quality

Throwing resources at low-income households can make things worse, because the resources are misused. Here is an example.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/30/us/new-digital-divide-seen-in-wasting-time-online.html
Wasting Time Is New Divide in Digital Era
By MATT RICHTEL
New York Times
Published: May 29, 2012
In the 1990s, the term “digital divide” emerged to describe technology’s haves and have-nots. It inspired many efforts to get the latest computing tools into the hands of all Americans, particularly low-income families.

Those efforts have indeed shrunk the divide. But they have created an unintended side effect, one that is surprising and troubling to researchers and policy makers and that the government now wants to fix.

As access to devices has spread, children in poorer families are spending considerably more time than children from more well-off families using their television and gadgets to watch shows and videos, play games and connect on social networking sites, studies show.

This growing time-wasting gap, policy makers and researchers say, is more a reflection of the ability of parents to monitor and limit how children use technology than of access to it.

“I’m not antitechnology at home, but it’s not a savior,” said Laura Robell, the principal at Elmhurst Community Prep, a public middle school in East Oakland, Calif., who has long doubted the value of putting a computer in every home without proper oversight.

“So often we have parents come up to us and say, ‘I have no idea how to monitor Facebook,’ ” she said.

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A similar story from a few years back:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/15/weekinreview/15read.html
WHEN COMPUTERS HURT INSTEAD OF HELP
New York Times
June 15, 2008

Ray Fisman writes on the Web site Slate about why giving computers to poor children won’t necessarily help educate them.

Parents are more worried than ever about making sure their kids can compete in today’s high-tech world, and the growing digital divide is a subject of great concern for educators and policymakers. Federal subsidies in the United States provide billions of dollars for computer access in schools and libraries, and billions more may soon be spent in the developing world through programs such as One Laptop per Child. But even O.L.P.C.’s $100 laptop comes loaded with more distractions than my PET [the world’s first personal computer] ever had. So will kids use these subsidized computing resources to prepare for the demands of the 21st-century job market? Or do computers just serve as a 21st-century substitute for that more venerable time-waster—the television?

New research by economists Ofer Malamud and Cristian Pop-Eleches provides an answer: For many kids, computers are indeed more of a distraction than a learning opportunity. The two researchers surveyed households that applied to Euro 200, a voucher distribution program in Romania designed to help poor households defray the cost of buying a computer for their children. It turns out that kids in households lucky enough to get computer vouchers spent a lot less time watching TV — but that’s where the good news ends. “Vouchered” kids also spent less time doing homework, got lower grades and reported lower educational aspirations than the “unvouchered” kids. ...

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People have discussed improving nutrition as a way to help low-SES children in this thread. Obesity is a bigger problem than undernourishment for America's poor, and free breakfasts, which have been touted by nutrition advocates, can worsen the obesity problem.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/20/n...akfasts-some-children-may-eat-twice.html
With Classroom Breakfasts, a Concern That Some Children Eat Twice
By MICHAEL M. GRYNBAUM
Published: April 19, 201

It is an innovative, intuitive and increasingly common way to ensure that food reaches the mouths of hungry children from low-income families: give out free breakfast in the classroom at the start of each school day.

The results, seen at urban districts across the country, are striking. Without the stigma of a trip to the cafeteria, the number of students in Newark who eat breakfast in school has tripled. Absenteeism has fallen in Los Angeles, and officials in Chicago say children from low-income families are eating healthier meals, more often.

But New York City, a leader in public health reform, has balked at expanding the approach in its own schools, and City Hall is citing a surprising concern: that all those classroom Cheerios and cheese sticks could lead to more obesity.

Some children, it turns out, may be double-dipping.

The city’s health department hit the pause button after a study found that the Breakfast in the Classroom program, now used in 381 of the city’s 1,750 schools, was problematic because some children might be “inadvertently taking in excess calories by eating in multiple locations” — in other words, having a meal at home, or snacking on the way to school, then eating again in school.

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The food stamps program may increase obesity in low-income women.

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebat...the-link-between-food-stamps-and-obesity
Food Stamps and Obesity
Diane M. Gibson
UPDATED SEPTEMBER 28, 2011, 12:17 AM

Forty-two percent of low-income women in the United States are obese, and the rate of obesity is even higher among women who participate in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program -- formerly the food stamp program.

Researchers have spent a lot of time trying to figure out whether this is the result of receiving SNAP benefits or whether there is simply a correlation between obesity and SNAP participation that arises because the low-income women who are more likely to be obese are also those most interested in getting SNAP benefits. The research suggests that SNAP participation may actually cause an increase in the likelihood of obesity for low-income women. A relationship between SNAP participation and obesity has not been found for low-income men.

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Higher obesity rates in the poor is not caused by their living in food deserts:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/18/h...s-and-obesity-challenged-in-studies.html
Studies Question the Pairing of Food Deserts and Obesity
By GINA KOLATA
April 17, 2012

It has become an article of faith among some policy makers and advocates, including Michelle Obama, that poor urban neighborhoods are food deserts, bereft of fresh fruits and vegetables.

But two new studies have found something unexpected. Such neighborhoods not only have more fast food restaurants and convenience stores than more affluent ones, but more grocery stores, supermarkets and full-service restaurants, too. And there is no relationship between the type of food being sold in a neighborhood and obesity among its children and adolescents.

Within a couple of miles of almost any urban neighborhood, “you can get basically any type of food,” said Roland Sturm of the RAND Corporation, lead author of one of the studies. “Maybe we should call it a food swamp rather than a desert,” he said.

Some experts say these new findings raise questions about the effectiveness of efforts to combat the obesity epidemic simply by improving access to healthy foods. Despite campaigns to get Americans to exercise more and eat healthier foods, obesity rates have not budged over the past decade, according to recently released federal data.

“It is always easy to advocate for more grocery stores,” said Kelly D. Brownell, director of Yale University’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity, who was not involved in the studies. “But if you are looking for what you hope will change obesity, healthy food access is probably just wishful thinking.”

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If spending more on the poor does not help them overall, consider spending less and letting productive people keep more of their earnings.