Children from low-income families tend to fall behind their more affluent peers in every stage of life. They are less likely to be prepared to enter school at age 5, achieve academic and social competencies by the end of elementary schools graduate from high school with good grades, no crime involvement, or teen pregnancy, or achievement equivalent income in their twenties.[i] 

 

Look at all the cognitive elements in the reading comprehension framework and it becomes obvious why students who have minimal access to books and spoken language in the home fall behind. An exposure to language is how students learn to form sentences, understand new words and build vocabulary, and comprehend what is being spoken or read. Without a book or someone to share a book with, a child doesn’t get experience deciphering new words, understanding phonemes, and structuring language.

Though putting a book on a bookcase, understanding that a book is read from left to right, or chewing on a book are deceptively simple steps down the road to literacy when compared to the complexity of reading comprehension skills, literacy is rarely achieved in households that don’t have access to literature. In fact, reading aloud is known to be the most important activity that leads to literacy and determines a student’s reading success through the rest of their life.[ii]

Parent involvement is critical in early childhood development. Before the first school bell rings, 90 percent of brain development has occurred between birth and age 5.[iii] It’s no wonder why children in poverty, who hear as many as 30 million fewer words than their more affluent peers before the age of 4, are kept at a perpetual academic disadvantage. [iv]

According to the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, their research shows 37 percent of children entering kindergarten are not prepared with the skills they need to learn. Research also shows that an academic setback in kindergarten makes it very difficult for students to ever catch up.[v] The quality of a student’s early childhood education is strongly correlated with their high school success.

Email me at caroljcarter@lifebound.com if you are interested in learning more about how you can bring summer learning to your community.

• 60% of America’s prison inmates are functionally illiterate and 85% of all juvenile offenders have reading problems.
• Approximately 50% of the nation’s unemployed youth age 16-21 are functionally illiterate, with virtually no prospects of obtaining good jobs.
• 55% of adults with below basic reading comprehension did not graduate high school.1

Reading has been the sine qua non of culture and civilization for thousands of years. The spread of literacy from the upper echelons of society to the middle and lower classes is perhaps one of the most defining characteristics of modernism. According to the United Nations, the presence of illiteracy in the world today among less-developed nations has been connected to continuing cycles of poverty, poor health, and deprivation, and makes democracy in these nations difficult or nearly impossible to achieve ¹. So, the fact that reading scores for American high school graduates are the lowest they’ve been in 40 years should cause worry.

Both the SAT and ACT scores in 2012 show poor reading levels. The SAT showed an average score that was one point lower than last year’s, and the lowest since 1972 ². Only 57% of grads who took the ACT met their benchmark for reading scores, which is much the same result as last year’s tests; in fact, the average composite score for the ACT hasn’t shown much change at all in either direction since 2008 ³. The reason these particular tests are important in evaluating high school graduates is because they’re one of the most important evaluation tools a college uses to determine whether an applicant should be admitted. As such, the tests are widely recognized by colleges as trustworthy in determining whether or not a student is ready for college-level work.

Literacy changes lives, and means much more than the ability to sit down with a novel. Consider the travel, career, school, dietary, or entertainment limitations that would be set by illiteracy in your daily routine. If you couldn’t read the bus sign, compose an email, or understand the menu at lunch, your life would be very different, wouldn’t it?

The best way to overcome illiteracy is to prevent it in the first place. Summer reading, tutors, and early cognitive testing are just a few ways schools, communities, and families can address reading problems before students get overwhelmingly behind or drop out. Although preventative measures are ideal, realistically, there are already many teens and adults who are illiterate and who — without help — are determined to continue fueling the poverty cycle.

Check out the infographic by Project Read for a closer look at the costs and progression of illiteracy in American families. What could our country’s economic, education, and professional future look like if we had more advocates for childhood, teen, and adult literacy? What can you do to help an adult or child improve their literacy skills?

^{1″Literacy vital for beating poverty and disease and reinforcing stability.” 11 September 2011. United Nations News Centre. Accessed on 15 November 2012. http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=39485&Cr=literacy&Cr1#.UKU3jeOe_Bo}

^{2″SAT reading scores hit a four-decade low” by Lyndsey Layton and Emma Brown. 24 September 2012. The Washington Post. Accessed on 15 November 2012. http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/sat-reading-scores-hit-a-four-decade-low/2012/09/24/7ec9cb1e-0643-11e2-afff-d6c7f20a83bf_story.html}

^{3″ACT Takers Make Small Gains in College Readiness, Report Says,” by Timothy Sandoval. 22 August 2012. The Chronicle of Higher Education. 15 November 2012. http://chronicle.com/article/ACT-Takers-Make-Small-Gains-in/133902/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en}

For low-income kids, the oncoming summer vacation can bring forth different feelings than it does for privileged students. Due to a lack of accessibility, availability, and financial resources, low-income students often don’t have equal summer learning opportunities as privileged students, which contributes to increased summer learning losses and puts them at a disadvantage at the start of each new school year. Some of these students care for younger siblings all summer. Others play the role of parent to parents who may struggle with addiction or other issues. Others are in foster families or are raised by a grandparent because their parents are in prison or not fit to raise them.

This year, teen unemployment rates are soaring between 23.2 – 23.8 percent ¹, which may prove to be even more problematic for low-income teens looking to work more hours to contribute to the family, make money for the upcoming school year, or to simply keep busy and off the street.

Many communities offer a number of ways for students to learn and grow this summer.  In some cities, like Denver, La Casa/Quigg Newton Medical Facility is promoting reading by distributing LifeBound books to parents and students who are their patients.  Many of these Spanish speaking patients are encouraged to read with their kids, improving both their English language skills and their overall literacy. Public libraries are reinventing themselves as well. The Omaha Public Library is running a youth program for more than 1700 students including some programs for parents. Housing Projects, which have been hit hard by a dip in federal funds for GED, computer skills, and financial literacy classes, are discovering new ways to promote reading and learning.

Beyond these initiatives, parents, and students can use the following ideas to make a summer activity schedule. Educators who work in low-income area can use the following ideas to generate a specific list of things to do in their students’ area during the summer months that keep them active, learning, and growing in diverse and challenging ways:

Spring break is coming to an end and that’s a sure sign summer vacation will be here before we know it. When students go on summer vacation it is important for them to be mentally challenged. Why?  Students who aren’t engaged in learning activities don’t  retain information learned during the school year and often start the following year behind their counterparts who do grow their brains in the summer.

“All young people experience learning losses when they do not engage in educational activities during the summer,” according to the National Summer Learning Association. Low-income students who aren’t engaged in summer activities typically lose more than two months in reading achievement over the summer.

This summer, as an educator or parent, how can you influence students to adopt a reading culture at home? If you teach, consider sending home a reading list to all your students or lend books from your personal classroom library. As a parent, what can you do to ensure your child has access to books over the summer, or reading groups around popular topics, or writing workshops where they can reflect on what they’ve read? You can take weekly trips to the library where they can check out a bag of books, even those they aren’t sure about. You can also start a book exchange in your neighborhood.

Recently, the Common Core Standards for English/language arts has been adopted by all but four states and requires educators to teach how to read non-fiction literature, as well as fiction. Students might not consider picking up a book about castles, how to bake a pie, or build a watch, but reading informational texts can give them a more fully developed repertoire of reading. Learning how to read informational texts is important for students because it exercises different reading skills. Fiction usually has a beginning, middle, and end, a plot, characters, dialogue, and themes. Nonfiction doesn’t provide the same structure for readers as fiction does, and requires practice — just as everything else does — in order to master it. This summer, you can help younger kids hone these non-fiction reading skills by finding a science blog for kids online or subscribe older kids to magazines like Smithsonian or National Geographic.

How can you personally help promote literacy this summer and fight summer learning losses? At LifeBound, we believe summer reading can change lives. If you work with disadvantaged or impoverished students, ask us about our book donation program for summer reading in the comments or email us at contact@lifebound.com.

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Sources:

“Districts Gear Up for Shift to Informational Texts,” by Catherine Gewertz. 14 March 2012. Education Week. Accessed on 30 March 2012. http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2012/03/14/24informational_ep.h31.html?tkn=VUCFGGxCVWko01hd60UOyi5jZLLaUFRJvVt6&cmp=clp-sb-ascd

The National Summer Learning Association - http://www.summerlearning.org/?page=know_the_facts

We have many dreams for today’s students. We want to ensure they get an education that prepares them for a successful career. We want them to have all the latest technology. We want them to use technology to become a new generation of innovators and creative thinkers. We want them to have the best teachers. We want a system that values learning, not memorization.

Many people have many different ideas for how education can be reformed, but they all have one thing in common: they they all require funding.

In Florida, eleven percent of households with students in K12 education do not have Internet access, according to the article “Many Low-Income Students Struggle with Lack of Internet at Home.” A lack of Internet, whether due to a lack of devices, access or both, is one element that continues to drive a wedge in the achievement gap. Low-income students aren’t given the same benefits of their more affluent peers when they are required to do online assignments, putting them at a disadvantage in their education and future career.

Like many school districts around the country, school districts in Florida are pushing to have digital textbooks for all students by 2015. In fact, the Obama administration recently announced they are pushing for every student in the U.S. to have an e-textbook by 2017. However, getting devices in the hands of all 21st century students is only part of the equation. “The digital divide is not because students lack devices,” said Ocoee Middle School Principal Sharyn Gabriel, in the article. “The digital divide stems from the lack of Wi-Fi.”

Whose responsibility is it to close the divide?  AT&T announced this week that they are pledging $250 million to programs that promote high school graduation and career readiness over the next five years. This funding will be distributed through school grants, community organizations, and other companies helping at-risk students graduate and prepare them for careers. What level of achievement could students reach if they were all given equal opportunities? What responsibility to corporations have to put student success on their radar?

LifeBound is working this summer to close the achievement gap through providing students with a summer of learning. Summer learning losses are one of the greatest setbacks to underprivileged children. Ask us more about our book donations and literacy initiative by sending your questions to contact@lifebound.com. We look forward to hearing from you.

The economy has done more than take away jobs. It’s forced families from a wide range of socioeconomic backgrounds to be homeless, hungry, and lose the comfort of  having other basic needs. Nearly three-quarters of all U.S. households with income below the federal poverty line spend over 50 percent of monthly household income on rent (Endhomelessness.org.)

We are often reminded of the number of Americans losing jobs, or graduating into a bad economy, or taking low-level, minimum wage jobs just to get by. However, what about the students in these families? We also hear a lot about poor student performance on standardized tests, college grads who graduate without critical skills, decreases in school budgets, and the lack of student proficiency in literacy and STEM subjects. We’ve known for decades that students don’t do well if they are hungry, sleep-deprived, or stressed. As more families hit the poverty line, is it any wonder that more students aren’t successful?

“The results are plain to see,” writes Mark Naison in his article “America’s Teachers See Growing Poverty Up Close.” “After ten years of No Child Left Behind, three years of Race to the Top, and twenty years of Teach for America, we have seen no change in the global standing of America’s schools and no reduction in the test score gap between racially and economically disadvantaged groups and the rest of the population.”  Teachers on the frontline of teaching kids in “generational poverty” or those “made newly poor by the economic crisis” are an untapped resource in finding an answer to education reform.

Naison illustrates the picture that many educators see in today’s schools, a perspective he believes many “education reformers” don’t have:

• Many students who live in poor and working class neighborhoods don’t have a secure place to stay, moving from apartment to apartment, experience bouts of homelessness, and move in and out of foster care.
• Students may disappear from school for days or weeks at a time, sometimes not returning altogether.
• Those who attend class often fall asleep in class from sleep deprivation due to crowded homes and homelessness.
• Many students go hungry, and fear the weekend when they don’t get school meals.
• Many live without healthcare.

As many questions about education reform remain unanswered, consider what you can do to give legislators the perspective of a teacher. Is there more you can do to illustrate the struggles and achievements of your students? What would you do to solve the problem of poverty in the classroom? What can you do with your resources to make a difference in a child’s life? How can you use academic coaching to coach a child who is having a hard time at home and in school?

 

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Source:

“America’s Teachers See Growing Poverty Up Close,” By Mark Naison. 17 January 2012. Beyond Chron. Accessed on 18 January 2012. http://www.beyondchron.org/news/index.php?itemid=9812#more