Education
Foreign Aid and Its Unintended Consequences – review
In Foreign Aid and Its Unintended Consequences, Dirk-Jan Koch examines the unintended effects of development efforts, covering issues such as conflicts, migration, inequality and environmental degradation. Ruerd Ruben finds the book an original and detailed analysis that can help development policymakers and practitioners to better anticipate these consequences and build adaptive programmes.
Foreign Aid and Its Unintended Consequences. Dirk-Jan Koch. Routledge. 2023.
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Dirk-Jan Koch’s Foreign Aid and its Unintended Consequences offers a rich discussion on the unintended consequences of development efforts, including effects on conflicts, migration and inequality and changes in commodity prices, human behaviour, institutions and environmental degradation. The book explains how different perceptions of donors and recipients lead to quite opposite strategies (eg, for managing the Haiti earthquake), whereas in other settings aid programmes can even intensify local conflicts or spur deforestation.
Koch devotes due attention to the aggregate impact of development activities through so-called backlash effects, negative spillovers and positive ripple effects.
Koch devotes due attention to the aggregate impact of development activities through so-called backlash effects, negative spillovers and positive ripple effects. Many of these effects also occur in Western countries, where they are commonly labelled as crowding-in and -out, linkages and leakages, and substitution effects. Each chapter includes real-life examples (mostly cases from sub-Saharan Africa), ranging from due diligence legislation on conflict minerals in DR Congo to the experiences of the author’s parents with the Fairtrade shop in the tiny Dutch village of Achterveld.
Koch consistently argues that the analysis of unintended effects is helpful to unravel the complexities of development cooperation and enables better identification of incentives that allow for more adaptive planning. This is a welcome contribution, since it provides a common language for better communication between development agents.
Everyone involved in development programmes is invited by this book to reflect on their own experiences with unintended consequences. I still remember the shock when an external review of a large integrated rural development programme in Southern Nicaragua revealed that most funds were spent at the local gasoline station and car repair workshop for maintenance of the project vehicles. My original enthusiasm for Fairtrade certification of coffee and cocoa cooperatives was substantially reduced when I became aware that price support enabled farmers to maintain their income with less production and therefore increased inequality within rural communities.
Koch consistently shows that it is important and possible to disentangle each of these possible or likely side effects and to act to combat them.
The systematic overview of unintended consequences of foreign aid gives an initial impression that development cooperation is a system beyond repair. This is, however, far from the truth. Koch consistently shows that it is important and possible to disentangle each of these possible or likely side effects and to act to combat them. That requires an open mind and thorough knowledge of responses by different types of agents and institutions.
The analysis falls short, however, in showing that several types of unintended consequences are likely to interact (such as price and marginalisation effects, or conflict and migration effects). Other consequences may partially overlap or perhaps compensate for each other. Moreover, there is likely to be a certain ”hierarchy” in the underlying mechanisms, where behavioural effects, governance effects and price effects crowd out several other consequences. In addition, a further analysis of the development context and the influence of norms and values might be helpful to better understand why certain effects occur, or not.
There is likely to be a certain ‘hierarchy’ in the underlying mechanisms, where behavioural effects, governance effects and price effects crowd out several other consequences
Koch argues that unintended consequences are frequently overlooked due to “linear thinking” in international development. He probably refers to the dominance of logical frameworks in traditional development planning and the recent requirement for presenting a Theory of Change with different impact pathways for development programmes. Since links and feedback loops between activities are already widely acknowledged, Koch seems to merge “linearity” with “causality”. For responsible development policies and programmes, we need better insight into the cause-effect relationship, recognising that differentiated outcomes may occur and that side effects are likely to be registered.
The absence of linear response mechanisms has been part of development thinking since its foundation by development economist and Nobel-prize winner Jan Tinbergen. His work (and my PhD thesis) heavily relied on linear programming, which is still considered as an extremely useful approach for showing that an intervention can generate multiple outcomes and that policymakers need some insights into alternative scenarios before they start to act. Impact analysis through different (quantitative and qualitative) methods digs deeper into the adaptive behaviour of development agents in response to a wide variety of incentives (ranging from financial support and legal rules to knowledge diffusion and information exchange). Our attention should be focused on understanding how non-linearity as occasioned by the involvement of multiple agents with different interests (and power) in development programmes leads to multiple – and sometimes opposing – outcomes from interventions.
Our attention should be focused on understanding how non-linearity […] in development programmes leads to multiple – and sometimes opposing – outcomes from interventions.
Koch’s analysis is based on a wide variety of case studies and testimonies, enriched with secondary research on the gender effects of microfinance, the occurrence of exchange rate disturbances (Dutch Disease), and the effectiveness of incentives to encourage natural resource conservation (Payments for Ecosystem Services). In a few cases, it makes use of more systematic impact reviews made by the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie) and Campbell Collaboration. Information about the size and relative importance of the unintended consequences is notably absent.
The reliance on illustrative case studies and dense description challenges the academic rigor of the book. It may hinder our understanding about the underlying causes and mechanisms behind these effects: are they generated by the development intervention themselves, or are they due to the context in which the programme is implemented, or the types of stakeholders involved in its implementation? A more comparative approach could be helpful to better understand, for instance, why microfinance was accompanied by an increase in domestic violence in certain parts of India, but not in others. Comparing different ways of designing and organising microfinance would provide clearer insights into the causes of variation in outcomes.
Opening up for such an interactive engagement with development activities asks for an institutional re-design of international development cooperation, permitting projects with a substantially longer duration (eight to ten years), closing the gap between policy and practice and accepting a political commitment for learning from mistakes. Moreover, dealing with unintended consequences requires that far more aid is channelled through embassies and local organisations that have direct insights into local possibilities and needs.
Social and community service programmes for basic education and primary healthcare tend to deliver the most tangible positive effects on incomes, nutrition, behaviour, women’s participation and income distribution.
Furthermore, focusing on adaptive planning and learning trajectories may also imply that policy priorities for foreign aid need to change. Social and community service programmes for basic education and primary healthcare tend to deliver the most tangible positive effects on incomes, nutrition, behaviour, women’s participation and income distribution. The development record of programmes for trade promotion is far more doubtful and still heavily relies on (unproven) trickle-down reasoning. Particular attention should be given to budget support and cash transfers as aid modalities with the least strings attached that show a high impact on critical poverty indicators. Contrary to these findings, several years ago the Dutch parliament stopped budget support and eliminated primary education as a key policy priority.
While the author concludes by focusing on the need to act on side effects and further professionalisation of international development programmes, more concrete leverage points could be identified. First, many of the registered effects tend to be related to cross-cutting structural differences in resources and voice, and therefore programmes that start with improving asset ownership and women’s empowerment are likely to yield simultaneous changes in different areas. Second, a stronger focus on systems analysis (beyond complexity theory) can be helpful to identify inherent conflicts and tensions in development programmes that could be the subject of political negotiation. Unravelling potential trade-offs then becomes a key component of development planning. Third, more space could have been devoted to the role of experiments in the practice of development cooperation. Policymakers expect a high level of certainty and face difficulties to become engaged in more adaptive programming. Accepting deliberate risk-taking may be helpful to improve aid effectiveness.
Policymakers expect a high level of certainty and face difficulties to become engaged in more adaptive programming. Accepting deliberate risk-taking may be helpful to improve aid effectiveness.
These reservations aside, Foreign Aid and its Unintended Consequences is a welcome and original contribution to the debate on development effectiveness. Koch offers a systematic conceptual and empirical analysis of ten types of unintended effects from international development activities, and its recommendations on how these effects can be tackled in practice will be useful for policymakers, practitioners and evaluators.
This post gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics and Political Science. The LSE RB blog may receive a small commission if you choose to make a purchase through the above Amazon affiliate link. This is entirely independent of the coverage of the book on LSE Review of Books.
Image Credit: Jen Watson on Shutterstock.
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Abuse and Safeguarding: What’s Going Wrong at Eton?
With alumni including the future king, two recent prime ministers, the Head of the Church of England, the former Editor of the Daily Mail, three serving or recent Supreme Court judges, and the last head of the British Army, Eton College is – many would say – the most influential school in the country, if not the world.
It might also bear a much more sinister distinction. It could be the school with the highest number of recent incidents involving staff members found to be child abusers in the UK.
With a former Eton master facing jail for allegations of child sexual abuse, Byline Times has identified three other recent staff members there, along with other historic cases, who have been found – in the past 10 years – guilty of the sexual abuse of minors.
Interestingly, online searches for one of these individuals shows no public evidence of their conviction or their dismissal from the prestigious school.
In 2017, Thomas Dickson Recknell was found guilty of a sexual offence dating back to 2008, two years before his employment at Eton College in 2010. Recknell, who also studied at Eton, was appointed to be ‘Composer in Residence’ at the now £50,000-a-year school.
The abuse involved a 13-year-old and, on Recknell's arrest in September 2015, he was immediately suspended from Eton. He was to be sentenced to two years in prison. At the time, the judge said: “I can only give you very limited credit for any degree of remorse really at this stage.”
Despite sources close to the school saying that the incident was reported widely at the time, Byline Times has found an absence of articles detailing Recknell’s abuse or his dismissal from Eton appearing in online searches.
It is understood that the school denies any allegations that it was involved in the potential removal of such articles. However, it appears that a web page from the 'Eton College News and Diary’, which previously mentioned Recknell, has also been removed from Eton’s school website.
An Internet Wayback search reveals that the page once described a piece of devised dance theatre with “a driving pop score by Tom Recknell”.
There is also no mention of Recknell (or any other former masters of the school being convicted of abuse) on the Wikipedia page entitled 'Eton College controversies’. Nor is any child abuse at Eton detailed in the recent Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse.
But Recknell is not the only former Eton staff member to be accused of, or convicted of, the sexual abuse of children.
Eton's Abuse Cases
In November 2023, it was reported that former Eton master Jacob Leland has been charged with the sexual assault of a teenage boy. The 35-year-old is facing a total of 14 sexual offences, reportedly occurring more than a decade ago.
The charges include five counts of non-penetrative sexual activity and four counts of penetrative sexual activity with a boy under 16, alongside three counts of incitement to sexual activity and two counts of sexual assault on a male. Leland denies all charges.
In 2020, former Eton master Matthew Mowbray was sentenced to five years in prison for sexually offences against pupils and creating indecent images of children. He was found guilty of eight counts of sexual activity with a child. Mowbray also admitted to making thousands of indecent images, some of which involved superimposing the faces of his students onto the bodies of naked children. The abuse took place under the guise of night-time visits to discuss schoolwork.
Mowbray taught at Eton when Recknell was a pupil and they were on the staff at the same time from 2010. Simon Henderson, Eton’s Headmaster said at the time when Mowbray was arrested, that the teacher “was believed to be a caring and professional house master but we now know that he was a skilful and deceitful manipulator of both young people and adults… we shall all be redoubling our efforts to ensure that Eton remains an ever more open and supportive environment for all of our pupils”.
In 2018, a former teacher and house master at Eton College was also reported to the police over alleged child abuse. The late Raef Payne was accused of swapping pictures of naked children with other men at parties. The school reported its former staff member to Thames Valley police. Raef Payne, who taught at Eton for 35 years, died in 2001.
Also in 2018, Ajaz Karim, a former Eton College squash coach, was jailed for 10 years for the sexual abuse of minors. He was found guilty in April that year of indecently assaulting six female students while he worked at Christ's Hospital School, in Horsham, West Sussex, between 1985 and 1993.
In 2011, David Rachel, an Eton College rowing coach, was also found guilty of sexually abusing a girl during his teenage years in Solihull in the 1980s. He faced two charges of rape and five of indecent assault, of which he was convicted for four indecent assaults while acquitted of rape and one indecent assault charge.
Following the verdict, Rachel, who had a history of a conditional discharge for assault in 1990 and for causing alarm or distress in 1998, was ordered to register as a sex offender. The victim, alarmed by Rachel's role at Eton and his access to children, had initiated the case by contacting the school, leading to the police being informed.
Safeguarding Prioritised
Despite this catalogue of abuse only coming to light in recent years, the school appears to consider much of this to be in the past.
In 2015, its Headmaster, Tony Little, speaking at the Boarding Schools Association annual conference in London – of which he is president – said that Eton was “in part to blame” for the image of boarding schools portrayed in the 1960s as “shadowy, strange institutions”. Mr Little said schools like Eton once had "a remarkable lack of accountability” – implying that this was true no longer.
The past, however, has caught up with the school.
In 2019, an anonymous lawyer known as 'J' successfully won a civil compensation claim against Eton for historic abuse. Anthony Chenevix-Trench, a Headmaster of Eton College in the 1960s, assaulted ‘J’ during one-on-one training for his 'O' Levels, administering corporal punishment for incorrect responses. Chenevix-Trench's actions turned into sexual abuse. 'J' eventually complained, leading to the termination of private tutoring. This experience left 'J' with post-traumatic stress, but feelings of shame meant that he was hesitant to take legal action. However, inspired by the Harvey Weinstein scandal, 'J' successfully pursued and settled a case against Eton for a significant sum. Chenevix-Trench died in 1979.
Today, Eton College stresses the welfare of its pupils as its top priority, detailing significant improvements made in safeguarding practices over the past 10 years. This includes the appointment of a new director of safeguarding in 2020. The school's most recent Independent Schools Inspectorate report has also shown there to be improvement in this area.
Asked about Thomas Recknell, Eton told Byline Times: “At the time, we reported Mr Recknell’s departure from Eton’s employment to the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) and to the National College for Teaching and Leadership (NCTL).
"We take the safeguarding of our pupils extremely seriously, most particularly ensuring that all our staff pass the rigorous pre-employment checks to which they are subject, and ensuring that when safeguarding issues arise they are dealt with in accordance with our established policies.”
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Music in Schools: A Plea
If you went to a state school in the 20th Century and had an interest in or aptitude for music, the chances are you went to a Saturday morning music school run by your local authority, played in your county youth orchestra, band or other ensemble, participated in one of its choirs, and received specialist tuition (often free) in playing or singing.
Like tens of thousands of others, my siblings, cousins, and I all benefited from the Oxfordshire County Music Service. At one point there were five Goodalls in the orchestra. Some of the County Music Services were world class, but even the smaller ones offered a safety-net provision for children who wanted to play instruments, whether or not the local authority school they individually attended had a flourishing music department of its own.
After the change of government in 2010, these services were transformed into 'Hubs'. Part of the rationale for this was that young people’s experience of and engagement in music, in the new century, was itself changing and it was felt that providers from outside the classical orchestral tradition could add a new dimension to the offer. There was a political aspect to the change, too.
Under then Education Secretary Michael Gove from 2010 onwards, the Government’s policies moved to loosen local authorities’ grip on schooling at an accelerated pace, with the diverting of funds earmarked under Labour for the rebuilding, maintenance and renovation of all schools, to the setting up of so-called ‘free schools’ that would answer only to the Secretary of State, in effect independent but taxpayer-funded.
So it was with the replacement of County Music Services to the Hubs which followed a hybrid model, combining local authority involvement (or not) with private sector organisations, businesses and some musical charities.
The mantra that state-provided services were always necessarily worse than anything the private sector could offer reshaped government policy (see also: public utilities and infrastructure, social housing etc.). The Hubs came into existence and set about their task, by and large, with aplomb.
Then, in June 2022, the Government announced its intention to reduce the number of Music Hubs nationally from 116 (roughly analogous to the county music service network they replaced) to 43, effective this year, in April, theoretically. This came after, and in direct contradiction of, consultation in the sector and analysis of the data received from the Hubs over their 10-year existence that this would be the worst of all given options for a restructuring of the network.
In the final year of the last Labour Government, funding for the County Music Services ran at £82 million annually, a figure that the incoming Coalition Government pledged to match, which it nearly did (£79 million) – a figure that remains today. Yet £80 million in 2010 is equivalent to £120 million in 2024, so the continued grant of £79 million is not only, in real terms, a significant cut, but the Government is now asking, for this same £79 million, for 43 Hubs to do the work and reach of the 116.
There is not one shred of evidence that the slimming down of the provision network will improve anything. The reduction of Hubs is a cost-cutting exercise dressed up as rationalisation. Nothing about this change will help a single child’s participation in music, though much in the National Plan for Music Education, of which it was a part, was welcomed, outlining as it did a strong case for musical opportunities and pathways to be made available to all children in English schools.
The transforming of the County Music Services into Hubs coincided with Gove’s radical overhaul of the national curriculum at the Department for Education. Gove was warned by almost everyone involved in cultural education that his pet project – what became the English Baccalaureate (EBacc) – would decimate creative subjects in state schools. His department ignored this advice (he and Dominic Cummings haughtily described the educators who challenged their reforms as "the Blob") and went ahead with the five-subject scheme.
Sure enough, since its introduction (and that of its bedfellow, Progress 8 assessment), the uptake of GCSE Music has dropped from 7% of the overall cohort to 4% of the cohort. The drop at 'A’ Level Music is of a similar magnitude. Ditto other arts subjects. These are stark figures.
We are heading, at this rate, back to the situation in the early 1960s when only 5,000 children annually took 'O’ Level Music, virtually all of them in grammar and private schools. The huge steps in access and opportunity in the arts for young people that took place thereafter, especially between 1997-2009, which included funding of new resources and classroom teaching of music technology, have been put into reverse.
Why does it matter how many children take music or music technology as a classroom subject, if they can play in an orchestra or sing in a choir, politicians ask (Gove said this to me at a lunch in 2009 before he did all this).
The reason it matters is that, unlike in independent schools, which can afford members of staff to run extra-curricular musical activities whether or not they teach classes, state schools, by and large, fund teachers according to the numbers of children studying a subject in publicly examined classroom subjects. If you are at a school with few or no children taking GCSE or 'A’ Level music, there simply won't be the staff to organise and run all the other myriad musical activities that every fee-paying school in the country considers essential to attract parents.
If you rank schools by results, as state schools are by Ofsted, according to how well you deliver the five EBacc subjects, giving scant or no recognition to everything else a school might offer, you will inevitably see a decline in ‘non-essential' subjects.
What happened to music education between 2010 and 2022 was a root-and-branch dismantling of a model that expected schools to include music just as they would any other subject.
Historically, there were two types of music education offered in advanced economies in the post-war period. Three, if you include Finland (but Finland is so far ahead on its own in educational enlightenment and high standards that it’s unfair to compare it to other countries).
On the one hand, for example, Germany and France, have not traditionally offered much music inside non-specialist secondary schools but created well-resourced music schools in every town or neighbourhood for use at weekends, and after school, with highly subsidised or even free tuition. These local centres also offer the opportunity to be part of ensembles or choirs.
The UK, on the other hand, developed a different tradition where music in schools would involve the option of studying the subject in class to GCSE/'A’ Level and also a range of extra-curricular musical opportunities on site. Many states in the US persist with this model too, where you would expect considerable musical endeavour to be going on in a high school without the need for children to look for these activities elsewhere.
The County Music Service network was set up specifically to support and enlarge what individual state schools in the UK offered, not to replace provision in schools. Most if not all children accessing the County Music Services network did so through their schools.
The National Plan of 2022 intended to change the dynamic of this arrangement so that the Hubs would now be wholly responsible for ensuring schools in their area complied with the check list of requirements the Government expected them to provide for their students. No additional funding was found to pay for this considerable new burden of responsibility, and the plan's stipulation that schools in England teach all five to 14-year-olds one hour of music a week has no statutory enforcement, nor are there any sanctions for schools' failure to comply.
The Conservatives’ agenda seems to be to hand over the state’s responsibility for music education to independent organisations, outside schools, but with a decreasing level of funding so to do. This feels like a recipe for further decline in music as a classroom subject or extra-curricular activity in any school that does not right now have an outstanding music department, well supported by its senior leadership team.
What worries me about all this is that it is a no-brainer for a fee-paying school to offer plentiful access to musical engagement for its students. It is assumed that parents want this for their children and that there are huge benefits for a learning community that has plenty of music going on within it.
So why must it be such a struggle for the same assumption not to underpin a government providing a rounded education to the children in its care in state schools? Why is it always a matter of how cheaply it can be done? Why can't 93% of our children in state schools receive the same musical offering that the 7% children in private schools take for granted? If it's a good thing for the 7% it's a good thing for the 93%, is it not?
The signal from the Government, time and time again, is that creative subjects are non-essential. Which is weird for a country that has congratulated itself, for the past 40 years at least, for being the world’s second-biggest provider of music after America.
There is now a drastic shortage of teachers in arts subjects. The Department for Education met only 27% of its target for newly-trained music teachers last year. ’Please come and teach a subject we don't value, nor will your school get Ofsted credits for you offering excellent music’ is not exactly the welcoming slogan to a career in music teaching they may think it is.
Headteachers are already under enormous pressure, financially, and may be tempted by governmental uninterest to see reducing musical facilities as a way of saving costs in hard times. Some may think, erroneously, the Hubs will have new money to do the job for them.
Rishi Sunak recently revealed his back-of-an-envelope priority for education – that all children up to the age of 18 should take mathematics. It is an idea that seems detached from our current, urgent reality. How will it address our shortages of health workers, revive our hospitality sector, solve the food security crisis unfolding across the agricultural landscape? How do we avert the worst effects of environmental catastrophe?
All of the above will require ingenuity, teamwork, imaginative thinking, resourcefulness – how are those qualities taught and acquired? How do we help young people to be more open-minded, creative, and community-minded in a period of enormous insecurity and social dislocation? To question, explore, take risks? To perform, to be more confident, to think differently, and to value difference? How do we improve young people’s well-being and mental health?
One answer to these questions is engagement with music and the other arts, from a young age, as part of a rounded, transferable-skills-orientated education. I am pretty sure extending any individual subject, however laudable in its own right, is not the cure. Sunak reinforces the notion that there are ‘essential’ school subjects, and the rest are add-ons, luxuries, agreeable perks.
And, if his idea was solely about our economic future, then riddle me this: what percentage of ‘mathematical’ jobs currently undertaken by accountants and fund managers will be replaced by artificial intelligence in the next 20 years – 80%? 90%?
I’ve met several Conservative MPs who were enthusiastic supporters of the arts in general and of music education being available to young people in particular. They have gone deathly quiet in recent years. Perhaps they were removed in the Great Brexit Purge of 2019. Perhaps they are afraid of being slapped down by libertarian asset-strippers and ultra-nationalist populists, now ascendant in their party, who think the words of Rule, Britannia! or statues of slavers are what constitute our country’s ‘culture’.
In recent years, we have had to listen to a Deputy Prime Minister no less, Dominic Raab, snobbishly mocking Angela Rayner for going to the opera to see Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, and a constant stream of disdainful, ill-informed 'culture warriors’ who cannot conceal their distaste for the people who make art and the institutions, like the BBC, that nourish it.
Britain’s two biggest and most essential exporting industries, by a wide margin, financial and creative, were two sectors conspicuously left out of Lord David Frost’s Trade and Cooperation Agreement withdrawal deal with the EU. For us, in music, that shoddy, negligent negotiation led to a 'no deal’ Brexit. How valued we felt. By our own Government. It fits a pattern that has emerged in the last decade of neglect, bordering on contempt.
A lot of hope in the music and education worlds is being pinned on an incoming Labour government, enhanced by the fact that the Shadow Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, Thangam Debbonaire, is herself an accomplished musician.
Both she and Labour Leader Keir Starmer have spoken forthrightly about the need to restore music and other arts to their place in schools in England and Wales. The weight of expectation on a new government, if elected, will be to find quick fixes to problems that have been years, or even decades, in the making, with a gigantic national debt and public sector funding crises everywhere you look. Right now, there are nine million children of school age in England, and the current funding for music services that support them in school, the Hubs, get £79 million a year from government. That’s less than £9 per child, per year.
Don’t our children deserve better than this?
Why Schools Are Welcoming Intergenerational Tutoring
This story first appeared at The 74, a nonprofit news site covering education. Sign up for free newsletters from The 74 to get more like this in your inbox.
At a desk wedged between a hallway vent and a classroom door, Marge Mangelsdorf coaxed Harlan to write down what he remembered.
The two had just finished reading Hi! Fly Guy, a popular children’s book about a boy and his pet bug. Now it was time for Harlan, a first grader at Bayless Elementary School in St. Louis County, to review the plot and characters with his tutor. But while his vocabulary was improving, he appeared hesitant about speaking and writing prompts like these.
“In the beginning, there was a fly,” said Marge. Clad in white sneakers and a floral print shirt on a sunny November morning, she gave off the air of a gentle but insistent grandparent. “And then he was caught, where — in a jar? And then what happened?”
For a moment, Harlan grimaced. Then, gripping a pen topped with an electric light, he began writing in an unsteady script.
Marge Mangelsdorf, a 22-year Oasis veteran, working with first grader Harlan. Credit: Kevin Mahnken
Mangelsdorf spends several days each week in empty classrooms and corridors like these, working with kids through Oasis Intergenerational Tutoring. The program, which pairs volunteers with students for 30–45 minutes each week, is overseen by the Oasis Institute, a St. Louis-based nonprofit that promotes healthy aging through a mix of community involvement and continuing education. According to the Institute’s leadership, intergenerational tutoring has spread to 15 states, though its greatest concentration is in Missouri, where it began 35 years ago.
Participating students between kindergarten and the third grade are identified by their teachers as needing academic or social-emotional support. And while some skew younger, the average volunteer is around 72 years old, with many resembling Mangelsdorf, a mother of three grown children who has lived in nearby Affton for her entire life. After 22 years tutoring in Bayless Elementary and other schools, Oasis has become her later-life mission.
It’s a form of service that addresses critical needs arising from the educational catastrophe of Covid-19. Harlan and his classmates were toddlers when schools began to close in March 2020. Nearly four years later, standardized testing results indicate that elementary schoolers around the country lost the equivalent of years of learning, with students in the St. Louis area still reading and doing math at a lower level than they did before the pandemic. Driven by desperation, and financed by millions of dollars in federal funds, states and districts have built up their own tutoring efforts or contracted with existing ones.
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Oasis’s model holds a unique appeal. Its workforce of largely retired volunteers cost districts a comparative pittance in fees, making their continuing presence sustainable even after Covid recovery grants expire this year. What’s more, their time in schools yields a secondary benefit to the tutors themselves, who remain engaged in the wider world rather than receding into inactivity. Some spend over a decade in the program, building friendships with school staff and their fellow tutors, said Paul Weiss, Oasis’s president.
“The theme is: How do we connect older adults with each other, ideas, and activities in ways that increase the footprint of their lives?” said Weiss. “And how do we position older adults to be more than a population that’s served, but to be a population that is a vital part of American life?”
For her part, Mangelsdorf said she appreciates the opportunity to watch local kids grow throughout the school year. At the end of her session with Harlan, she announced that she would ask that his teacher bump up the difficulty level of his reading materials. Reaching into her bag, she produced a handful of seasonal stickers — accumulated over the years along with an array of children’s books that she awards as prizes — and let him choose between pumpkins and Pilgrims.
“You really did pretty good, okay? And you tried.”
A nationwide experiment
Mangelsdorf, and thousands like her, are participating in a kind of nationwide experiment in high-dosage tutoring, which has raised the hopes of both families and policymakers over the last few years of hampered learning.
The excitement emerged from a remarkable empirical consensus, which shows one-on-one and small-group tutoring to be among the most effective educational reforms that schools can use to lift student achievement. A 2020 research review, gathering the results of 96 randomized controlled trials, showcased the wide scope of tutoring offerings that deliver significant learning advantages, including both reading- and math-focused programs that employed either professional educators or community volunteers.
Oasis tutors’ support for students often goes beyond schoolwork. Some stay in touch with their pupils for years afterwards. Credit: Kevin Mahnken
Advocates quickly embraced tutoring as a solution to students’ clear backsliding during the transition to virtual learning. But questions remained about whether the approach could be successfully scaled up.
To reach the tens of millions of kids who fell behind during COVID, districts needed to recruit an army of educators at a moment when most adults were still concerned about the danger of stepping into schools. Teachers and paraprofessionals, generally found to be the most effective tutors, were experiencing historic levels of burnout, while both private- and public-sector employers struggled to fill openings.
States did what they could to fill the gap, with one analysis of pandemic spending plans showing that districts planned to commit $3 billion to tutoring initiatives. With nearly $200 billion in federal ESSER money expiring next year, however, schools are already feeling a pinch in core academic programs, let alone supplemental offerings.
Access to Oasis tutors costs districts and schools a nominal fee, which Weiss estimates supports roughly six percent of the program’s total price tag. Offerings include reading material and workbooks, summer training for tutors, further coaching during the school year and sometimes help with building program-specific libraries. In cases where those costs are prohibitive, the program sometimes offers discounts. And the Oasis Institute, which operates physical locations in eight hub cities, has recently introduced tutoring programs in southeast Alabama, upstate New York, and the San Antonio area.
Tutors don’t typically bring prior instructional experience to their work (though most are former parents, and many volunteer in a variety of school settings outside of Oasis), but their involvement generally adheres to the guidelines for successful tutoring programs laid out in prior research: It is principally geared toward honing elementary reading skills, conducted at regular intervals and delivered during the school day.
Though Oasis hasn’t yet undergone a rigorous study, the terms of one of its federal grants require the organization to provide proof of its effectiveness. In a sample of 300 students, 97 percent of students working with an Oasis tutor showed improvement in reading performance on a range of standardized exams. In a 2023 survey of educators in schools where Oasis works, 80 percent of classroom teachers said they’d seen improvement in their students’ reading skills, and 67 percent said they’d perceived an improvement in those students’ attitudes at school. Virtually every administrator polled said they would continue to welcome Oasis tutors in their schools.
Jason Sefrit. Courtesy of the Oasis Institute
Jason Sefrit is one of the program’s loudest advocates. The district superintendent in the city of St. Charles — a northwestern suburb of St. Louis, and one of Missouri’s largest cities — said the assistance offered through Oasis provided a sorely needed asset as his schools worked to bring children back to pre-pandemic levels of achievement. In his daily visits to district campuses, Sefrit said, he often walks past half a dozen Oasis tutors huddling with pupils in the halls.
“It’s not a want, it’s a necessity,” he remarked. “These kids rely on their tutors each week to support them.”
That support goes beyond schoolwork. Though tutors are typically assigned to different students each year, they often cultivate deep ties with children by learning their interests and listening to their stories. Some students come from unstable families, while others are simply grateful to have a regular, unfiltered interaction with an adult who isn’t a teacher or family member.
Stacy Butz said that academic gains are cemented by familiarity and mutual trust between adults and students. A reading specialist who has spent 28 years in schools, she also coordinates Oasis’s tutoring efforts at her St. Louis County school district of Ladue. Even before taking on that role, she was impressed by how close students grew to their tutors.
“In a half-hour, they’re able to make gains in reading, writing, and communication skills and develop this beautiful relationship along the way,” said Butz. “A lot of surrogate grandparents are developed because of the connections that are made.”
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Over nearly a quarter-century working as a tutor, Mangelsdorf said her students confided so much to her about their home lives and families that she sometimes feels “like a confessor.” The intimacy she forms with kids like Harlan doesn’t just provide immense personal satisfaction. It’s a necessary component to helping them advance.
The fulfillment she gets from that challenge is distinct from what she experienced in her days as a small business owner — or even from her work as an advocate for disabled adults, which she began after raising a child with special needs. One of her daughters, a teacher, also spends her life helping kids; but the interpersonal effects of one-on-one tutoring differ even from those of classroom instruction.
“It’s got to come from within the tutor, and it’s got to draw out of the kid what they need,” she reflected. “I know a lot comes from the teachers, so I’m not taking anything away from any teacher. But maybe my little bit of input pushes a student past where they already were.”
‘Older adults don’t get looked at’
Whatever the effects of tutoring on young kids, Oasis’s work is also meant to help their volunteers.
Gerontologists have long observed the dangerous tendency of seniors to become disconnected from the world outside their homes. The loss of job and social responsibilities, as well as declining physical mobility, has been linked in research studies to higher levels of mortality and severe health problems, including dementia.
More than one-quarter of American seniors live by themselves — far more than similarly aged people in other countries, and more than the combined numbers of those living with their adult children or extended relatives. In a poll conducted earlier this year by the University of Michigan, one in three Americans between the ages of 50 and 80 said they only infrequently had contact with family, friends or neighbors, a significant jump from 2018.
Paul Weiss. Courtesy of the Oasis Institute
Weiss said that pervasive isolation was what motivated Oasis Institute founder Marylen Mann to look for more opportunities for older adults to contribute. In visits to senior living facilities in the early 1980s, he said, Mann saw residents’ basic needs being attended to, but lamented that their wisdom and life experience were being allowed to wither.
“One of the things that’s hardest is that older adults don’t get looked at,” Weiss said. “They don’t get touched, they don’t get engaged with.”
But when given the chance to be active and help others, seniors’ quality of life can dramatically improve. A 2020 Harvard University study found that adults over 50 who volunteered at least two hours per week were less likely to express loneliness, depression and hopelessness and more likely to be optimistic and purposeful. Putting them in direct contact with school-aged children might be the best way to leverage their talents, especially given America’s growing number of seniors; by the 2030s, the US Census estimates, people over the age of 65 will outnumber those under 18.
Butz said that the benefits of tutoring could be measured in the ties strengthened between local community members. Volunteers often encounter their pupils around their neighborhoods and attend milestone events like elementary school graduations.
Asked to name memorable tutors from her years of working alongside them, she recited a litany of Silent Generation names: Thelma, who stayed with Oasis until she turned 90; Bernard, who spread a love of chess through his students to the rest of their elementary school; Ray, who taught his student to ride a bike in the school parking lot.
“They are taxpayers, and the more opportunities they have to come into our buildings and volunteer their time, the better,” Butz said. “Many of our tutors are previous parents as well — their kids went to our elementary schools, and now they’re giving back.”
‘More positive than playing checkers’
Nick Hall has tutored for nearly a decade in the Ferguson-Florissant School District, where he, his father, children and grandchildren all attended. The former sales executive was initially hesitant to be paired with young children, but his reservations evaporated upon contact with his first student: Kanye, a first-grader who was capable of excelling academically but struggled at times with classroom behavior.
The two forged a bond, in part because Hall himself dealt with disciplinary problems in school. “There are teachers all over the St. Louis area spinning in their graves about the idea of me having anything to do with kids learning anything,” he said.
As he moved through the rest of his elementary years, Kanye would bump into Hall around his elementary school, stopping to crack jokes or occasionally play basketball. Courtside banter sometimes turned to friendly advice on how to stay out of trouble.
Tutor Nick Hall with his former student, Kanye. Courtesy of Nick Hall
Hall kept up his school visits, but the two lost touch as Kanye advanced through middle and high school. Hall said he asked after his former pupil, hoping for good news about his academic and social progress. But the pandemic made it impossible to connect.
This fall, after working with district officials to arrange a visit during the school day, Hall surprised Kanye in the middle of a class period. He hardly recognized the high school junior, who has sprung up well over six feet. Now Hall hopes they can occasionally meet for lunch as the transition from K–12 approaches.
Not every tutor-pupil pairing sparks the same magic, he acknowledged, and a disappointing experience of online tutoring during the pandemic was much less productive than face-to-face interactions. But Hall said he’ll keep working in schools for at least a few more years, perhaps until he reaches the 12-year mark. He likes the symmetry of the dozen years he spent as a student in Ferguson and a subsequent dozen spent working with students.
“It gives people like me — who are looking for something to do that’s more positive than just playing checkers in the afternoon at the senior center — something to do and a place to do it,” he concluded. “It gives you more than a little bit of satisfaction about how you spent your afternoon when you get done with one of these sessions.”
This story was produced by The 74, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on education in America.
The post Why Schools Are Welcoming Intergenerational Tutoring appeared first on Reasons to be Cheerful.
Public education – a case for all of us to work together
I write in relation to the article published in Pearls and Irritations on 23 January 2024, authored by John Frew. The writer appears to be questioning who should be working with children experiencing educational disadvantage, get funding to do it, and be responsible for their outcomes. He raises the example of The Smith Family, as Continue reading »
How Books Are Reaching Kids in ‘Book Deserts’
When Larry Abrams started teaching English in New Jersey high schools in the early 2000s, his first two schools were within a few miles of each other, yet worlds apart.
At the first school in a wealthy suburb, “I taught the sons and daughters of millionaires,” Abrams remembers. The second school was “at the opposite end of the socioeconomic spectrum,” and Abrams says he had to “relearn how to teach” his students there.
“My ninth graders had a fourth- or fifth-grade reading level,” he says, though they were native English speakers. He realized this was because they were missing something he had taken for granted: books.
He had an “aha” moment in 2017, when he asked one of his senior students, Belyeneda Sanchez, what she was reading to her two-year-old daughter Brizzy. The student responded that she had no children’s books at home: “We just don’t do that in our culture.”
The nonprofit BookSmiles distributes some 70,000 books a month. Courtesy of BookSmiles
Abrams admits the response stumped him. The next day, he handed her a box of children’s books with the words, “Every kid needs books in their home.” Sanchez confesses she avoided Abrams in the following weeks because every time he saw her, he would inquire how Brizzy was enjoying the books, and she still hadn’t read any to her daughter. Eventually, Sanchez picked up Harold and the Purple Crayon, and her daughter enjoyed it so much that she started reading to Brizzy every night.
After that humble exchange, Abrams began requesting donations of gently used children’s books from friends and students, and within weeks, thousands of books piled up, first in his garage, then in a storage room. He distributed them to young parents and elementary schools. The book donations were met with so much enthusiasm (“It caused a feeding frenzy,” Abrams says) that he is now the founding director of the nonprofit BookSmiles, one of the biggest book banks for children in the US.
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According to Abrams, BookSmiles has given away nearly two million books in the last six years. The nonprofit distributes about 70,000 free books locally each month and wants to raise that figure to 100,000. BookSmiles focus its efforts in the region, while other big book donation programs make books available by mail. For instance, Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library has donated more than 226 million children’s books nationally and internationally.
“We will not rest until every child in Philadelphia and in New Jersey grows up with books, and we are not going to let poverty and excuses get in the way,” Abrams promises. “That child is going to have a better success rate in kindergarten and in school than a kid who doesn’t have any books.”
BookSmiles has become one of the biggest book banks for children in the US. Courtesy of BookSmiles
According to the US Department of Education, up to 61 percent of low-income families do not have any books for their kids at home. Forty-five percent of US children live in neighborhoods that lack public libraries and stores that sell books, or in homes where books are an unaffordable or unfamiliar luxury. This means that 32.4 million American children go without books, while 67 percent of the schools and programs in the nation’s lowest-income neighborhoods can’t afford to buy books at retail prices. For instance, in Washington, D.C.’s Anacostia neighborhood, where the poverty level sits around 61 percent, 830 children would share a single book, whereas children in high-income communities have about 13 books per child. The nonprofit End Book Deserts cites studies that show access to print resources during early childhood development has an immediate and long-term effect on vocabulary, background knowledge, and comprehension.
Abrams had grown up as a bookworm. Both his parents and his grandmother were teachers. “I never lacked books and magazines,” he says. “We went to the library. I got books as gifts. Some books are like friends to me or love affairs that I treasure. I like the transformative experience of reading, of going into other worlds, experiencing other cultures.”
It was not until he started teaching at the public Lindenwold High School in South Jersey that the lack of reading material in many households became evident to him. “Just as there are food deserts, there are book deserts,” he came to realize. “I can’t give the kids ballet lessons or summer camp. But we can give them books, and it’s transforming the culture of a family.” He quotes research to show that early literacy sets the stage for a child’s future success by promoting academic achievement, reduced grade retention (meaning fewer kids are held back), higher graduation rates and enhanced productivity in adult life. Abrams calls it “book wealth.”
A few of BookSmiles’ hand-painted book collection bins. Courtesy of BookSmiles
In front of BookSmiles’ 4,300-square-foot headquarters in Pennsauken, (clean) trash bins hand-painted with sunflowers, colorful birds and nature scenes invite passersby to drop off gently used books. The nonprofit gets the rest through student drives and by buying them cheaply from Goodwill. With the help of hundreds of volunteers, three full-time employees sort the books into age-appropriate groups. Abrams tries to make sure BookSmiles offers a diverse selection for the teachers who come by and pick up about 10,000 books per month. Like in a bookstore, available books are sorted on shelves, including LGBTQ books, bilingual books, books with Black protagonists and banned books. “If you don’t like a certain book, you don’t have to take it,” Abrams says. “I trust that teachers make good choices.”
“At first, when you hear about BookSmiles, you think it’s too good to be true,” Lisa Feinstein, a literacy coach at James H. Johnson Elementary School in Cherry Hill, told the Philadelphia Citizen. “The first time I went, it was like a yard sale, where you get 10 books, and think, ‘Yay, great!’ But then you’ve got Larry saying, ‘No, take more, take more, take more. Don’t leave here without 150 books!’”
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During the pandemic lockdown, teachers stopped coming, and Abrams has since partnered with several nonprofits, including food banks, which load their trucks full of books and distribute them to families in need along with produce and diapers. The nonprofits include Share Food, Philadelphia’s biggest food bank; Cradles to Crayons, which distributes children’s clothing; and Fathers Read 365, two Philly dads who read to kids in daycare and distribute books. “I love the idea of feeding bodies and feeding minds,” Abrams says. “If you want a child to grow up and be a powerful person who has great writing ability and great language skills, you have to read to them.”
Abrams shows a picture of Brizzy, Belyeneda Sanchez’s daughter, who is now 12 years old, an honors student and loves to read. “English is her best class,” her mom attests. “You really never know what reading can do to a child but it goes to show that in the long run, it’s a great thing to do. Start them early, make it a habit, and they will enjoy it!”
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