Ruby Payne, Scholar?
January 17, 2009
As she comes under much more critical scrutinty lately, Ruby Payne keeps digging herself in deeper.
Case in Point: In the January issue of Kappan Mistilina Sato and Tim Lensmire is a very good article critiquing Payne and proposing work that more substantively prepares teachers to understand the lives of poor students. They note, as many others have also done, that Payne’s work is based on many unsubstantiated claims.
Payne responds in the same issue with a more general response to criticism of her book, A Framework for Understanding Poverty. She begins with the tiresome claim that she’s made elsewhere that most people criticizing the book are nontenured assistant “professors of higher education” [sic] as if that addresses any of the detailed concerns raised in critiques of her work published in rigorous academic journals.
But more troublesome are her attempts to justify her work as actually supported by “research”.
In her Kappan article she cites herself as the source for her claim of much higher rates of child abuse among poor children than children “not in poverty”, even though Payne herself has done no research on the demographics of child abuse.
Several paragraphs later, she refers to “peer reviewed” research on her website showing statistically significant achievement differences in schools implementing her approach, an astounding distortion of conventional peer review process. For Education and Class readers who don’t publish in academic journals, “peer review” means that a study has been scrutinized by scholars who do not know the identity of the author, who are charged with assessing whether an author has complied with expected norms of scholarly inquiry, and who critique the study for the extent to which it builds and extends the body of existing research around a given question.
Payne’s “peer review” consists of nothing more than a brief commentary of some of her research methods by some faculty members (no explanation was given for why these men were chosen) who seem to have no background in school achievement studies and who clearly knew the source of the work they were reading.
Payne’s reasearch consists of nothing more than a handful of simple pre-test/post -test studies of single schools. Students in Intro to Research courses learn the pretty serious limitations of interpreting data from studies that presume that the only thing that has affected achievement in complex schools (and their communities) over time is the particular teaching methodology of interest to a particular author.
In spite of how often her supporters contrast Payne with “those academics” who lack credibility because of their distance from classrooms, Payne proudly identifies herself as a Ph.D.
So she should know better.
And so should school districts looking for support for teachers who want to learn more about how how best to teach poor children.
September 29, 2010 at 2:27 pm
All of this Ruby Payne debate is interesting because I feel as if a lot of the critics are casting her as some sort of villain who is out to hurt these kids as opposed to help them. Whatever her flaws may be (lack of research, overuse of anecdotes, misleading sources, etc.), my contention is that the woman’s heart is in the right place. This by no menas excuses her for potentially passing off her work as both expert and research/source laden and I too would have liked to have seen pages and pages of detailed footnotes. But, I feel it is plain wrong wrong to be saying that Payne is “misleading” and “shortchanging” teachers. Her work is designed to help us better educate children of poverty and much like anything else in life, if you do not like what it is you are reading, then look elsewhere for assistance. For me, it is that simple. Too many us are quick to judge and attack others for an honest effort and that is the shame of it all. Payne is throwing her hat into the ring, so to speak and attempting to rectify a tragic problem in this country. Isn’t that the kind of stuff that should be applauded? It’s one thing to disagree with her work but, the vitriol that exists in cyberspace with regard to Ruby Payne is completely lost on me.
September 29, 2010 at 2:47 pm
Hi Scott,
I want to think about what people with good intentions typically do. I’d absolutely accept your position if she’d just appeared on the scene and people just shot her down.
But that’s not the case here.
People have been drawing attention to the errors, misinterpretations, over generalizations, and other problems in her work for years now, and she’s steadfastly refused to back off her claims and continues to charge districts enormous amounts of money to train teachers with the very same ideas year after year. I guess one interpretation is that her heart is in the right place and she’s just sort of stubborn and believes very deeply in what she’s saying so won’t develop her thinking at all in 20 years because she got it right the first time.
But isn’t that pretty unusual, for someone to not really grow in their thinking in that long? Especially someone who’s work is so often critiqued (and I certainly can’t speak to all that you’ve read, but she’s declared herself a scholar and scholars critique one anothers ideas. That’s absolutely fair game).
Maybe another explanation is that she’s built a huge business on these ideas at considerable personal profit — more than many educational consultants, surely – and that business wouldn’t fare too well if she now started back-tracking, would it?
I have no idea what kind of person she is. I’m sure that all of us have very mixed motives. But I know that her ideas — no matter how well intended — do not hold up to scrutiny. They’re often just puzzling in her misinterpretation of the few sources that she does cite. And she’s stuck with them for years and years and years, no matter how many times others have asked her to support some of her claims.
I’m sorry, but good intentions aren’t enough for me.
I honestly want to know, Scott: What other educators have been telling the exact same story for this long, even when so many others have said “WAIT A MINUTE!”? In my world, people with really good intentions to help poor kids keep growing and learning themselves. They write about how they’ve had to learn and learn because their initial ideas were often prettty short sited. That’s the kind of honest dialogue that others working on behalf of poor kids do all the time.
Why do you think Ruby Payne is an exception to that?
April 10, 2011 at 4:25 pm
I think that in her attempt to simplefy the problems related to poverty, Payne drew global conclusions based on persona,educational experience, and limited research. Good intentions do not always lead to helpful actions. In fact, damage can be done when teachers take these prejudices as their own and underestimate, undervalue, underutilize the individuality of the child and his/her family culture.
We are trained professionals and life long learners. I propose that all positions be taken with a grain of salt and tested through personal relationships with children and families living in poverty. Classes, such as the one I am currently taking, that present differing views related to poverty and education are a start. In addition, teachers need to get outside of their comfort zones and begin to do their own action research as they build relationships with their children and families, keeping in mind children’s family cultures and their experience in them vary from individual to individual. Then, we need to use all this information gathered by experts and our own experiences to create change first in ourselves, then our students, schools, community. In addition, we need to help create change in our nation and world. It is the only way I know to understand and overcome prejudices and break apart the complexity of poverty, so that change can occur in a personal and meaningful way.
By the way, Payne is not the only one who has capitalized on the problems of poverty. . . curriculum publishers are terrific at taking the current research, simplifying it to meet their needs, and offering whole sets of quick-fix solutions for a hefty price.
June 13, 2011 at 7:28 pm
I would agree that Ruby Payne is guilty of taking her data further than can be reasonably defended. She also oversimplifies and generalizes to the point of stereotyping. The fact that she has made such a career on the lecture circuit points to a problem that exists more in education and educators than the speaker of the day, (or last several years in this case) – educators, administrators seem to constantly seek the next quick fix. If a book has enough cool sound bites and anecedotal evidence to resonate with readers, a movement can be born. Very seldom to school districts hear something new, something that presents well initially and immediately ask, “what’s the other side of the story?” Very seldom do we back check the works cited to see if the research is being interpreted fairly. We don’t seek the balance that is necessary.
Dr. Payne’s work may not be the earth shattering, all saving piece that some believe it to be, but it does have value for me. Taken as part of a balanced diet of thought and consideration it can contribute to how I work in my classroom. My focus as a high school teacher for the last few years, almost a mantra really, has been, “It’s not about what works for me, it’s about what works for the kid.” Payne’s book has been enlightening in helping me realize that many of my students don’t have lives that are similar to mine in any way. I also can’t assume that because a child is poor, they will match the descriptions set forth by Dr. Payne. It all comes down to what it has always come down to – I need to get to know my students, one at a time. Payne’s work will cause me to do with a mind open to more possibilities than before
June 14, 2011 at 5:32 am
Hello, Commenter.
To even say that she has “data” is a stretch — she does not. She has her own personal experiences in one neighborhood many years ago and citations to others’ research that has long since been discredited.
I agree so strongly that teachers have to get to know their students. It would seem so much more productive to go to their neighborhoods, to design assignments wherein they might tell us about themselves, to forge productive partnerships with families, to read and to study voices from the communities of our students rather than relying on the voice of a wealthy white woman who has not changed her thinking in decades to tell us about them. I’m just not seeing the connection between reading a book that does admittedly stereotype and saying that that same book helps teachers to understand their students.