Last week I had my first blog published on Huffington Post. The open forum in the Huffington Post comment sections has already been a great writing and learning experience, and I look forward to engaging with more opinionated readers.

My latest article explores why low-income students are often less likely to receive a quality K-12 education, graduate from high school, and enter college with college-level skills. Over the next few weeks I’m going to continue the conversation by sharing how low-income students can find learning opportunities outside of school to improve their personal, academic, and professional achievement as well as share some stories of  people I know personally who have overcome poverty.

You can read and comment on my blog “Why Aren’t Low-Income Students Succeeding in School?”  at the Huffington Post.

“We cannot rest until each of us would be satisfied with randomly assigning our own children to any public school in the nation.” 

-  Jason Kamras

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.

In America, it doesn’t matter what socioeconomic standing you were born into, we believe everyone deserves an equal chance at an equally fulfilling life. In the land of opportunity, a general sense of optimism for our futures sets us apart from other countries. A 2009 Pew Poll found even after the beginning of the Great Recession, Americans remained optimistic that they would still get ahead.[i]

That being said, the numbers speak a different truth. However optimistic we are about opportunity in America, the U.S. ranks 27th out of 31 developed countries when measuring equal opportunities.[ii] Research shows American students start falling behind other developed nations by kindergarten.[iii]

A study by Center on Children & Families at Brookings found the chance of being successful, in this study defined as reaching the middle class, is very much influenced by race and gender, but even more so by the earnings of the subject’s parents.[iv] The following graph shows a student’s preparedness for each phase of life based on whether they were born to parents in the bottom fifth of family income or the top fifth.

Note only 48 percent of children born to the bottom fifth are ready for school, compared to 78 percent in the top fifth. As these students move through the different phases of their life and into adulthood, 75 percent of those born in the top fifth will hit middle class status, compared to only 40% of those born into the bottom fifth.[v]

As this report points out, even in an unabashedly meritocratic country, “success begets later success.”[vi] Early intervention is key to a student’s future success, financially, academically, socially, and emotionally. This is true for all countries, and the ones that are succeeding know it.
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[i]  http://www.pewstates.org/research/analysis/opinion-poll-on-economic-mobility-and-the-american-dream-85899378651
[ii] http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/papers/2012/9/20%20pathways%20middle%20class%20sawhill%20winship/0920%20pathways%20middle%20class%20sawhill%20winship.pdf, page 2
[iii] http://www.michronicleonline.com/index.php/achieve/9277-greatness-starts-before-grade-school

[iv] Ibid, page 6
[v] Ibid, page 6
[vi] Ibid, page 8

The achievement gap is not an invisible problem. It is one that we can see and one that can be eliminated if we take action. Every summer underprivileged students who don’t have the means for learning resources or experiences will get set behind their more affluent peers. They also are more likely to return to a home environment every day that is not conducive to learning. Low-income families may have illiterate parents, no or limited access to technology, and a lack of literature — all influences that keep the poverty cycle going and the achievement gap strong.

Second and third-grade teacher Justin Minkel teaches to a class of 25 students, 24 of which are at the poverty level and 20 are English language learners. He recently wrote an article for Education Week where he uses his student, Melinda, as an example of how books can change a student’s life. Melinda had one book at home, was abused as a very young child, lives in poverty, and has a mother who is illiterate in English and Spanish. Today, thanks to Minkel, she has a library of 40 books. Over the last two years, she’s also gone from a kindergarten reading level to a 4th grade reading level.

Minkel attacked illiteracy in his classroom with “The 1,000 Books Project.” Each of the 25 students in his 2nd and 3rd grade classes received 3 books a month, which by the end of their two years created a library of 40 books in each student’s home, or 1,000 books in total. Scholastic took care of half the books and Minkel, alongside individuals and organizations, purchased the other half.

He calls his project “simple.” Children had home libraries “ranging from a cardboard box decorated with stickers to a wooden bookcase.” Supplies also only cost $50 per child per year. The results, however, were extraordinary. Students’ language skills improved, their reading scores soared above state expectations, and members of their families became more literate by association.

At LifeBound, we believe providing students with learning resources is key to closing the achievement gap and are working with our partners this summer to bring books to those in need. At La Casa/Quigg Newton Family Center, families are getting our book Study Skills for High School Students to be read by middle school and high school students alongside their parents. Including parents in the learning experience opens up many more opportunities for each family’s future. LifeBound is also launching a summer reading program with the Omaha Public Library this summer to get books in the hands of  1,000 students who otherwise will approach a summer without learning resources that keep their brains engaged and ready to start the next school year strong.

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Sources

“The Home Library Effect: Transforming At-Risk Readers,” by Justin Minkel. 12 June 2012. Education Week. Accessed on 14 June 2012. http://www.edweek.org/tm/articles/2012/06/12/tln_minkel.html?tkn=RNCCFBZesMUu%2FHLFXuXie61FaxwpDAC5G9Cd&cmp=clp-sb-ascd

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

800 million people are unable to read and write. Yesterday was International Literacy Day, an occasion created by the United Nations to increase awareness of the amounts of people affected by illiteracy and the harm it does to any advances made in improving poverty and sickness in nations around the world.

Millions of people deal with illiteracy every day, and most of those are women. Of the 793 million illiterate adults in the world, two-thirds are female. Literacy gives people the power to create a picture of a hopeful future, avoid disease, make more money, and provide for their families. The importance of educating women is shown in two profound statistics: In girls and women, HIV/AIDS spreads twice as fast among those who are illiterate. Also, babies who are born to literate mothers have a fifty-percent better chance of living to five-years-old compared to those born to an illiterate mother.

UNESCO recently gave the international Confucius and King Sejong literacy prizes to education institutes who are fighting for literacy to make the following possible:

• the ability to exercise peace and tolerance
• the ability for people, women especially, to exercise their rights
• more reading materials in local and minority languages

With your students or children, share these statistics and the reasons different people are rallying to increase literacy around the world. Brainstorm the different ways you could attack illiteracy around the world. Look at helping from different levels and perspectives by asking questions like:

• How would you solve illiteracy if money weren’t an option?
• How would you solve illiteracy if you had a million dollars?
• How would you solve illiteracy if you didn’t have any money?
• How could you donate to the cause to make a difference with items or time?

Time and money spent in helping men to do more for themselves is far better than mere giving. ~ Henry Ford

Sources: