Social Development TheoryAnd PovertyIn Education

Knowledge Area Module 1:Principles of Social Change

Student: William Molnar William.molnar@waldenu.eduStudent ID # 0396053

Ph.D. in EducationSpecialization: K-12 Leadership

Faculty Assessor: Dr. Wade Smith Wade.Smith@waldenu.eduFaculty Mentor: Dr. Wade Smith Wade.Smith@waldenu.edu

Walden University

September 12, 2008

ABSTRACT

Breadth

The purpose of this KAM is to identify and discuss principles derived from social development

theory that educators can apply in daily practice. The Breadth component focuses on the role of

society in education. Questions addressed include the following: What is society? What is

education? How do the two intertwine? What role does society have in the education system?

What is poverty, and how does poverty effect education? The works of classical theorists Dewey,

Durkheim, Payne, and W. R. Smith are compared and contrasted in relation to motivation and

changes in the public school system.

ABSTRACT

Depth

The Depth section reviews current literature concerning the role of development in the area of

poverty and its effects on education. Analysis of the concept of poverty as it relates to the

educational process and a discussion of how school leaders address poverty as a major obstacle

of the educational process are presented. In probing the recent literature, the intended outcome is

to find strategies to develop a better learning environment for students in low-income areas and

determine how school leaders can better address poverty as a major obstacle of the educational

process.

ABSTRACT

Application

Concepts learned in the Breadth and Depth components are utilized to develop a PowerPoint

demonstration for the school staff showing the research about the impact of poverty on student

achievement. After receiving teachers’ input and suggestions, a proposal/grant will be written

asking for increased funding to assist schools with a high poverty population. The funds will be

used to develop a program to address the needs of students in poverty situations.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

BREADTH: SBSF 8110: THEORIES OF SOCIETAL DEVELOPMENT....................................3Introduction......................................................................................................................................3Evolution of Education....................................................................................................................3The Problem of Illiteracy.................................................................................................................5Origins of Sociology........................................................................................................................5Sociology and Education.................................................................................................................7Educational Sociology...................................................................................................................10Innate Characteristics.....................................................................................................................10Socialization..................................................................................................................................11Applying Socialization to Education.............................................................................................12Human Beings as Social Animals..................................................................................................12Social Contact and Social Grouping..............................................................................................13Influence of the Family..................................................................................................................14Loss of the City Child....................................................................................................................17Principles of Dynamic Democratic Change..................................................................................19Inner-City Schools and Discipline.................................................................................................20Inner-City Schools and Poverty.....................................................................................................22Classes of Poverty..........................................................................................................................24Generational Poverty and Discipline.............................................................................................26Summary........................................................................................................................................28

DEPTH: EDUC 8128 STRATEGIC LEADERSHIP IN EDUCATION AND SOCIAL CHANGE.......................................................................................................................................30Annotated Bibliography.................................................................................................................30Literature Review Essay................................................................................................................59Poverty and the NCLB...................................................................................................................61School Success and Poverty..........................................................................................................63International Poverty.....................................................................................................................65The Oregon Simulation..................................................................................................................74The Weber Towers........................................................................................................................80Psychosocial Environment of Poverty...........................................................................................82Physical Environment of Childhood Poverty................................................................................85The Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort...................................................89Summary........................................................................................................................................91

APPLICATION: EDUC 8138: PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE IN STRATEGIC LEADERSHIP AND SOCIETAL DEVELOPMENT............................................................................................93Introduction....................................................................................................................................93Background....................................................................................................................................93The Program..................................................................................................................................95Overview of Poverty and Education..............................................................................................97Objectives of the Presentation.......................................................................................................98Presentation of the PowerPoint Demonstration.............................................................................99Summary......................................................................................................................................100

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POWER POINT DEMONSTRATION.......................................................................................102 REFEREN

CES…………………………………………………………………………………129

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BREADTHSBSF 8110: THEORIES OF SOCIETAL DEVELOPMENT

Introduction

The focus of this Breadth section is the role of society and its relationship to education.

The works of classical theorists Dewey, Durkheim, Payne, and W. R. Smith are compared and

contrasted in relation to society and the effects of poverty on education. The major concepts of

each are analyzed and evaluated. W. R. Smith’s (1917) theories of society and education are used

to compare and contrast the arguments of the others. Historical and contemporary works are

highlighted to give a broad range of perspectives.

Evolution of Education

Educational evolution did not begin with the schools. In fact, informal education existed

for thousands of years before any formal system of training was established. Training of the

young, which must be recognized as education, exists even among animals. However, conscious

training is a human product, and educational systems exist only among civilized peoples. Savage

and barbarian education, as well as early civilization, was uncertain, and that of advanced society

is institutionalized.

Dewey (1900) stated that there have been three fundamental lines of advances in our

educational development: (a) the extension of education advantages from the select classes to the

masses, (b) a gradual change in the subject matter and methods of education from the purely

cultural to the realistic, and (c) the transfer of education from private to public control. The first

schools were organized by and maintained for the very select few. It was in the Greek states that

the idea of a wide extension of education first took root. This topic is discussed later in this

essay.

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The Romans showed tendencies toward popular education, but their dreams weakened

attention to the masses. Following the downfall of Rome and during the time of Charlemagne,

not more than 1 of every 1,000 of the Spanish clergy could read; in England, only a small

number of priests could understand the Latin in the service. By the turn of the 18th century, the

studious had gained knowledge equal to that of the well-to-do classes and were able to obtain

some of the benefits of organized instruction. Soon, lay teachers found their way into the

universities and aided in broadening the educational ideal. The demand for education paved the

way for a more general education than had been known since the days of Athens.

Dewey (1900) stated that the first real desire for education came during the Industrial

Revolution, which began in the middle of the 18th century. Prior to this time, human beings had

to gain training on machinery through apprenticeship to an occupation. This apprenticeship

would usually last about 7 years. With the dawning of the factory, the labor allowed workers to

perform day after day simple tasks in which they could become expert in a short time. This cut

down the apprenticeship from 7 years to a few months. It also limited the number of things that

individuals learned to do, narrowing their work interest and curtailing the value of their

occupational training.

There were other reasons for the spread of education among the industrial classes. Dewey

(1900) stated that the skills required in production through power machinery called for trained

minds and rewarded their possessors liberally. Leaders with adaptability, knowledge, and

foresight were needed to forward the industrial organization. The increased demand for

education led to an increase in the number of facilities for popular instruction. The notion of

educating manual laborers began to take hold.

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The Problem of Illiteracy

Although education was starting to become the norm, many issues were causing strains

on the social environment. One strain was illiteracy. Durkheim (1956) stated that in 1790 France,

63% of civilians registering for marriage were unable to sign their marriage certificates. From

1910 to 1920, only 4% were unable to do so. In England in 1843, 40% of those applying for

marriage licenses could not sign their marriage certificates, but in 1905, only 1.85% could not. In

1875, 23.7% of German army recruits could neither read nor write, but in 1908, that percentage

had declined to .02%. The United States cut its illiteracy rate by more than in half between 1870

and 1900. W. R. Smith (1917) felt that illiteracy would be eliminated by 1947.

Origins of Sociology

Durkheim (1956) stated that we are bound to conform to idle customs and that if we

ignore them, too take their vengeance on our children. The children, when they become adults,

are unable to live with peers with whom they are not in agreement. In other words, life will be

difficult for those whose customs are different from the customs that they were brought up on.

Whether they have been raised in accordance with ideas that were either obsolete or premature

does not matter. Keeping in mind the conformity of society, a definition of sociology should be

stated as a foundation upon which to work.

W. R. Smith (1917) defined sociology as the science of human association, stating that

“this study implies an examination of the laws and principles underlying human relations and

interprets the phenomena of group life” (p. 3). Sociology deals with society as a whole, whereas

the other sciences, such as geology, geography, biology, psychology, and so on, do not deal with

the origin, growth, structure, and activities of society. W. R. Smith stated that sociology covers

four phases of society:

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Social origins- the basis of human association; social history- this phase can be subdivided into three stages, savagery, barbarism, and civilization; social conditions - the study of society in cross-section- social beliefs, customs, traditions, institutions, social feelings, sentiments, and opinions, and social improvement and progress. (pp. 4-5) The first two phases of sociology can be grouped into pure sociology. W. R. Smith

(1917) stated that “pure science in any field deals with the laws and principles of the particular

science; applied science with the applications of those laws and principles to the various parts of

life” (p. 6). Applied sociology, on the other hand, deals with the application to the social

problems of contemporary life. In classifying sociology among the other sciences, W. R. Smith

placed it last in a list preceded by astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology, and psychology. This

list spanned the more exact to the least exact. It was unusual to find that in 1917, astronomy was

considered the leading science because at that time, laws were so universal that the local

environment produced few variations.

The second line of development is from the simple to the complex. In the previous list of

sciences, the facts and laws of astronomy are simple in comparison to physics, which deals with

unchanging phenomena of matter. Sociology is the last in the series because it deals with

complex individuals. One can tell that these lines of development of scientific thinking go from

the general to the specific. The general sciences construct the complex ones. For example, W. R.

Smith (1917) stated that “the principles of molecular attraction and biological selection are used

to illuminate the study of social laws. The physical has paved the way for the biological, the

biological for the psychological, and the psychological for the sociological” (pp. 8-9). The

dawning of sociology came at a time when the exact, the simple, and the parent sciences slowly

developed. Astronomy grew out of astrology, physics and chemistry grew out of natural

philosophy and alchemy; biology started in the 18th century, psychology in the 19th century, and

sociology in the 20th century.

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Sociology and Education

In order to put into perspective the commonality between sociology and education, it is

necessary to define what education is. A definition of sociology has already been provided.

Durkheim (1956) defined education as “the totality of influences that nature or other men are

able to exercise either on our intelligence or on our will” (p. 61). He also commented that the

influence of things on human beings is very different in their processes and effects from that

which comes from human beings themselves; and the influence of peers on peers differs from

that which adults exercise on youth. Only the latter is of concern to this researcher. Durkheim

felt that “there is an ideal perfect education which applies to all men indiscriminately, and it is

this education, universal, and unique, that the theorist tries to define” (p. 64). Durkheim stated

that to define education, one “must consider educational systems present, and past, put them

together and abstract the characteristics which are common to them” (p. 67). He further asserted:

Education is the influence exercised by adult generations on those that are not yet ready for social life. Its object is to arouse and to develop in the child a certain number of physical intellectual and moral states which are demanded of him by both the political society as a whole and the special milieu for which he is specifically destined. (p. 71)

Dewey (1915) stated that the education of children should not depend upon the chance of

their having been born here, there, or to some parents rather than others. He went on to say that

“there are two elements needed for education to exist. There must be a generation of adults and

one of youth in interaction and an influence exercised by the first on the second” (p. 67). One

may argue that psychology would be a more exact science to study when it comes to education,

if education was primarily an individual matter, but this is not the case: Education is not an

individual matter. Human beings can no longer be relied upon to educate themselves, so it is up

to society to do it for them. In other words, society has adopted compulsory education to protect

itself.

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Education is society’s greatest force. Social evolution rather than individual development

is widespread. Education has taken on a whole new sociological aspect. School curricula are

being rewritten to introduce sociology, and even school discipline is curbing its ways of being

individualistic and domineering, and becoming more social. Dewey (1900) stated:

The changes going on in the method and curriculum of education is as much a product of the changed social situation and as much an effort to meet the needs of the new society that is forming, as are changes in modes of industry and commerce. (p. 47)

Dewey also asserted:

That which interests us most is the progress made by the individual child of our acquaintance, his normal physical development, his advance in ability to read, write, and figure, his growth in the knowledge of geography and history, improvement in manners, habits of promptness, order, and industry, it is from such standards as these that we judge the work of the school. (p. 3)

Greek and Roman education was intended to produce a sound mind and a sound body. A

well-balanced, well-trained, and active mind was supported by a well-trained physique. During

the times of Ancient Greece and Rome, education was divided among the classes. The education

of the aristocrat was not the same as that of an individual from the working class. In the Middle

Ages, the education that the young page received was in all of the arts of chivalry; today, lower

class urban students focus on learning trades, an activity that enables them to work within

society, whereas suburban students from the upper middle class are being prepared for higher

education.

Durkheim (1956) noted that education varies according to location and social classes, but

is this morally justifiable? Durkheim stated that “in the Middle Ages, education was Christian, in

the Renaissance, it assumes a more lay and literary character, today science tends to assume the

place in education formerly occupied by the arts” (p. 64).

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Around the late 19th century, social works, such as those of Pestalozzi, Froebel, and

Herbert, all of which Dewey (1900) discussed, began to make their mark on society. Dewey

stated that “the individual must not only possess a sound mind in a sound body, but he must be

brought into active and harmonious relations with his environment” (p. 8). The individual must

be personally and socially efficient. An educator needs to feel his dependence upon society; his

ideas need to be social, and his intellectual and moral views must harmonize with those of

society. The education of females was considered unnecessary at the time. It is up to education to

train an individual for membership in the family, the state, and the business world. Durkheim

stated:

If Roman education had been infused with an individualism comparable to ours, the Roman city would not have been able to maintain itself; Latin civilization would not have developed nor our modern civilization which is in part descended from it. (p. 64)

Just as in the Greek and Roman empires, the social demand is training for citizenship,

whereas the social view demands training into citizenship. The former looks at the intellectual

training of the individual, and the latter looks toward the active aid in the work of the state. One

sort of training can be given in isolation, but the other must be done in groups. The first can be

tutorial, but the latter must be group instruction (Dewey, 1900).

W. R. Smith (1928) discussed the increased need of social interdependence. He felt that

man is still limited by a physical environment that he must adapt to or learn to control. During

Greek and Roman times, the Athenian citizenship was directed only to the elite. The majority of

Greeks and Romans were considered unfit for education. Dewey (1900) commented that “a

society is a number of people held together because they are working along common lines, in a

common spirit and with reference to common aims” (p. 94).

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Educational Sociology

W. R. Smith (1917) defined educational sociology as the application of the scientific

spirit, methods, and principles of sociology to the study of education. W. R. Smith felt that

studying the laws that governed education in the American education system in the early 1900s

will improve educational practice. If sociology can make contributions to educational theory, it

will prove effective in teaching. However, the principles of sociology are still too new to provide

a basis for a scientific educational sociology. In this researcher’s opinion, it took generations for

psychology to become what it is today in the educational field, so it will take time for sociology

to assume its role in education; otherwise, it may fade away as inconsequential. W. R. Smith

stated that there is an effort in sociology to

Conceive what roughly may be termed the new education in the light of larger changes in society. There is a revolution going on that is extremely rapid and extensive and through it the face of the earth is making over even as to its physical forms; political boundaries are rapidly changing, population booms are occurring in the cities. Even moral and religious ideas and interests the most conservative because the deepest lying things in our nature are affected. All these changes in this revolution should not affect education in some other than a formal and superficial fashion is inconceivable. (p. 6)

Innate Characteristics

Therein lies the inseparability between the individual and the social man. W. R. Smith

(1917) asserted that an individual is born into a stream of tendencies and that whatever he or she

does or becomes, it is because of society. Eventually, these impressions will differentiate around

the age of 2, when the toddler is said to have to approach complete consciousness of self as an

individual.

W. R. Smith (1917) identified two types of individuality: isolation and choice. Isolation is

the result of random or accidental variations, and isolation is rational. In terms of isolation, the

individual is far removed from the tumultuous life and shows individuality. It is this individuality

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that dominates business organization, government control, and social reform. This individual’s

contacts are human, intimate, and fraternal. The individuality of isolation and choice brings up

another point, namely, the demand of socialized education. Formal education was instituted by

establishing schools to take over the training previously provided by existing institutions in

reproducing themselves. As the economy of formal education became generally recognized, the

work of the schools was expanded, and their opportunities extended to more children.

In the realm of education that was in existence at the time of the publication of W. R.

Smith’s book (1917), greatness of the individual was more dependent upon the greatness of the

group, and more stress was placed on the development of the individuality of choice. This left

educators to place students into organized relations with other students, where much schoolwork

is cooperative. Although the need for cooperative learning was discussed in a book written in

1917, now in 2008, one topic of interest to educators is the need for more child-centered and

cooperative learning environments.

Socialization

W. R. Smith (1917) stated that no group can advance without leaders and that no leaders

can exist apart from society. The geniuses and the great inventors are necessary to originate the

standards of society, do most of the thinking, and create, but contributions from the masses are

necessary to check standards with human nature to give reality to the ideas of the thinkers and to

give inspiration to the artists. The individual originates, but society perpetuates. It is through this

perpetuation that social progress results in individual contributions that are translated into social

achievement. This is accomplished through the process of socialization, which is brought about

through speech, printing, and transportation, and by competition and cooperation, as worked out

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by social organization. Dewey (1900) stated that when we turn to the school, we find a tendency

toward manual training, shop work, and household arts.

Applying Socialization to Education

There lies a flaw in applying socialization to education. The unity of the individual and

the social groups that Durkheim (1956) discussed has never been recognized in the schools as

evident. The current education system has been built upon the individual as its foundation. W. R.

Smith (1917) felt that social aspects have been recognized occasionally, but not emphasized;

rather, they have been considered secondary. The importance lies in the fact that the individual

must be educated in order to be a fruitful producer and a cultivated member of society

Human Beings as Social Animals

Durkheim (1956) stated that animals learn quickly how to adapt to society through their

own individual experiences because they either do not live under social conditions or they form

rather simple societies Human beings carry with them a fully formed education that adds nothing

essential to nature, and although they are recognized as individuals, human life is a collective

life. Durkheim stated:

If man was able to surpass the stage at which animals have stopped, it is because he is not reduced to the fruit only of his personal efforts, but cooperates with his fellow creatures which make the activity more productive. It is a result of this that the products of the work of one generation are not lost for that which follows. (p. 77)

W. R. Smith (1917) asserted that human beings’ organic inheritance is shown by the

quantity and quality of the brain and nervous structure, and the adaptability of the physique.

Keeping this is mind, one could say that education consists of the total of the influences and

forces that society brings to bear upon the individual for the purpose of developing and

socializing humankind. All human contact is educative, but it is not all equally educative.

Whatever affects human contact also affects education, the process of society. Education can be

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thought of as a by-product of social activities, but it is insufficient to satisfy a progressive society

such as that of the 21st century.

Social Contact and Social Grouping

W. R. Smith (1917) stated that social contacts during early childhood and youth are very

strong and carefully monitored. Children are very vulnerable and are forbidden certain adult

activities, such as going into poolrooms, playing on the streets after curfew, and being limited as

to what they can watch on television. Social contacts are so important that certain childhood

activities are supervised, such as monitoring their reading, limiting their employment by enacting

child labor laws, and selecting the children with whom they socialize. What W. R. Smith (1928)

stated 50 years ago remains a problem in the modern school system, namely, that society

attempts to control contacts by eliminating the harmful and substituting the more useful for the

less useful.

W. R. Smith (1917) stated that “a series of sanctions in favor of certain types of conduct,

and a series of taboos against other types of conduct, is built up in the public mind” (p. 45), and

he talked about building up public institutions for the students. The cities of today do not help to

control the milieu of mischief that today’s children encounter. Perhaps in W. R. Smith’s time,

these institutions might have helped. W. R. Smith noted that “society accepted the ignorance of

youth as an invitation to exercise guardianship and has established the school as a public

institution to provide the choices available contacts preserved from the past and offered in the

present” (p. 46).

Social groupings exist in three classes: primary, intermediate, and secondary. The

primary groups are characterized by face-to-face association. The intermediate groups are those

in which associational contacts are partly direct and partly indirect. The secondary groups are

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those in which relationships are almost completely indirect. An example of the primary group is

the family, the playgroup, and the neighborhood. The school, along with the church, would be

categorized as the intermediate group. The secondary groups would consist of organizations such

as the state. Primary groups are limited in membership, whereas the intermediate groups have

local units whose association is intimate and direct. For example, the school has its local

organization, where contacts are direct and personal, but in addition, it has its larger institutional

influences gained through textbooks, educational conferences and traditions, materials, and

methods acquired through social inheritance. Secondary groups consist of large numbers that

exert their influence through indirect channels. In the primary groups, contacts are personal; in

the intermediate, both personal and institutional; and in the secondary group, mostly institutional.

The primary group is found in the animal kingdom right through to human life. The importance

of these groups varies with the locality and the nature of the social organization found, but not

one of them is ever completely lacking.

Influence of the Family

There exist in society influences from three groups: primary, intermediate, and

secondary. The primary influence is the family. As previously mentioned, the approach to social

education is through the primary social group. This group, which includes the family, cares for

the children during their most impressionable years. W. R. Smith (1917) stated that the

responsibility then rests on the educational system, and if teachers fail to impress and mold the

children, it is the fault of the school system, not the family. He also stated that “the school must

act as the coordinating agent of the various educational forces and that the mission of the teacher

must be conceived in broader social terms” (pp. 61-62).

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In their formative years, children receive two impressions: One is self-consciousness, and

the other is social consciousness. Of all social relations that children receive, the relation of

mother and child is the first and most elementary of all relations. Eventually, children begin to

separate from their mothers. W. R. Smith (1917) questioned whether this separation is one of

self, of self as separated from others, or of self in accord with others. Therein lies the importance

of the family group. The close connection of family life does not end with childhood. It is less

important in the early years of youth and continues its influence in later years. Eventually,

marriage and the creation of a new home begin another cycle of family life. It should be very

easy to see why the family is considered the primary unit in every phase of life. What W. R.

Smith said in 1917 remains true today: “If training for cooperation is necessary in our highly

organized twentieth-century civilization, it should be as scientific as possible and later training

should be based upon the early activities and mental qualities developed in the home” (p. 64).

Public education was not always there to provide for children from the early years until

the developmental years, when they were ready to become successful in the outside world.

Before schools evolved, all education took place in the home, and children were taught by their

parents whatever skills they needed to meet the demands of life. During the Industrial

Revolution, that is, during the transfer of manufacturing from the family to the factory, many

changes took place. Cities were built, peasant farming gave way to specialized farming, and the

educative apprenticeship to trades disappeared. These developments broke up the home industry

and caused a disruption of family unity and parental control of children. The costs of progress

were beginning to show in the city slums, the street gangs, and the steady recurrence of crime in

congested centers. Many of these issues still exist in today’s cities. There were, however, some

developments from this disruption in family unity that were positive. One of them was the

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formation of an organized education system that replaced the apprenticeship training of the

earlier days. The humiliation of the industrialized masses led to the first vision of the need for a

free public school system (W. R. Smith, 1928).

Durkheim (1956) observed that a century ago, only 4% of the American population lived

under city conditions. At the time of Durkheim’s later writings, that percentage had increased to

more than 50%. One can only imagine what the percentages would be today 50 years later. Most

of the personal training of the home in political and financial affairs, caring for the livestock, and

managing crops has been lost in our city homes. Urban life is cramped and mechanical. The care

of living things has ceased. The hustle and bustle of the busy streets of the city has led to a strain

in family solidarity.

There are specific weaknesses in today’s family units that have been caused by changes

in society. These weaknesses need to be addressed by an organized society. Currently, the church

is attempting to deal with the situation, but the burden must fall on the public school system,

which is supported by the public. In the inner-city environment, the loss of former training in

physical ingenuity is evident. For example, children do not learn to use tools. They have no

chance in the home to develop their mechanical skills. They are only outside observers and get

very little practice in adapting physical means to ends. The joy of making things, which used to

encompass much of the play of children, is now denied to them. Most urban schools have

removed industrial arts and home economics from their curricula, but what the schools do have,

but the homes do not, is competition and the possibility of developing ambition. Children can

acquire proper equipment and leadership. The schools can develop manual training just as

effectively as the former home setting could. Schools also can provide athletics and the

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knowledge necessary for children to develop the mechanical ingenuity and physical aptitude that

the home can no longer supply.

Loss of the City Child

The stimulus of city life leads to haste among all who are susceptible to crowd

excitement. Children who live in the city are in danger from overstress. City-bred children are

likely to flutter from one environment to another, destroying the continuity of thought and effort

of country-bred children. The school must help the home to counteract the strain of the city in

producing hope in our youth (Durkheim, 1956). Before the age of computers and the Internet,

many schools used to have gardens where children could cultivate flowers and vegetables. The

idea of crowding the curriculum with a lot of studies and rushing from one class to the next is

giving way in theory and will eventually give way in practice. Along with this schoolwork is the

effort to help the home. The schools are encouraging home gardens, home manual work for boys,

and household duties for girls.

Germany, unlike the United States, has a filtering system in which students’ educational

future is decided by high-stakes testing. Japan, England, and other countries, along with the

United States, have had similar systems for years. However, one does not want the future of

American citizens decided by a test in an educational setting. Society needs skilled tradespeople,

but the family and the home can no longer provide this training. Many industrial companies are

establishing service schools, but they are limited and are in need of better educated apprentices

as instructors. Public agencies must assume the responsibility for vocational education, and the

public schools are the only institutions that can cope with a problem of such magnitude and

significance. Many schools are finding that vocational education is too expensive to implement

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in a meaningful way in the K-12 setting. The U.S. government disburses more than $1 billion

annually for vocational education. All of the states participate in this grant.

W. R. Smith (1928) asserted that all of the changes in family and home life must be

compliant with the schools. Family unity, which was a largely protective environment, now is

chiefly economic and is shifting to one that is primarily spiritual. The functions of the family

have been distributed among various institutions that can handle them more effectively than the

family can. Its religious function has been transferred to the church, its legal function has been

transferred to the government, and its function of educating children has been transferred to the

schools. The family has not relinquished all of its responsibilities, but it trusts that the school is

reaching out into new fields and is assuming more responsibility over the education of the youth.

According to Durkheim (1956), under the new circumstances, family members are at a loss to

know what to do and are so absorbed in other affairs that they trust educational training to the

schools. Parents need to be educated in ways of supplementing and aiding schoolwork. At the

same time, teacher training is needed in studying the home environment of the pupils so that

teachers can base their work upon what the children are and direct it with reference to what they

are to become. This is what led initially to the development of parent-teacher associations,

mothers’ clubs, visitors’ days, music festivals, art exhibits, and so on. Parents need the viewpoint

of sociology, which the teachers should be able to provide, and the teachers need the special

insight into the nature of the children that only the parents can give. Here each can benefit from

one another.

Another form of family input is in the area of homework. In some schools, parents are

asked to grade their children on home conduct for the benefit of the teachers, just as the teachers

send home report cards for the benefit of the parents. Parents are beginning to feel a new

19

responsibility for restoring home opportunities. They realize that book-based education cannot

take the place of parents, so teachers are minimizing book instruction as they realize how little it

functions in the lives of their students. They are coming back to the more natural and useful type

of training in the earlier home Environment (W. R. Smith, 1928).

Principles of Dynamic Democratic Change

W. R. Smith (1928) stated that social organization has increased in complexity through

the extension of group relationships and that these relationships have been fostered by the

universal trend toward democracy. Every phase of our life is influenced by democracy, and every

institution is being overhauled to meet its needs. The growth of democracy is speeding up the

rate of social change that was so evident in W. R. Smith’s time. Even today, we can see a high

rate of social change, especially in the inner city, but a new problem has arisen, namely, that the

schools are having a difficult time keeping up with social change. The rush of economic and

social democracy was overwhelming in the middle of the 18th century. At the time of the printing

of W. R. Smith’s book, social change needed to keep up with the automobile, the telephone, the

wireless telegraph, and the airplane. Today’s biggest social changes should be obvious: the

telephone and the computer. The schools must recognize the principles of this dynamic

democratic change. Education must be aggressive and progressive; otherwise, it will become

useless. Dewey (1900) asserted:

Each society at a given stage of development has a system of education which exercises an irresistible influence on individuals. It is idle custom to which we are bound to conform if we flout them too severely; they take their vengeance on our children. The children when they become adults are unable to live with their peers with whom they are not in accord. Whether they had been raised in accordance with ideas that were either obsolete or premature does not matter. (p. 65)

Another change in education is that from private and institutional control to public

control. As clans and tribal organizations became more dominant, certain functions in regard to

20

education were assumed by groups of elders. In early civilization, the first institution to gain

control was the church. Before the rise of enlightened governments, the church was the primary

social organization. As previously stated, the movement toward civic control occurred in the

Greek states. It was there that the governments assumed the educational function to develop a

trained citizenship. The liberalization of the elementary school began in England. The schools

were primarily church schools but gradually became less religious in discipline. By the 1800s,

the students were largely secular, and schools gradually evolved into the so-called public

schools, which were really private schools. Similar movements toward secularizing education

occurred all over England. As the state advanced in importance, the function of the schools in the

development of citizenship began to be seen, albeit dimly. The goal of the new education was the

training of professional efficiency.

Public education is demanding a longer period of service and is continually assuming

new functions. Elementary schools used to focus on reading, spelling, writing, and arithmetic.

Then geography, language, history, and physiology were added. Many districts are creating

vocational-technical high schools in place of domestic arts, manual training, and shops. It is at

these schools that students can focus on various trades rather than on college-bound academics.

Inner-City Schools and Discipline

W. R. Smith (1917) stated that school discipline has been an ongoing problem, and

although its fundamentals are better understood today, it is not becoming any less acute in actual

practice. As teachers are solving problems of physical control over their pupils, society is

demanding that they increase their spiritual control. At one time, teachers were required to be

supreme in their own narrow realm; teachers are now asked to build up ideals of conduct in the

21

minds of pupils that will not only aid in establishing self-control but also will help in developing

community control.

Durkheim (1956) asserted that at a minimum, at least 20% of the failures of beginning

teachers can be attributed to weaknesses in discipline skills. School discipline needs to be

approached from two standpoints. On the one hand, it is concerned with individuals as different

from all others in experience, but it also is concerned with individuals as members of social

groups, similar to others in nature and training. These groups vary in aim and spirit as much as

individuals do. When discipline deals with individuals as members of groups that are dominated

by social motives and ideals, it becomes a sociological problem. W. R. Smith (1917) stated that

when dealing with inner-city children, there are at least four fundamental principles necessary to

good discipline: It must harmonize with social ideals outside the schoolroom, it must be positive

and constructive rather than negative and restrictive, it must be indirect rather than direct, and it

must be administered so that the students can understand it.

Direct discipline is the exercise of control by very evident means. It is conscious

discipline on the part of teachers and students. The typical form is the direct command to do, or

not to do, certain things. The teacher must have control over discipline in order to conduct the

class in a controlled environment. If there are radical conditions, education cannot occur. Dewey

(1900) explained:

It is radical conditions which have changed and only an equally radical change in education suffices. We must recognize our compensations, the increase in toleration, in breadth of social judgment, the larger acquaintance with human nature, the sharpened alertness in reading signs of character and interpreting social situation, and a greater accuracy of adaptation to differing personalities, contact with greater commercial activities. These considerations mean much to the city-bred child of today. (p. 8)

Indirect discipline is control that can be conscious on the part of the teacher but must be

unconscious on the part of the child. It is the discipline that comes from congenial work well

22

done and from participation in the various activities of the school as a whole. It is the kind

exercised most freely in society outside of the school setting. Each individual has a part to play

in the activities of the world, and the child’s responses indicate the nature and the

wholesomeness of the discipline that the child has undergone.

Inner-City Schools and Poverty

Payne (1996) defined poverty as “the extent to which an individual does without

resources. These resources include, in addition to financial; emotional, mental, spiritual,

physical, support systems, relationships/role models, and knowledge of hidden rules” (p. 7).

When one thinks of poverty, the immediate thought is financial, but in reality, financial hardship

is only one aspect of poverty. The reasons to leave poverty are not only financial. One reason

Montano-Harmon (1991, as cited in Payne) found for student failure is the lack of formal register

at home. Formal register is one of five registers of language that exist in society. Formal register

is “the standard sentence syntax and word choice of work and school. “Formal register has

complete sentences and specific word choice” (Payne, p. 27). Montano-Harmon stated that all

state tests are in the formal register, which students living in poverty have no access to. One

function of the education system is to teach the formal register. To make the situation more

complicated, to get well-paying jobs, children are expected to use formal language, and it is this

formal language that allows children to score high on tests and do well in school. In addition,

children of poverty have limited knowledge of sentence structure, which prohibits their use of

formal language.

Another issue facing students of poverty is the pattern of discourse. Discourse is not

related to the formal register; rather, it is a different issue. Payne (1996) stated that discourse is

“the manner in which the information is organized” (p. 28). Payne noted that “acquisition is the

23

best and most natural way to learn a language and is simply the immersion in, and constant

interaction with, that language. Learning is the direct-teaching of a language and usually is at a

more metacognitive level” (p. 29). Payne commented:

Teachers want to get right to the point, but parents, especially those from poverty, need to beat around the bush first. When teachers cut off the conversation and get right to the point, parents view this as rude and not caring. (p. 30)

Payne stated that there are hidden rules for those living in poverty. This also holds true among

racial and ethnic groups. In generational poverty, entertainment and relationships are the key

forces that drive them, whereas in the middle class, the driving forces are work and achievement;

in the wealthy class, the financial, social, and political connections have the influence. Payne

believed that being able to physically fight is more important to survive in poverty, but in the

middle class, being able to use words as a tool of attack is crucial. In poverty, fists are used

because words are neither available nor respected.

The problem associated with getting out of poverty is how to manage one’s money. How

can people manage something that they have never had? If they did have money, their primary

concern was to use it for entertainment. The notion of using money as a foundation for the future

and the chance to leave a life of poverty behind is unheard of. Individuals in poverty view the

world in its immediate locale, whereas the middle class sees the world in terms of a national

picture. The wealthy view the world as an international scene. There are multiple obstacles to

getting out of poverty. Payne (1996) asserted:

Assumptions made about individuals’ intelligence and approaches to the school and/or work setting may relate more to their understanding of hidden rules. Students need to be taught the hidden rules of middle class-not in denigration of their own but rather as another set of rules that can be used if they so choose. Many of the attitudes that students and parents bring with them are an integral part of their culture and belief systems. Middle-class solutions should not necessarily be imposed when other more workable, solutions might be found An understanding of the culture and values of poverty will lessen the anger and frustration that educators may periodically feel when dealing with

24

these students and parents. Most of the students that I have talked to in poverty do not believe they are poor, even when they are on welfare. Most of the wealthy adults I have talked to do not believe they are wealthy; they will usually cite someone who has more than they do. (p. 45)

Classes of Poverty

Payne (1996) divided those living in poverty into two classes: generational poverty and

situational poverty. She described them as the following:

Generational poverty exists when one has been in poverty for a minimum of two generations. Situational poverty is a result of a lack of resources due to an event such as a death, illness, or divorce. Like all classes, generational poverty has its own hidden rules and belief systems. The difference between these two poverty systems is the attitude. In generational poverty, the attitude is that society owes one a living. This is the prevailing attitude found in the inner-city schools today. In situational poverty, the attitude is often seen with pride and refuses to accept charity. They refuse to look for handouts. (p. 47)

There are also familial patterns in generational poverty. In generational poverty, many marriages

are common-law unions. In New Jersey, common-law marriages exist when a man and a woman

have been living together for 7 years. Divorce is rare because it is only legal in court and only

important if there is property to disperse. Among middle-class and wealthy individuals, most

marriages are legal, and divorce exists because material assets need to be divided.

Along with common-law marriages come children, many of whom are born out of

wedlock, especially to parents in their early adolescent years. It is not uncommon to find these

children raised by the grandmothers as their own children. In my school are numerous

adolescents between the ages of 13 and 15 who have children and are still attending school

themselves. These infants become the youngest children in the family, and the oldest daughters,

who are actually the mothers of these children, are referred to as the infants’ sisters. The

relationship becomes one of siblings, not one of mother and child.

In the generational poverty situation, the maternal grandmothers keep the biological

children. It is also part of the present family because the deceased member played a role in the

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memories of the family. Here is another example of generational poverty: I had a student from

age 7 to age 14. At age 12, she had her first child. She is now 21 and has seven children. Her

mother, the maternal grandmother, has custody of four of the children. This is not unusual in

families that experience generational poverty.

In the generational poverty family, the key player is the mother. She is always at the

center. If we were to ask some children where their fathers are, and if one of them were to say,

“He left,” one can assume where that child will stay when there is trouble. The male will stay

with his mother, if he is having trouble with his ex-partner, and vice versa. One also knows that

the male changes residences numerous times. Payne (1996) stated that in addition, there can be

many internal feuds within families. Support of the children may change overnight. This is a way

of life in generational poverty. Questions arise, such as, “Who will the children go to stay with

after school? Who stays with whom when there is trouble? Who is available to deal with school

issues?” (Payne, p. 57).

Payne (1996) asserted that one of the main reasons students are becoming more difficult

to control is because the schools have fewer students bringing middle-class culture and values

with them and more students who are bringing the poverty culture. What Payne meant is that the

values associated with middle-class culture are slowly being replaced by the values (i.e.,

financial, emotional, mental, spiritual, physical, support systems; relationships/role models; and

knowledge of hidden rules) of those who live in poverty.

Schools can help children to leave generational poverty. Payne (1996) asserted that

schools are stratifying students by economic level. A good education will help children escape

from generational poverty. Payne stated that there are four reasons why individuals want to leave

poverty:

26

1) A goal or vision of something they want to be or have, 2) someone who sponsors them such as an educator or spouse or a mentor, 3) a specific talent or ability that provides them an opportunity, and 4) a situation that is so painful that anything could be better. (p. 61)

It is up to teachers to provide these students with hope for a brighter future by offering them

ways to leave generational poverty: Do well in school, graduate from high school, do not become

pregnant, and do not impregnate another.

Generational Poverty and Discipline

In generational poverty, discipline is about forgiveness. Payne (1996) asserted that when

the mother dispenses the judgments, she determines the punishment and offers forgiveness.

When the forgiveness is granted, the behavior and activity return to the way they were before the

incident. Children need to be taught certain rules for success in the classroom. Children’s main

concern is survival on the street, so if they do not know how to fight physically, they are going to

be in danger, and if this is their only way of resolving problems, they will not be successful in

school. To be successful in school, one needs to acquire self-control. The two choices of any

effective discipline program are structure and choice. Payne stated that “the program must

clearly delineate the expected behaviors and the probable consequences of not choosing those

behaviors. The program that the individual always has is a choice to follow or not to follow the

expected behaviors” (p. 78).

Students in poverty exhibit various behaviors when confronted by teachers who want to

know why they manifest these behaviors. These behaviors are laughing when disciplined,

arguing loudly with the teacher, responding angrily, making inappropriate or vulgar comments,

physically fighting, putting their hands on someone else, not following directions, being

extremely disorganized, completing only part of a task, being disrespectful to the teacher,

harming other students verbally or physically, cheating or stealing, or talking consistently. Many

27

students play dual roles in the household. In poverty, many students function as their own

parents. They sometimes have to parent not only themselves but also their siblings. Payne (1996)

stated that everyone has three internal voices. When a teacher speaks to the student in a parent

voice, the situation is made worse than the original incident. Payne commented:

When the parent voice is used with a student who is already a parent in many ways, the result is anger. The student is angry because anger is based on fear. The parent voice forces the student to use either the child voice or the parent voice. If the student uses the parent voice, the student will most likely get in trouble. If the student uses the child voice, they may feel helpless and at the mercy of the adult. Most students will choose the parent voice because it is less frightening than memories connected with being helpless. In conclusion, students from poverty need to have at least two sets of behaviors to choose, one for the street and one for the school setting, the purpose of discipline should be to promote successful behaviors at school, teaching students to use the adult voice is important for success in and out of school, and discipline should be seen and used as a form of instruction. (p. 82)

Teachers also have found situations where it is difficult for students to learn because the

students lack cognitive skills. Students need these skills in order to learn. Payne (1996) stated

that cognitive skills are divided into four areas;

(1) Cognitive strategies: this is the fundamental way of processing information; (2) Concepts: this store information and allow for retrieval; (3) Skills: skills such as reading, writing, computing, language all comprise the processing of content; and (4) Content: this is the “what” of learning, the information used to make sense of daily life. In schools, we assume that the cognitive strategies are already in place. (p. 89)

Teachers of students in Grade 5 and higher assume that their students acquired the necessary

cognitive skills in Grades Kindergarten to 4, but if they did not, why were they promoted to the

next grade? Not much effort has been placed on cognitive strategies because Payne believed that

to a large extent, they are not remediable. Students from low-income homes come to school

without the concepts expected of them, and worse, they have no cognitive strategies.

What are these cognitive strategies, and how do we build these learning structures in our

students? One cognitive strategy that has been tested successfully is mediation. “Mediation is

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three things, identification of the stimulus, assignment of meaning, and identification of a

strategy. Mediation builds cognitive strategies and those strategies give the individual the ability

to plan and systematically go through data” (Payne, 1996, p. 90). To further research on

cognitive strategies, Feurstein, an Israeli who worked with poor Jewish youth in 1945 and

studied under Piaget, identified three stages in the learning process: input, elaboration, and

output. Feurstein defined input as “quantity and quality of the data gathered” (as cited in Payne,

p. 93). Examples of input strategies include the following:

Planning behaviors, focusing perception on specific stimulus, controlling impulsivity, exploring data systematically, using appropriate and accurate labels, organizing space with stable systems of reference, orienting data in time, identifying constancies across variations, gathering precise and accurate data, considering two sources of information at once, organizing data, and visually transporting data. (Feurstein, as cited in Payne, pp. 93-94)

Elaboration was defined by Payne (1996) as “use of the data” (p. 94). This is where the

teaching tends to occur. Payne’s examples of elaboration strategies included the following:

Identifying and defining the problem, selecting relevant cues, comparing data, selecting appropriate categories of time, summarizing data, projecting relationships of data, using logical data,, testing hypothesis, building inferences, making a plan using the data, using appropriate labels, and using data systematically. (p. 94)

Payne defined output as “communication of the data” (p. 94). Her examples of output strategies

included “communicating clearly the labels and process, visually transporting data correctly,

using precise and accurate language, and controlling impulsive behavior” (p. 94).

Summary

Traditionally, teachers have persevered since the mid-1970s and have since added

expectations as part of the discussion. However, what is appropriate support? Payne (1996)

found that the Virginia State Department of Education in 1993 identified four responses as

effective in promoting learning for at-risk students: “developmental preschool programs,

29

supplemental reading programs, [reductions in] class size and schoolwide projects in prevention

and support” (p. 107). These four responses can facilitate the development of relationships,

support, persistence, and cognitive strategies. A study of low-performance schools looked at the

external resources that students bring to school. Perhaps if teachers rethink their focus of parent

training, they may have more success in the classroom. Relationships with teachers are

extremely important for students who live in poverty. Relationships are the key motivator for

these students. Since 1980, schools have concentrated all their energies on achievement and

effective teaching strategies, yet the most important part of learning seems to be related to

relationships. There are students who live in poverty all their lives who do become successful.

When asked how they became successful, their answers usually have to do not with their

education, but with relationships.

This Breadth essay discussed theories drawn from Dewey, Durkheim, Payne, and W. R.

Smith regarding the role of society and education. In addition, contrasting beliefs concerning

influences were made by the classical theorists in education. Also included was a discussion

about the impact of poverty on the educational system and how students from the lower class

have the opportunity to move out of the conditions they currently are in. The Depth component

strengthens the connection between the classical theorists with regard to issues of poverty and

education. I speculate that by understanding the social situation of students who live in poverty,

teachers can begin to help them remove themselves from their lives of hardship and become

successful citizens.

DEPTH

EDUC 8128 STRATEGIC LEADERSHIP IN EDUCATION AND SOCIAL CHANGE

Annotated Bibliography

Ackerman, B. P., Brown, E. D., & Izard, C. E. (2004). The relations between persistent poverty and contextual risk and children’s behavior in elementary school. Developmental Psychology, 40(3), 367-377.

The researchers proved through experimental evidence that there is a relation between

academic failure and problem behavior. They stated that there is an emerging focus on studies

concerning the effects of persistent income poverty on child outcomes regarding income status

measured over time. They even suggested that instability over time has more impact on the

adjustment of disadvantaged children than average income levels. They suggested that persistent

income poverty is associated with a home learning and verbal environment that is ill provided,

along with other competencies such as emotion and the inhibition of aggressive and impulsive

behavior that affect children’s persistence hardship. Exposure to intense and destructive parental

conflict disrupts children’s adjustment at any particular time, but it can sensitize children, which

limits children’s development of self-regulatory capability.

Ackerman et al. conducted a test in a means-tested school lunch program over 4 years,

predicting externalizing problems in peer relations and low self-esteem. They discovered that

persistent poverty predicted children’s internalizing problems. They also found a relationship

between average income levels over three assessments and depressive symptoms among

adolescent boys. In further study, they identified a weak relationship between persistent poverty

and delinquent behavior at age 16, with marital status controlled over time, and no relation to

externalizing behavior. The results had several theoretical implications: They suggested caution

in entertaining expectations about the effects of persistent risk exposure for disadvantaged

31

children; pointed out that an appropriate model of persistence effects vary for different aspects of

environment adversity in relation to specific outcome; and asserted that a lot of interpretation

depends on the definition of persistence and on the number of assessment intervals in any

particular longitudinal study, perhaps even on the length of the intervals.

This article emphasized Payne’s (1996) research on poverty and education and the results

of academic failure. Ackerman et al. and Payne suggested that there is an effect of persistent

income poverty In the Depth essay, I elaborate on the assessments discussed in this article.

Anyon, J., & Greene, K. (2007, Spring). No Child Left Behind as an anti-poverty measure. Teacher Education Quarterly, xx, 157-162.

Anyon and Greene criticized the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) because it is

based on the assumption that increased educational achievement is the route out of poverty for

low-income families. The NCLB stands in the place of policies like job creation and an increase

in the minimum wage, factors that would decrease poverty in the United States. This was the

rationale for the War on Poverty. From the mid-1960s to present, the government has spent more

than a trillion dollars on this problem. The result has been no change in the poverty rate and a

sharp increase in the unemployment rate.

For at least 2 decades, there have not been enough jobs for those who need them.

Between 1984 and 1996, the average number of job openings in relation to the number of

students needing jobs was a staggering 5:1 ratio. In addition, the U.S. economy now produces

primarily poverty-wage jobs and relatively few highly paid ones. Other economic realities such

as lack of unionization, free-trade agreements without source jobs, and the increased use of part-

time workers have cut across the college-wage benefits, lowering them for large numbers of

people, most of whom are minorities and women. Approximately 1 in 10 college graduates is

employed at a job that pays a poverty wage. Anyon and Greene alleged that the NCLB is a

32

federal legislative substitute for policies that would lower poverty and create jobs with decent

wages for those who do not have them.

In a critical analysis of this article, it is clear that the assumption underlying the NCLB

that increases in educational achievement ultimately will reduce poverty has not proven valid for

large segments of the population. If business were mandated to create jobs for those who need

them and had to pay decent wages, the costs would be enormous. If decent wages can be

mandated by the government, can maximum wages also be mandated? Instead, the costs of the

poverty produced by insufficient and poorly paid employment are passed on to the taxpayers to

pay for welfare, food stamps, and Medicaid.

Bowman, S., Bairstow, R., & Edwards, M. (2003). Poverty education in the classroom and beyond. Journal of Teaching in Marriage and Family, 3(1), 23-46.

The researchers used poverty as a teaching tool to show others what it is like to live in

poverty. They discussed the misconception about poverty that it has identifiable social roots. The

learners identified in this study often came from privileged socioeconomic backgrounds, making

it difficult to empathize with families in poverty. Most undergraduate students enter college

believing that the economic system is fair and equitable, poverty is based on individual choices,

and their own arrival at college was primarily the result of their own hard work. They are likely

to blame the poor population for their lack of personal economic success.

There is also a belief that the portrayal of poor individuals in the media is partially

responsible for the inaccuracy of American perceptions of the poor. Americans overestimate the

proportion of poor Blacks and Black welfare recipients. The researchers discovered that in

teaching students from families in poverty, educators need uniquely effective teaching methods.

Traditional teaching models have failed to recognize that social context impacts the way that

learners perceive and develop knowledge. Students involved in experiential learning have a

33

greater understanding of their subject matter than students in traditional classes. Those students

taught with experiential learning methods are more likely to become involved in public policy

activities after graduating.

Simulations are the greatest form of experiential learning because they engage the

audience in active learning and the participants learn from each other, not just from the expert.

Simulations also emphasize abstract concepts over factual information, engendering empathy

and serving as a reference for ongoing discussions regarding social inequality. The two

simulations discussed in this article were the Oregon Poverty Simulation and the Weber Towers.

Both simulations taught the learners how to empathize and critically analyze the issue of poverty

and inequality.

This article presented poverty and family policy as a challenge for family educators

inside the classroom and in local communities. After a review of public misconceptions of

poverty and a critique of conventional pedagogy, the researchers argued that experiential

activities, particularly simulations, are appropriate for promoting critical thinking about and

increasing empathy for families in poverty. These simulations are used with a wide array of

learners, ranging from adolescent students to upper level administrators.

I felt compelled to study this article on the use of simulations as a tool for teachers in

low-income area schools to better understand the lives of the students. Payne (1996) discussed

various levels of lifestyles of the poor and their effect on children’s education. In the Depth

essay, I elaborate on the influence of these two role-play simulations on the students involved.

34

Buarque, C., Spolar, V. A. M., & Zhang, T. (2006). Introduction: Education and poverty reduction. Review of Education, 52(3/4), 219-229.

In doing research on poverty and education, I found that Brazil is one of the poorest

countries regarding education. Brazil has not developed leaders because the children who should

have emerged as leaders did not learn mathematics or other disciplines essential for the

advancement of their potential. Brazil is ashamed that it ranks first in the world regarding

inequality and that half of its population lives in poverty. With the rise of capitalism, the concept

of wealth was defined in terms of annual income and the accumulation of possessions. Poverty

came to mean an insufficient periodic income or salary and a lack of possessions or assets.

Society needs to harness the flow of social income to guarantee a minimum family

income, which would then enable families to purchase goods and services, thus eliminating

poverty. The strategy for fighting poverty should consist of investing resources in productive

activities, creating jobs, and increasing consumption levels for everyone. Instead of separating

those who earn more than a certain amount per day, the poverty line should separate those with

access to the goods and services that are essential for a life from those without access. A

minimum set of at least five can be given: food, housing with water and sanitation services,

public transportation, education, and health care. Education would have to be seen as both an

essential service, the lack of which characterizes poverty, and a key station on the way out of

poverty. The social separation that used to exist among countries can now be seen within

countries. There have always been different social classes in all countries. One of the countries

that has minimal barriers to people moving from one social class to another is the United States.

Under current economic conditions, there is no way for the poor population to cross the

poverty line. Investments in poor communities are not enough because the investments made will

not generate the necessary jobs; the jobs created will not be for the poor, unskilled workforce;

35

and the salaries will not be sufficient to move the workforce out of poverty. Economic

development will continue to concentrate income by employing only a few workers and rejecting

poor, unskilled workers.

Poverty is defined in terms of a lack of income, not of knowledge. The researchers did

not make a distinction regarding how much annual income or accumulation of goods is needed

for one to be considered wealthy. In addition, they did not go into detail regarding how society

should harness the flow of social income to guarantee a minimum family income. One concept

that Buarque et al. did acknowledge is that the poverty line should separate those with access to

the goods and services that are essential for a life from those without access.

This article is necessary to support my contention that poverty is a socially driven

concept. Payne (1996) argued that society, in its own way, forces people into what he termed

situational poverty. The Depth essay addresses poverty and inequality regarding economic

development.

Burney, V. H., & Beilke, J. R. (2008). The constraints of poverty on high achievement. Journal for the Education of the Gifted, 31(3), 295-321. Burney and Bielke’s research on school success focused on the impact of discrete

elements such as race, culture, ethnicity, gender, language, or school location on high

achievement. The condition of poverty is not a discrete or easily identifiable variable. Poverty

may have the greatest impact on achievement. In 1987, 112 Grade 6 inner-city students were

promised a tuition-free college education if they graduated from high school. A total of 65%

came from families below the poverty level, and 100% were African-American. Far fewer

actually matriculated and graduated from college than expected. Poverty proved to be a burden,

and the conclusion was that money, in and of itself, cannot eradicate poverty or define the

condition of poverty.

36

Burney and Beilke’s students from the lowest income families who had the best academic

preparation earned bachelor’s degrees at a higher rate than most students without the rigorous

academic preparation needed for success. The key mandate of the NCLB is clear and concise

reporting on how well students are achieving in their studies. Students must have the opportunity

and background preparation to do well, which is often absent in low-income households. Schools

with a higher minority and low-income student population are less likely to offer rigorous

curricula and advanced placement courses. In summary, one may assume that low-income

students are significantly less likely to enter college than students from high-income

backgrounds and significantly less likely to graduate if they do enter.

The researchers included only African-American participants in their study, so it was not

a representative sample to test poverty and education. Poverty affects all races, not just African-

Americans. More research needs to be conducted, and more races need to be included to draw a

valid conclusion. This article was relevant, however, because it showed the impact of poverty on

education. It suggested that no racial or ethnic group is immune from poverty or that any group

experiences poverty in a universal way. Burney and Bielke discussed the criteria used to consider

a family poor in relation to their income and family size. An exploration of what the children

from low-income families need for academic success, along with the likelihood of low-income

students entering college and graduating, is discussed in the Depth essay and the Application

component.

Duncan, G. J., Ludwig, J., & Magnuson, K. A. (2007). Reducing poverty through preschool interventions. Future of Children, 17(2), 143-160.

The researchers suggested that increased investments in parental and infant health and in

high-quality preschool education programs will improve children’s life chances and generate

benefits to society that can easily cover the costs of these government programs. Based on this

37

evidence, Duncan et al. proposed a national program providing high-quality preschool education

for children ages 3 and 4. Children’s early learning environments vary across race and class.

Compared with Kindergarten students from families in the bottom fifth of the socioeconomic

status (SES), children from the most advantaged fifth are 4 times as likely to have a computer at

home, have 3 times as many books, are read to more often, watch far less TV, and are more

likely to visit a library.

The researchers reported that 3-year-old children in families from a low SES have half

the vocabulary of their more affluent peers, which in turn could be explained by the lower

quality and quantity of parental speech. The researchers concluded that the early years also

appear to be a sensitive period for the development of socioemotional skills. Among behavioral

skills, children’s ability to regulate their attention appears to contribute the most to their success

in elementary school. Researchers have discovered that children’s rudimentary reading and math

skills at Kindergarten entry are highly predictive of later school achievement. Children who

score poorly on academic assessments before entering Kindergarten are more likely to become

adolescent parents, engage in crime, and be unemployed as adults. The influence of the

preschool years on children’s later achievement and success is not reflected in current federal

government budget priorities.

Duncan et al. proposed an intensive 2-year education-focused intervention for

disadvantaged 3- and 4-year-old children. College-trained teachers would staff the classrooms

and administer the curriculum. Children from families with income below the poverty line would

be eligible to participate. The intervention would reduce poverty in the short and long term.

Potential results would be increased employment and work efforts among families receiving

subsidized education and care. The impact on children’s future might be a reduction in future

38

poverty rates in the United States by 5% to 15% of current levels. This article contributed to the

focus of the Depth section and this KAM in general because it showed how high-quality

preschool education can improve the educational outcomes for students living in poverty.

Very early childhood programs can produce lasting improvements in the life chances of

poor children. Even less expensive Head Start and Pre-Kindergarten programs may boost early

achievement significantly and in the case of Head Start, improve children’s long-term outcomes.

Duncan et al. studied two model programs to improve the life chances of disadvantages children,

namely, the Perry Preschool Intervention Program and the Abecedarian Program. The Perry

Preschool Intervention Program, which was designed for low-income, low-IQ African-American

children ages 3 and 4, provided 1 or 2 years of part-day educational services and home visits.

When the children entered school, these students scored higher on IQ tests than those who had

not received the services.

Dyson, L., Hett, G., & Blair, K. (2003). The effect of neighborhood poverty on school achievement and behavior: A study of children in a low-income neighborhood school in Canada. Connections ’03, xx, 191-199.

Studies have reported that family poverty decreases the IQ, verbal ability, and

achievement scores of children ages 2 to 8 and that lower income middle-school students score

lower on basic academic skills than higher income students. Dyson et al. reported that in Ontario,

Canada, welfare children have lower school performance than nonwelfare students. Inner-city

children ages 2 to 8 have lower occupational and educational aspirations than their counterparts

living in affluent conditions. Schools in low-income neighborhoods have a concentration of

children in poverty, who run the risk of having a lower level of school achievement and

motivation for achievement.

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The inability to read has been correlated with such social problems as delinquency and

adolescent pregnancy. Young children from a low SES lag behind children from a higher SES in

letter knowledge and other literacy skills. Poverty is a factor in impairing reading

comprehension. In Canada, a reading program called “Success for All” was applied to high-

poverty elementary school students by providing 90-minute tutoring of reading for students with

reading difficulty. In this study, a supplementary reading program was delivered to young

children from low-income homes. The purpose of this study was to identify the effects of the

intervention on the children’s reading skills. The study wanted to determine whether the

intervention resulted in higher levels of reading skills. This study examined the effect of a

reading program as a method of intervention for young children in a school located in a low-

income neighborhood. The results showed apparent gains in reading in both groups. Greater

gains took place in the experimental group.

Dyson et al. stated that their investigation of this pilot program was conducted with 58 students

from Grade 1 and Grade 2 classes in a midsized West Coast Canadian city. Grades 1 and 2 in

Canada correspond to the same grade levels in the United States. The experimental group had 32

children, and the control group had 26 children. The children attended a school in a low-income

neighborhood designated for special subsidies such as free lunches. It might be beneficial to

conduct this experiment on a larger population and within other parts of the country to compare

the results to the current study. This would provide more valid evidence regarding the findings.

The article was important to the current study because it showed that the students were not

prepared to enter Kindergarten with the skills needed to succeed at that level. Dyson at al.

discovered that the experimental group achieved their grade level in reading and showed greater

improvement in all aspects of reading than the control group. For the Grade 1 group, the

40

experimental group surpassed the control group in all areas of the posttest. In the Depth essay, I

intend to show how this program has helped students of low reading levels become readers at a

level higher than on-grade ability.

Evans, G. W. (2004). The environment of childhood poverty. American Psychologist, 59(2), 77-92.

Evans discussed the psychological ramifications of the home environment on childhood

poverty. Low-income children are exposed to greater levels of violence, family disruption, and

separation from their family than middle-income children are. Numerous large-scale studies have

demonstrated positive associations between family income and marital quality. Unresponsive,

harsh, more punitive parenting occurs more often among low-income families beginning as early

as infancy. The longer the duration of poverty lasts, the stronger the link is between poverty and

harsher, less unresponsive parenting.

Numerous national studies have revealed that low-income households have smaller social

networks, fewer organizational involvements, and less frequent contact with social network

members than families that are not poor. Mothers of a lower SES offer less emotional support to

their young children and greater instability in peer relationships from preschool through Grade 3.

Social resources also vary by neighborhood quality. Residents of disadvantaged neighborhoods

have weaker social ties, experience less interpersonal trust and norms of reciprocity, and

perceive lower levels of support than their more advantaged counterparts.

Evans stated that poverty is harmful to the physical, socioemotional, and cognitive well-

being of children, youth, and their families. Children from low-income families are

disproportionately exposed to more adverse social and physical environmental conditions. They

suffer greater family turmoil, violence, and separation from their parents. Their parents are more

nonresponsive and harsh, and they live in more chaotic households, with fewer routines, less

41

structure, and greater instability. Their households are more crowded, noisier, and more

physically deteriorated, and they contain more safety hazards, Low-income neighborhoods are

more dangerous, have poorer services, are run down and more hazardous, and are less likely to

contain elements of nature.

The common trait in this article appeared to be marital quality. Evans believed that

children who come from more stable homes have better chances of succeeding in school. Payne

(1996) would disagree with this. She felt that some people are in poverty because they have no

choice, that is, they are “stuck” in situational poverty. Evans stated that poor children are more

likely to spend a week or more in foster care and are more likely to live in a family where

divorce has occurred. He was alluding to the fact that marital status, as mentioned before, affects

children’s educational future.

As an educator in an inner-city low-income area, I understand the relevance of this article

because I can see how Kindergarten students are coming to school unprepared mentally and

emotionally to complete the task before them. Most of my students come from broken homes, a

situation that is affecting their performance in school. The Depth essay provides a detailed look

at how psychosocial and physical risk factors affect the education system in areas of poverty.

Hughes, C., Stenhjem, P. H., & Newkirk, R. (2007). Poverty, race & youth: Challenges and promising practices in education. International Journal of School Disaffection, 5(1), 22-28.

Hughes et al. stated that adolescents who come from high-poverty backgrounds are

considered at risk for a variety of unfavorable outcomes, including academic failure, school

dropout, drug abuse, unemployment, and incarceration. These adolescents are more likely than

their more affluent peers to know hunger, violence, unsafe neighborhoods, abuse, and neglect.

They also have a greater chance of experiencing poor physical health, cognitive delays or

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learning disabilities, and emotional or behavioral problems. African-American and Hispanic

youth are more likely than their Asian-American counterparts to attend minority schools with

limited resources and live in neighborhoods where poverty is concentrated.

Hughes et al. found that they are more likely to be identified for special education

services with a diagnosis of emotional disturbance or mental retardation and to be receiving these

services outside the general education classroom than their Asian-American or White peers. In

gifted and talented programs, minority are underrepresented. Hughes et al. discovered that the

national poverty rate increased to 12.7%, or 14 million children, in 2007. Stressors associated

with living in poverty, such as increased crime, persistent joblessness, limited health care, and

inadequate housing, may affect the overall mental and physical health of children and family

members, producing high levels of anxiety, hypertension, fear, or depression. Poverty also is

associated with lowered self-esteem and self-confidence, and little sense of belonging, thus

limiting students’ educational attainment and future success in the workforce.

Hughes et al. noted that African-American and Hispanic youth are more likely to attend

minority schools than their Asian-American counterparts. Their assertion was based on a

national database. As a teacher of 20 years, I find this to be a false assertion. My school, which is

a minority school in an inner-city area, has a very high population of Asian-American students.

What I do perceive to be happening, however, is that the Asian-American students are

succeeding at a faster rate than their African-American and Hispanic counterparts. Hughes et al.

also stated that students from high-poverty backgrounds are considered at risk of academic

failure, school dropout, drug abuse, unemployment, and incarceration. This assertion had no

empirical backing to support it. Research needs to be conducted to discover if this is true.

43

As an educator in an inner-city school teaching students of various backgrounds, but all

coming from low–income homes, I see the high rate of school dropout, drug abuse,

unemployment, and incarceration at the middle school level. However, more research needs to be

completed to arrive at a definite conclusion that these problems are the result of poor education

or poor home environments. Payne (1996) would place the blame on the home environment. In

the Depth essay, I discuss the effects of poverty on minority youth and youth with disabilities. I

also look at poverty’s challenge to access quality learning opportunities; the additional

challenges of poverty, race, and racism; and a promising practice in education to address poverty

and race.

Kainz, K., & Vernon-Feagans, L. (2007). The ecology of early reading development for children in poverty. Elementary School Journal, 107(5), 407-427.

Kainz and Vernon-Feagans conducted a study on the reading development of 1,913

economically disadvantaged children from Kindergarten to Grade 3. Children in the United

States are expected to learn to read during the earliest years of elementary school, if not before.

Children living in poverty are overrepresented among children with reading delays. The issues

that affect children who live in poverty extend beyond instruction, and more comprehensive

models of reading development are needed to lend precision to policies intended to improve

outcomes for economically disadvantaged children. The study was based on the contextual

theories of child development and methodological advances in the measurement of change. The

study examined three aspects of reading development for economically disadvantaged children:

(a) reading development trajectories defined by initial status and rates of growth from

Kindergarten to Grade 3, (2) the characteristics of children and family members associated with

children’s initial status and rates of growth in reading, and (c) the characteristics of classrooms

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and schools that affect children’s reading performance at specific times along the developmental

track.

Studying growth in children’s reading skills demanded an exploration of child, family,

classroom, and school variables that together influence reading. In addition, theory and research

have revealed that patterns of early academic affordances are associated with social address

variable such as race and SES. Kindergarten children who are African American and who have

parents with less education attend schools where the reading performance is lower and the

percentage of students from impoverished homes is higher, on average, compared to White

students and students from families with higher parental education. Children in urban settings

enter Kindergarten classes with peers who have lower reading skills. Finally, children from

families with low incomes are more likely to attend high-poverty schools with disproportionate

numbers of students from minority backgrounds. Children from low-income families are more

likely than their more affluent peers to attend economically and racially segregated schools.

In this brief but poignant article, Kainz and Vernon-Feagans discovered that children

living in poverty are overrepresented among children with reading delays. This is a powerful yet

true statement. Based on my daily teaching of low-income students, I know from evidence and

continuous testing that most of my students are, at a minimum, 1 to 1.5 years below grade level.

More research is needed to determine how the current system inhibits the reading development

of economically disadvantaged children, especially during the earliest years of elementary

school.

This article was relevant to the current study, which is trying to show that children who

live in poverty lag in academic developmental skills compared to their middle- and upper class

counterparts. In the Depth essay, I discuss in detail the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-

45

Kindergarten Cohort and the influence of its results on reading ability in children from

impoverished families at the Kindergarten level.

Machtinger, H. (2007). What do we know about high poverty schools? Summary of the high poverty schools conference at UNC-Chapel Hill. High School Journal, xx, 1-8.

Machtinger raised important points about high-poverty schooling revolving around three

points of view: (a) Equity of school resources is considered to be key in school improvement;

(b) no matter what the school resources are, there are successful high-poverty schools, so policy

should focus on their example rather than use poverty as an excuse for low performance; and

(c) without significant changes in overall social policy and economic opportunity, the impact of

school reform will be limited. High-poverty schools are below average in student achievement

and graduation rates.

Machtinger agreed that schools should not reinforce social inequalities and should play a

significant role in alleviating them and promoting equality of opportunity. In his study of

elementary schools, he found that the gap increased for African-American students and

decreased for Hispanic students. High-poverty schools not only have teachers who are less

experienced but also more teachers who are teaching out of licensure area. Why do highly

qualified teachers remain and not migrate to low-poverty schools? Research has shown that high-

quality teachers have students who achieve higher on standardized tests; however, the evidence

is less clear whether these teachers are more effective at lowering the achievement gap. Another

issue of importance is the state of a school’s physical plant, teaching resources, and onsite

support. Other important resources include the quality of the school principal.

What does the research say about the basic minimum of these resources that schools need

to function, and how many high poverty schools lack those minimum levels? Unlike researchers

of other articles, Machtinger stated that there are successful high-poverty schools and that

46

poverty should not be an excuse for low performance. This article was the first piece of evidence

suggesting that low-income schools can achieve success. As mentioned in a previous article

review, high-poverty schools are below average in student achievement and graduation rates.

Machtinger felt that the equity of school resources is key to school improvement. Should

finances allow it, low-income schools can achieve. Another key factor is the quality of the

teachers. Machtinger found that schools with teachers who are highly qualified are more

effective at lowering the achievement gap. There needs to be more research on this issue to make

a conclusion regarding the influence of highly qualified teachers on student achievement.

This article was relevant to this KAM because it focused on the achievement gap between

low-income students and students of middle- and high-income levels. It also discussed the

importance of high-quality teachers and the need to retain these teachers in low-income schools.

The Depth essay presents a discussion on the allocation of funds to remedy such situations,

renewed efforts at desegregation, the need for a rigorous curriculum with meaningful homework

and assessment, and culturally responsive teaching.

Manning, J. P., & Guadelli, W. (2006). What teacher educators should know about poverty and special education. Teacher Education and Special Education, 29(4), 236-243.

Manning and Guadelli studied the relationship between poverty and special education.

Poverty, often resulting in poor nutrition, poor health, and delayed development, is the root cause

of educational problems for many children. There are three myths related to poverty and

education in the United States:

Myth 1: U.S. public schools are failures: The federal government is exercising more

control over public schools than any other point in history, controlling what is taught, how it is

assessed, and what programs will be funded. Although our public schools are not failing

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suburban European-American children, the pattern of neglect for poor, minority urban students

has been documented.

Myth 2: School segregation is a thing of the past: Manning and Guadelli discovered

through a (1999) study by the Civil Rights Project of Harvard University that schools are

becoming more racially segregated. De jure segregation is a relic of the past. However, gone are

the days of segregation and discrimination of individuals identified as mentally physically or

emotionally challenged. Everyone has equal access to education offered in the least restrictive

environment.

Myth 3: Student test scores are responsible for poor schools: The new age of

accountability in public education is placed squarely on students’ shoulders. One of the results of

high-stakes testing has been that children have had to assume responsibility for their schools’

performance. In Florida, school grades are based on high-stakes tests. In some states, the

individual test scores of students with identified special needs are automatically excluded from

their schools’ cumulative test scores. This is not done as often as it was before the NCLB. As a

result, children in poorer schools, where failure is common, are assuming an emotional and

psychological burden that should not be theirs to carry.

Once again, we hear that schools of low-income and schools that cater to those in poverty

only attract uncertified, inexperienced, and not highly qualified teachers. Hiring highly qualified

teachers would help to reduce some of the issues of school success, as suggested by this article.

The three myths are just that: myths. Testing and evidence need to be documented to prove that

school segregation is a relic of the past. In my district, many schools are made up of many races,

but they are still failing schools, according to state standards and the state assessment test, the NJ

ASK (New Jersey Assessment of Skills and Knowledge). Manning and Guadelli asserted that the

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country’s education system on the whole is not failing suburban White students, but has this been

documented, and has it been proven? There are many rural areas across the United States where

suburban White students are failing. There is documentation to support this assertion, but that is

beyond the scope of this project. This article was relevant to the current study because it showed

how low-income inner-city students are failing at an alarming rate. The Depth essay shows how

Manning and Guadelli (2006) demonstrated their findings on the results of standardized testing

and student achievement.

Mertens, S. B., & Flowers, N. (2003). Middle school practices improve student achievement in high poverty schools. Middle School Journal, 35(1), 33-43.

Mertens and Flowers conducted an experiment with various teaching strategies at the

middle school level to seek a system that would result in improving student achievement in high-

poverty schools. The NCLB Act of 2001 clarified the accountability issue by stating that student

academic success will be assessed through annual student achievement tests for Grades 3 to 8.

Initially, only students in Grades 3, 5, and 8 were tested for accountability purposes. Thus,

student achievement scores will serve as the measure of success and failure for schools. This is

one of the key parameters, but there are others. There are differences in academic achievement

among students of various SES backgrounds as well as between genders.

Mertens and Flowers considered the impact of interdisciplinary teaming and common

planning time. They addressed the effect of poverty using free or reduced lunch status as the

measure of students’ family poverty level. They examined the impact of the duration of

implementation of teaming on practices and achievement. It is only through an examination of

the combined effects of all these factors that we find a relationship between teaming and

classroom practices and student achievement. An important goal of teaming is that teachers work

together to coordinate the instruction that is delivered in the classroom.

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After examining the free and reduced price lunch data, Mertens and Flowers placed

schools in one of three categories: 0% to 29% free lunch, 40% to 59% free lunch, and 60% to

100% free lunch. Schools with the lowest percentage of low-income students and schools with

the highest percentage had the highest levels of team practices. Schools with 60% or more

students from low-income families also had the highest levels of curriculum coordination and

integration practices, compared to schools serving more affluent populations. In reviewing the

data, they discovered a strong relationship between the levels of interdisciplinary team and

classroom practices. Next, the effects that student family income status had on both practices and

achievement was examined. Schools with the highest levels of poverty had the highest levels of

classroom practices and high levels of team practices. Schools with higher percentages of low-

income students had lower achievement scores. They concluded that SES is an important

predictor of student’s academic outcomes.

In analyzing the data presented here, Mertens and Flowers did find a solution to help

students succeed academically, but can it endure over a long period of time? This is what the

research lacked. There needs to be further research on interdisciplinary teaming and common

planning time. The challenge for middle-grade educators is to understand how curricular

coordination and integration, as well as classroom instructional practices, are linked to student

achievement. In the Depth essay, I examine the impact of income levels of students’ families on

students’ education and the sustained implementation of common planning time.

Murnane, R. J. (2007). Improving the education of children living in poverty. Future of Children, 17(2), 161-182.

Children living in poverty tend to be concentrated in schools with inadequate resources

and poorly skilled teachers. Many of these children are likely to leave school before earning a

high school diploma. Even if they graduate, many leave school without the skills needed to earn

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a decent living. On a (2005) assessment of the math skills of students in Grade 8, only 13% of

the children living in poverty achieved a score of proficient, compared with 30% of the children

who were not poor. Almost 50% of the children living in poverty had scores below the threshold

for basic competency. About 75% of the White youth earned high school diplomas on time, but

for African-American and Hispanic students likely to be living in poverty, the rate was about

half. Murnane suggested recommendations for resolving the situation.

The federal government could improve the education of poor children and increase their

chances to escape poverty by taking three steps. The first step is to strengthen educational

accountability by amending the NCLB to make test score goals attainable and to develop

meaningful goals for increasing the rate of students who graduate from high school. The second

step is to address the problems of low-income students by encouraging states to strengthen high

school graduation requirements so that they better reflect the skills needed for success after

graduation. Finally, it could build the instructional capacity of schools to educate low-income

children. The federal government needs to get involved in preparing students living in poverty

for reaching attainable goals. Beginning with the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of

1965, a major focus of federal education policy has been to improve the education of

disadvantaged children. The NCLB is the latest federal effort to strive for equal educational

opportunity. Its focus is on improving outcomes for children who have historically been poorly

served by America’s schools. This federal effort has not worked well for the past 40 years.

In analyzing the data in this article, it appears that Murnane made recommendations to

curtail the high dropout rate and low test scores. He also suggested that policymakers define the

skills and knowledge that students must master at each grade level. Schools should be

administered by school principals who know how to recruit and support effective teachers and

51

provide them with the tools to do this work. Schools should attract experienced, skilled teachers,

and school staff should monitor the learning of every student.

In relation to my daily work in inner-city teaching, I feel that Murnane made some wise

decisions. This article had strong relevance to my study because it focused on the dropout rate of

students in poverty. It gave me ideas for further research to discover what is causing such high

dropout rates and ways to curtail them. In the Depth essay, I will show how the federal role can

attract and support experience skilled teachers and monitor the learning of every student. I also

discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the NCLB as it relates to children from low-income

families, children of color, and children with disabilities.

Pagani, L. S., Jalbert, J., LaPointe, P., & Herbert, M. (2006). Effects of junior kindergarten on emerging literacy in children from low-income and linguistic minority families. Early Childhood Education Journal, 33(4), 209-215.

Montreal has a high concentration of families of children who are disadvantaged. Recent

newcomers represent 65% of low-income families, of which more than half are young children.

If low-income children are not performing with their average income peers, it is more evidently

the case for children belonging to an ethnic group other than African, especially for deficits in

prereading and prearithmetic skills. Expectations for Kindergarten have become so high that

increasing numbers of children are experiencing Kindergarten failure, with ethnic minorities

being the most at risk of retention.

The school system has been implementing a school-based half-day Junior Kindergarten

initiative for all 4-year-old children living in Montreal’s poorest neighborhoods. First, a common

thread of newcomer upbringing is parental anxiety regarding the dilution of heritage. Second, the

learning of a second language requires significant cultural immersion. Third, the North American

assumption is that parents and child-related institutions like schools must relate. For many

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cultures, the extended family acts as a childcare institution, teacher, welfare net, and advisory

unit. There is a clear relationship between parental support and minority student achievement.

Junior Kindergarten represents the first year of formal schooling for almost all of the children

living in poor Montreal neighborhoods. The early childhood intervention literature predicts that

these children might benefit more from their early schooling experience. Classroom climate

features, including pedagogical characteristics and parent-teacher relations, have an established

impact upon children’s learning outcomes. According to Pagani et al., many of the children

living below the poverty line have a promise of school success in attaining second language

proficiency. These children are behaviorally advantaged from the start of the Junior Kindergarten

school year by showing significantly less emotional distress and hyperactive behavior, as rated

by teachers, in comparison to their French-speaking linguistic-majority peers.

The objective of this article was to examine low-income linguistic-minority and linguistic

majority children and the amount of improvement associated with attending Junior Kindergarten.

Junior Kindergarten represents an excellent opportunity to sharpen one’s social and academic

skills that facilitate Kindergarten and school entry success. Pagani et al. did a wonderful job

providing suggestions on ways to address the problem of low-income students at the

Kindergarten level by establishing a Junior Kindergarten similar to the American preschool

system.

Pagani et al.’s article was important to this study because it showed how other countries

deal with the issue of low-income students in the inner-city school system. In the Depth essay, I

discuss the research and the results. A discussion of the measures (Learning Climate Scale and

parent-teacher contact); Measures Outcomes (Peabody Picture Vocabulary, Test, Number

53

Knowledge Test, Social Behavior Questionnaire, and First Grade Performance) and the data

analytic strategy are presented.

Price, D. V., & Reeves, E. B. (2003). Student poverty school accountability and post-secondary enrollment: A challenge for educational reform in Kentucky. Journal of Poverty, 7(4), 21-34.

During the past decade, the nationwide movement to achieve greater accountability in

public education through the implementation of state-mandated testing and assessment programs

has expanded. Many states have placed a high priority on rewarding schools that boost the

academic achievement of their students. Achievement test scores were shown to be influenced

not by schools, but by the social, cultural, and financial capital possessed by students’ families as

well as by the communities where the students and schools were located. Price and Reeves found

that these studies and many similar ones have questioned whether schools have the capacity to

increase the academic achievement of their students, independent of the influences of family and

community.

School poverty inhibits postsecondary enrollment, even after controlling for geographic

location and accountability test scores. Price and Reeves discovered three key findings from this

analysis between school effects on 1998 postsecondary enrollment rates in Kentucky. They

concluded that students in high-poverty schools may not benefit from school-accountability

policies intended to improve academic achievement and college participation: (a) Eight years

after the Kentucky Education Reform Act (KERA), high-poverty schools still sent fewer of their

graduates to college than did more affluent high schools; (b) despite the positive association

between the Math Accountability Index scores and postsecondary enrollment rates in Kentucky,

high-poverty schools that improved average math scores had postsecondary enrollment rates that

lagged behind schools where the students were affluent; and (c) impoverished schools with high

54

dropout rates may have increased their college enrollment rates. The school-restructuring effects

have been significantly negative for those schools that mainly serve disadvantaged students. The

evidence has suggested that focusing exclusively on school accountability measures is unlikely

to generate equal educational opportunities for all of Kentucky’s children because of the strong

negative influence of school poverty on postsecondary enrollment.

It appears that Price and Reeves completed an analysis of college enrollment patterns

through the 1990s and found evidence of the direct effect of family income, race, and gender,

even after controlling for academic factors. Schools equalized opportunities for people of color,

women, and low-income families. This article proved that KERA did not help high-poverty

schools, as opposed to the affluent high schools, send graduates to college. Policymakers cannot

ignore the negative influence of concentrated poverty in high schools and other factors over

which schools have little control. The findings demonstrated the powerful impact of school

poverty on postsecondary opportunity for Kentucky high school graduates. Price and Reeve’s

research was relevant to my study because like previous articles, it revealed the power of

standardized test scores on the future of children based on family income, race, and gender.

Further exploration of the KERA study is discussed in the Depth essay.

Ruby, A. (2006). Improving science achievement at high-poverty urban middle schools. Science Education, xx, 1005-1026.

A large percentage of U.S. students attending high-poverty urban middle schools achieve

low levels of science proficiency, posing significant challenges to their success in high school

science and to national and local efforts to reform science education. The teacher support model,

designed by Johns Hopkins University, addresses variations in science curricula, the lack of

material, and underprepared teachers. When combined with initial low levels of proficiency,

these factors can block improvements in science achievement. The model includes a common

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science curriculum based on supported materials commercially available, ongoing teacher

professional development built around day-to-day lessons and regular in-class support of

teachers by expert peer coaches. One cohort of students at 3 Philadelphia middle schools using

this model was followed from the end of Grade 4 through to the end of Grade 7. Their gains in

science achievement was substantially greater than those of students at 3 matched control

schools and 23 district middle schools serving a similar student population. Using widely

available materials and techniques, the model can be adopted and modified by school partners

and districts.

Ruby found that U.S. urban schools serving high-poverty and high-minority populations

face great challenges based on the characteristics of their neighborhoods, student backgrounds,

teacher preparation, and district and school level resources. These schools show large differences

in school experiences and student outcomes versus low-poverty schools and even high-poverty

nonurban schools. From 1996 to 2001, the U.S. National Assessment of Educational Progress

(NAEP) showed that students’ science achievement significantly worsened under the conditions

of inner-city middle schools. In the (2000) NAEP, 39% of all Grade 8 students were below the

basic level in science. However, this percentage climbed to 70% of students attending high-

poverty inner-city schools as seen when scores were broken out for African-American and

Hispanic status and lower SES.

Ruby made a good comparison by following a cohort of students and comparing them to

the matched control schools and the district middle schools serving a similar student population.

What Ruby lacked was research documenting the poorer science performance of middle grade

students attending schools with higher concentrations of students with lower SES. One needs to

56

go back to the earlier grades to find if students are making adequate progress toward meeting the

expectation for their future grades.

As an inner-city teacher in an elementary-middle school environment, I see the

development of science from the elementary grades into the middle grades. Many of the students

cannot accomplish the material that is presented to them in the middle grades. Research needs to

determine if the problem is a result of the SES or the lack of not having enough highly qualified

teachers. The Depth essay includes a discussion of the obstacles to improve science achievement

and the talent development model result as a useful approach for construction, including its

background, the study design and the data of the talent development model, the form of

measurement, a descriptive analysis, and a final discussion.

Sanbonmatsu, L., Kling, J. R., & Duncan, G. J. (2006). Neighborhoods and academic achievement results from the moving to opportunity experiment. Journal of Human Resources, 31(14), 649-691.

Sanbonmatsu et al. attempted to show how families originally living in public housing

were assigned housing vouchers to move to neighborhoods with lower poverty rates. The

hypothesis was that for families offered vouches with larger effects among younger children, the

results would show no significant effects on tests scores for any age group. Children educated in

large urban school districts in the Unites States have lower academic performance than children

in the nation as a whole. Children attending schools with concentrations of poor students are

particularly disadvantaged, including less-educated parents performing skills and distress

communities outside of school. Families were assigned to one of three groups: Families in the

experimental group received housing vouchers eligible for use in low-poverty neighborhoods;

families in a Section 8 group received traditional housing vouchers without neighborhood

restrictions; and families in a control group did not receive either choice vouchers, but were still

57

eligible for public housing. Roughly half of the families accepted the vouchers, producing

sizeable differences in neighborhood conditions among the experimental and control families

during the 4- to 7-year period after the program began.

Sanbonmatsu et al. found that the families that were offered housing moved on average to

residential neighborhoods that were substantially less impoverished and sent their children to

schools that were of modestly higher quality. They did not find evidence of improvements in

reading or math scores, reductions in behavior or school problems, or improved school

engagement overall for any age group. Developmental theory suggests more rapid cognitive

development among younger children and greater ability to adapt to new social environment.

This theory suggests that environment may have a gender impact on younger rather than older

children.

The analysis of Sanbonmatsu et al.’s research showed that the experiment provided a test

of the consequences for poor children when their families were offered the change to move from

high-poverty neighborhoods to more affluent ones. They found that families offered housing in

the demonstration moved on average to residential neighborhoods that were substantially less

impoverished and sent their children to schools that were of modestly higher quality. There was

no evidence of improvements in reading or math scores, reductions in behavior or school

problems, or improved school engagement overall for any age group.

This article was relevant to my study because it showed that the individuals who lived in

poverty, although they had the opportunity to attend schools that were of modestly higher

quality, did not improve in their academics. I wonder why these students did not succeed, even

after they left the impoverished neighborhoods they once belonged to. Further research needs to

be done to determine the underlying factors resulting in this phenomenon.

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Smith, D. E., & Ashiabi, G. S. (2007). Poverty and children outcomes: A focus on Jamaican youth. Adolescence, 42(168), 837-858.

In Jamaica, poor children face a very high risk of developmental delays and fare worse on

various measures of developmental outcomes. People living in poverty face lasting obstacles that

keep them from attaining their most basic human rights and individual potentials. They often

lack food, shelter, access to education and health care, protection from violence, and a voice in

what happens to their communities. They live from day to day in constant fear of the future.

Poverty depletes families’ economic, physical, and psychological resources; drains their abilities;

and exhausts their social support networks. The effects of poverty are particularly devastating for

children and youth because they are the root cause of child mortality. Sixteen percent of children

in the developing world lack adequate nutrition, and 13% lack access to education. Poor children

disproportionately suffer acute and chronic ill health, malnutrition and other conditions that

afflict their physical, cognitive, and mental development. Poverty deprives children of their basic

human rights and sense of well-being, it weakens their protective environment, and it places

them at high risk for abuse situations that threatens their survival.

D. E. Smith and Ashiabi found that the poor children in their study performed worse on

tests of cognitive ability and had poorer academic outcomes than their nonpoor peers. They

attended school less regularly, attended schools of poorer quality, and were more prone to school

dropout than their nonpoor peers. The poor children scored lower than their more affluent peers

on various standardized tests of intelligences, verbal ability, and achievement, even after

controlling for maternal age, marital status, and education. Neighborhood and family social

capital were related to the children’s cognitive skills. Specifically, children from neighborhoods

with poor individual and community social capital had poorer problem-solving skills over and

above family economic resources and parental involvement. In addition, adolescents’ attention at

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higher rated schools was related to higher reading and mathematics scores, and residence in

better quality neighborhoods correlated with high reading scores. Many crimes committed in

Jamaica are a response to the material conditions inherent to economic dispossession, severe

inequality, and general hopelessness.

There were no clear scientific data to support D. E. Smith and Ashiabi’s study. It appears

that most of this article was based on observation. The article was extremely subjective rather

than objective. Scientific research needs to be done before making any assumptions about the

effects of poverty on education in Jamaica. For example, the researchers stated that poor children

performed worse on tests of cognitive ability and had poorer academic outcomes than their

nonpoor peers. What research supported this statement? I think that the study lacked scientific

data to support the statements.

Although a lot of statistical information was missing from this article, it was relevant to

my research because it supported my contention that poverty has an effect on children’s

education. The essay addresses high levels of poverty and its effect on children in today’s

schools.

Literature Review Essay

The Breadth component of this KAM concluded that there is mounting recognition

among theorists that poverty has an effect on children’s education. Dewey (1900), Durkheim

(1956), and Payne (1996) explored the foundations of education and poverty and supported this

assumption. The essay fortifies these findings and supports the connection between poverty and

education. The specific focus of the contemporary work examined is in the area of poverty and

its effects on the education of children in the inner-city public school. Of the three classical

theories extensively examined in the Breadth essay of this KAM, Payne’s theory of education

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has the most value and utility for present application. Progress recently made in the fields of

poverty and education is presented. Current information on traditional concepts is described,

based on research presented in the annotated bibliography. The Depth essay also includes critical

analyses of contemporary literature relating to educational theories and current outgrowths of it.

Poverty and its effects on educational practice are illustrated. With this in mind, one objective of

this Depth essay is to integrate the developmental concepts of classical theories with recent

findings on poverty and education in inner-city public elementary schools. An additional intent

of the Depth discussion is to analyze the concept of poverty related to change and influence in

the children’s behavior toward education. The current literature describes the model or stages of

changed behavior developed by Payne. Recent research has used her theories as a framework in

the area of poverty and education.

Ackerman et al. (2004) discovered that there is an emerging focus on poverty studies

concerning the effects of persistent income poverty on child outcome with income status

measured overt time. They even suggested that instability over time has more impact on the

adjustment of disadvantaged children than average income levels. Ackerman et al. felt that other

issues that impact children’s academic success include frequent changes in residence and

maternal relationship, along with parent substance abuse and antisocial behavior.

W. R. Smith (1917), in his discussion of the formative years of children, stated that there

are two impressions a child receives: One is self-consciousness, and the other is social

consciousness. Of all social relations that children receive, the relationship between mother and

child is the first and most elementary of all relations. Children who are brought up in poverty-

stricken environments lack a solid maternal relationship, as discussed by Ackerman et al. (2004).

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Payne (1996) found that the one reason for student failure in education is the lack of maternal

support in the home.

Poverty and the NCLB

Anyon and Greene (2006) agreed that the NCLB of 2001 has had a severe impact in

today’s public schools, especially among inner-city schools. They felt that the NCLB is based on

the assumption that increased educational achievement is the route out of poverty for low-

income families. Anyon and Greene argued that although the NCLB is not presented as a job

policy, it does function as a substitute for the creation of decent paying jobs for those who need

them. The minimum wage in 2006 was $5.15, which produced a yearly income of $10,294, a

sum that is supposed to raise people out of poverty. The poverty level for one person in 2006 was

$10,294. A person making the minimum wage in 2006 was not under the poverty level.

Minimum-wage standards directly affect the wages of 9% of the workforce. When we include

those making just $1.40 more an hour than the minimum wage ($6.55 an hour, or $13,624

annually), this legislation (i.e., NCLB) affects the wages of as much as 18% of the workforce.

Murnane (2007) suggested that Congress should improve accountability by amending the

NCLB to make performance goals more attainable. The goals should emphasize growth in

children’s skills rather than the need to meet specific test score targets. Congress also should

amend the NCLB to develop meaningful goals for high school graduation rates. Murnane stated

that the federal government could improve the education of poor children and increase their

chances to escape poverty by taking three steps. The first step is to amend the NCLB to make

test score goals attainable and to develop meaningful goals for increasing the share of students

who graduate from high school. The second and third steps also are important, but they do not

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address the issue of the NCLB. What Murnane suggested is what the federal government had

done for 40 years before the NCLB Act.

Burney and Beilke’s (2008) research on school success focused on the impact of discrete

elements such as race, culture, ethnicity, gender, language, and school location on high

achievement. They asserted in their study on high-achievement students, whose level of

performance was higher than one would expect for students of the same age, grade, or

experience, that most tests used to comply with the NCLB are not designed to measure

achievement above grade-level standards.

Manning and Guadelli (2006) discussed a myth about the NCLB, namely, that U.S.

public schools are failures. Under the founding legislation for the U.S. Department of Education,

the federal government may not control any state’s curriculum, nor can it direct a state entity to

use any specific actions, curricula, and so on. The federal government also does not control how

students are assessed. Each state decides which type of assessment will be used in that state.

Federal funding accounts for about 7% of total education funding, and most funding decisions

are made at the state level. The NCLB requires annual standardized school assessments in order

for schools to receive federal money. The mythology of poor public performance misinforms the

development of education policy. The mythology of failed public education in the United States

masks the history of neglect that has plagued poor children in this country. Public schools have

become the target of tight, controlled spending because of lagging test scores in comparison to

other industrialized nations. Although our public schools are not failing suburban White children,

the pattern of neglect for poor, minority urban students has been documented. This is one of the

main requirements of NCLB, that is, the use of disaggregated data reports.

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Mertens and Flowers (2003) conducted an experiment with various teaching strategies at

the middle school level to identify a system that would result in improving student achievement

in high poverty schools. The NCLB clarified the accountability issue by stating that student

academic success would be assessed through annual student achievement tests for Grade 3 to

Grade 8. Thus, student achievement scores will serve as the measure of success and failure for

schools.

School Success and Poverty

According to statistics, the success of a school is based on the results of standardized

testing. Elements such as race, culture, ethnicity, gender, language, or school location were not

taken into consideration in the development of these standardized tests. As previously

mentioned, Burney and Beilke (2008) conducted research that focused on the impact of these

elements on high achievement. In 1987, 112 Grade 6 inner-city students in Philadelphia were

promised a tuition-free college education if they graduated from high school. Far fewer actually

matriculated and graduated from college than expected. Poverty proved to be a burden, and the

conclusion was that money cannot alleviate poverty, nor can it define the condition of poverty.

Duncan et al. (2007) proposed that increased investments in parental and infant health

and high-quality preschool education programs will improve children’s life chances and generate

benefits to society that can easily cover the costs of these government programs. They studied

two model programs to improve the life chances of disadvantaged children, namely, the Perry

Preschool Intervention Program and the Abcedarian Program. The Perry Preschool Intervention

provided 1 or 2 years of part-day educational services and home visits to a sample of low-

income, low-IQ African-American children ages 3 and 4 in Ypsilanti, Michigan, during the

1960s.

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Perry Preschool hired highly educated teachers and was implemented as a randomized

experiment. Some mothers and their children were randomly assigned to the Perry program;

others were assigned to a control group that did not receive the Perry intervention. Parents and

children in the program of interest were expected, on average, to be similar at baseline to those

randomly assigned to the control group. When the children entered school, those who had

participated in the Perry program scored higher on IQ tests than those who had not; however,

these IQ effects disappeared by Grade 3

The Abcedarian Program, which began in 1972 and served a sample of low-income

mostly African-American women from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, was even more intensive

than the Perry program. Mothers and children assigned to Abcedarian treatment received year-

round, full-time care for 5 years, starting with the child’s first year of life. The Abcedarian

Preschool Program included transportation; individualized educational activities that changed as

the children aged; and low child-teacher ratios (3:1 for the youngest, and 6:1 for the oldest).

Abcedarian teachers followed a curriculum that focused on language development and explained

to them the importance of each task as well as how to teach it. High-quality health care,

additional social services, and nutritional supplements also were provided to participating

families. A full-time nurse and a part-time pediatrician were on staff and in the same building as

the children. They provided immediate treatment for ear infections, which could have had an

effect on the children’s language development.

Abcedarian was a high-quality program run by researchers rather than a government

agency. It cost about $18,000 a year for each of a child’s first 5 years and produced dramatic

effects on the future life outcomes of its participants. At the start, the Abcedarian and the control

group children had IQ scores that averaged 1 standard deviation below the mean. By the time the

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Abcedarian children reached age 5, their IQ scores were close to the national average and higher

than the scores of the children who did not participate. Nearly 15 years later, the program’s effect

on IQ scores at age 21 was smaller than at age 5. Children who received the Abcedarian

treatment entered college at 2.5 times the rate of the control group. The Abcedarian intervention

also reduced rates of adolescent parenthood and marijuana use by nearly half. In addition,

smoking rates of the Abcedarian participants were about 30% lower than those of the control

group. Children who participated in the program were about two thirds more likely to be working

in skilled jobs.

International Poverty

Buarque et al. (2006) examined the state of poverty in Brazil. Brazil is one of the poorest

countries regarding education. If the price of a soccer ball were the same as monthly school

tuition, only 10% of children would play soccer, and 90% would be excluded. Many Brazilians

are ashamed of the country’s poor rate of basic education, ashamed that it ranks first in the world

regarding inequality, and ashamed that half of the population lives in poverty. In Brazil, most

soccer players come from poor communities, and the explanation for that is simple: Although

rich children are able to spend their free time engaging in several activities, poor children who

possess only a ball, empty streets, and a great deal of free time can develop and sharpen their

soccer skills and are in a better position to move up the social ladder.

As long as individual and family poverty levels were considered to be a normal part of a

lack of income, the social poverty of nations is determined with reference to gross domestic

product (GDP). Nations are ranked from rich to poor according to their per capita income. It is

widely believed that economic aid will help countries lift their GDP above the poverty line and

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that the increased income will spread, eliminating individual poverty and reducing disparities

between nations and individuals.

There needs to be an educational Marshall Plan. The 21st-century Marshall Plan should be

social rather than economic, global rather than regional, and focused on education rather than on

infrastructure. Instead of investing in economic growth to distribute income and meet the needs

of the poor, it will be necessary to invest in education to facilitate the social promotion of the

most excluded population. A global social plan focused on education would be worthwhile not

only in itself but also because it would promote immediate economic growth. It would provide

workers with the skills they need to earn more money, which would be reintroduced into the

economy through purchases and investments. Five major lines of international investment would

fuel such a shift in education worldwide and yield benefits for countries in which most of the

population has a high income and countries in which most of the population have a low income.

Brazil has endorsed the Bolsa-Escola Program, which has been implemented in several countries

in South America. In addition to freeing nearly 250 million children from child labor, taking

them off the streets, and putting them into school, such a program would create a demand among

poor families for quality education in places where local governments do not offer adequate

public education. Several Brazilian municipalities have seen an increase in this kind of family-

based empowerment and demand. The Bolsa-Escola Program has replaced the need for school

with the demand for school. At the same time, by increasing a community’s income, the program

has stimulated local economic growth.

In another hemisphere is a country that also has issues with poverty and education. In

Montreal, Canada’a second largest city, newcomers represent an alarming 65% of low-income

families, of which more than half are young children. Pagani et al. (2006) studied the benefits of

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Junior Kindergarten for linguistic-minority 4-year old children compared to their linguistic-

majority classmates from the same low-income neighborhoods. At the end of the school year, the

linguistic-minority children made significantly greater improvements in language skills than their

host society classmates. At the midyear point, the Junior Kindergarten teachers made efforts to

help the linguist-minority children overcome the challenges of the school environment of their

new host society by adapting their pedagogical strategies to those showing difficulty in their

receptive vocabulary skills. They also offered greater means of contact to parents of linguistic-

minority children having difficulty attaining language proficiency than to parents of children

showing better improvements. The parents of the linguistic-minority students showing smaller

gains were more likely to use a larger proportion of the communication methods offered by

teachers and participate in the parent-school relationship for the well-being of their children.

Long-term results suggested that the linguistic-minority children continued to make significant

improvements.

First launched in 1997, the Montreal Longitudinal-Experimental Preschool Study set out

to examine the ongoing psychosocial and academic development of 4-year-old children starting

Junior Kindergarten in the most disadvantaged neighborhoods of Montreal Island. The

experiment was made up of 260 girls and 262 boys from families with a mean income of $17,500

Canadian dollars. Two linguistic groups were sought: (a) linguistic-majority (i.e., children whose

parents were born in Canada and were French speaking as a first language, N = 201), and (b)

linguistic-minority (i.e., children whose parents were not born in Canada and spoke a language

other than French at home, N = 108). French was the official language of instruction.

The measurement used was a French-language version of the Learning Climate Scale

(LCS; Forget-Giroux, Richard, & Michaud, 1995). Completed by teachers at the midpoint of the

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school year, this Likert response scale assesses a multitude of classroom features that can

influence learning. It comprises 7 factors: class participation (5 items), mutual attachment (6

items), teacher support (6 items), task emphasis (6 items), order and organization (4 items), rules

(4 items), and pedagogical innovation (4 items). To complement the LCS, the teachers were

asked on a Likert-type scale to rate how much their classroom environment was based on child-

driven interests and goals and student learning of problem solving.

The teachers were asked to elaborate upon the methods of parent-teacher contact offered.

At the end of Junior Kindergarten, based on a Likert scale, the parents were asked about their

participation according to each method offered by the child’s teacher. This gave two variables:

the total methods of parent participation offered by teachers and a user-sensitive parent

participation ratio.

The Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (EVIP-PPVT, Forms A and B, French adaptation;

Dunn, Theriault-Whalen, & Dunn, 1993) was individually administered to assess receptive

verbal skills, which predict intellectual development and school readiness. It was standardized

with a sample of 2,038 French-Canadian children from ages 2 to 18. The Number Knowledge

Test (NKT) represents an individually administered assessment of children’s informal

knowledge of number and conceptual prerequisites of prearithmetic operations. Norms are

available from ages 4 to 10 for low- and middle-income North American children. The Social

Behavior Questionnaire (SBQ), completed by teachers, originates from the National

Longitudinal Study of Children and Youth (Pagani et al., 2003). Norms are available from ages 4

to 11.

First Grade Performance scores were obtained in the French language and math skills

from school report cards for 75% of the sample retained for the analyses (French-speaking = 164

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and linguistic-minority N = 71). These correlated with Kindergarten PPVT and NKT at 0.25 (p <

.01) respectively; Pagani et al. examined (a) between-group differences in learning (PPVT &

NKT) and behavior (SBQ) to situate relative performance; (b) to indicate the degree of relative

improvement of deterioration, we computed change scores (beginning of year scores subtracted

from end-of-year scores); (c) a test was conducted on the significance of between-group

differences on outcome variable change while controlling for other potentially explanatory

factors using hierarchical multiple regression; and (d) among only the significant change

outcome variables, Pagani et al. tested possible teacher and parent factors that could moderate

the relative degree of change by using MANOVAs.

There were no between-group differences in maternal/paternal education and

employment. Although they reported more single parenthood (1, N = 309) = 10.69, p < .01, , and

younger maternal age at birth of first child, t(307) = -5.02, p < .01, linguistic majority children

had more daycare experience, t(307) = -4.51, p < .01, less economic disadvantage, t(307) = 2.90,

p < .01, and smaller family composition, t(307) = -2.69, p < .01 with which to distribute their

comparatively higher family income.

At both the beginning and end of Junior Kindergarten, the linguistic-minority children

showed less hyperactive behavior, beginning t(307) = 2.45, p = .01 and end t(307) = 3.70, p < .01

and less emotional distress beginning t(307) = 3.71, p = .01 and end t(307) = 4.78, p < .01, than

their linguistic majority peers. Nevertheless, they showed large lags at the beginning of the

school year on receptive language and number knowledge skills, PPVT t (307) = 11.69, p < .01

and NKT, t (307) = 5.44, p < .01, respectively.

Next, using Junior Kindergarten change scores, the linguistic-minority children showed

greater end-of-year improvement than their linguist-majority classmates for both verbal and math

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skills, PPVT, t(307) = -3.90 p < .01 and NKT, t(307) = -4.98, p < .01, respectively. No between-

group differences were noted for the behavioral variables.

Pagani et al. (2003) discovered that for many ethnic minority children living below the

poverty line, the promise of school success means attaining second language proficiency on a par

with their new society they call home and its linguistic-majority peers. If Kindergarten readiness

is defined as social competence, there was no great evidence of concern for linguistic minority

children. More specifically, they were behaviorally advantaged from the start of the Junior

Kindergarten school year by showing significantly less emotional distress and hyperactive

behavior, as rated by teachers, in comparison to their French-speaking, linguistic-majority peers.

Neither linguistic group showed comparatively different significant gains or losses in behavior

by the end of the school year. One could conclude that the junior kindergarten experience did not

impact their behavioral development.

A second experiment in Canadian education was conducted by Dyson et al. (2003). They

stated that poverty threatens a wide range of child development, most critically school

achievement and other academic-related behavior. American studies have reported that family

poverty decreases IQ, verbal ability, and achievement scores of children from ages 2 to 8 and

that lower income middle-school students scored lower on basic academic skills than higher

income students.

The harmful effect of family poverty is exacerbated by neighborhoods with a

concentration of low-income families. Neighborhood poverty increases the effect of individual

poverty through collective socialization. For example, persistent unemployment in a

neighborhood may provide models of joblessness as normative and reduce children’s motivation

for school achievement. Research has shown that inner-city boys in Grades 2 to 8 have lower

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occupational and educational aspirations than their counterparts living in affluent circumstances.

Schools in low-income neighborhoods will have a concentration of children in poverty who run

the risk of having a lower level of school achievement and motivation for achievement.

Reading is fundamental to schooling and other skill areas. Retention and special

education placement are largely determined by reading performance. The inability to read is

correlated with delinquency and adolescent pregnancy. Poverty especially impedes children’s

literacy. A British study found that young children ages 4 to 8 from low SES families were

behind children from higher SES in letter knowledge and other foundation literacy skills. Even

as early as 48 months of age, many children from low SES show lower levels of literacy

concepts than their middle SES counterparts. Poverty has been especially found to impair

reading and comprehension.

In the Dyson et al. (2003) Canadian study, a supplementary reading program was

delivered to young children living in low-income homes. The researchers wanted to identify the

effect of the intervention on children’s reading skills. They hypothesized that the intervention

resulted in higher levels of reading skills. Instruments to measure reading outcomes were

administered individually to students at pretest and posttest. The instruments used included the

following:

1. PIAT-R/NU (the Peabody Individual Achievement Test-Revised). This test is an

individually administered achievement test assessing six content areas. Only three

subtests were administered presently: reading recognition, reading

comprehension, and spelling.

2. Slosson Oral Reading Test. This brief test, given orally, assesses one’s ability to

pronounce words at different levels of difficulty.

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Through the random assignment, the group was divided into an experimental group

and a control group. The former received a supplementary reading program, but the latter did

not. For most of the children, the supplementary reading program occurred twice a week.

These two 20-minute sessions were provided under the direction of a university student who

held a teaching certificate. The group size ranged from 2 to 4 children. The smaller groups

were designed for younger children and those with lower reading abilities. Two children with

very low reading ability were grouped together for two 30-minute sessions per week.

The sessions were conducted by having individual students read a short selection

from the story. On occasion, as in reading poetry, all of the students read together. The

students and teachers frequently read difficult passages together.

Two major teaching procedures were used to guide the children’s reading first,

guided reading included the following process:

1. High-frequency words - The teacher selected words from the passage that were

important and the students were unfamiliar with. She taught the meaning and

spelling of these words.

2. Introduce book - The teacher provided a brief main idea statement about the book.

She solicited the students’ prior knowledge on the subject; she then discussed it

with them, and they predicted the story line.

3. Guided Reading - The teacher guided the students through the story at their own

pace. Students did all the reading

4. Skills in Context - The teacher discussed one skill that was evident in the story.

For example, word endings (-ing); word families (tough, rough); and rhyme (can,

man).

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Second, while reading a story, the teacher often stopped and asked the students questions about

the story. The children were asked to predict what would happen next or to reflect on what had

happened.

The results of the reading tests are presented in grade equivalents. At pretest, the

experimental group was at a lower reading level in all areas of reading than was the control

group, the difference being about half a grade. The control group was clearly reading at grade

level, but the experimental was not. At posttest, however, the experimental group not only

achieved grade level in reading but also showed greater improvement in all aspects of reading

than did the control group.

For the Grade 1 group, the experimental group, although initially scoring lower than the

control group in all areas of reading at pretest, surpassed the control group in all areas at posttest.

The group’s gains were clearly greater than those of the control group. The experimental group

was behind the control group in all aspects of reading at pretest but was reading at above grade

level at posttest, although reading levels remained lower than the control group.

This pilot study examined the effect of a reading program as an intervention for young

children in a school located in a low-income neighborhood. A 4-month supplementary reading

program was provided twice a week for 20 to 30 minutes during each session. Comparison was

made with a group that received no intervention. The results showed apparent gains in reading in

both groups. Greater gains appeared to take place in the experimental group. Further, the gain in

the experimental group, however, appeared to be largely accounted for by the Grade 1 group,

which made large gains of one grade in all aspects of reading. Of special significance was the

observation that although the children in the study were generally reading at their grade level

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despite their low-income status, for the Grade 1 children, the intervention raised their reading to

above their Grade 1 level.

The preliminary results suggested that supplementary reading, limited to only 40 to 60

minutes per week, was effective in increasing the reading skill of children in Grades 1 and 2 who

came from low-income homes. The study especially alluded to the greater effectiveness of

intervention at a younger age. The results identified the importance of early intervention for

improving reading for children from low-income homes. Schools need to consider the provision

of supplementary or additional reading programs for these children outside their regular class

instruction. The effect should be evaluated further.

This study provided empirical evidence of the effect of intervention on the reading

competency of young children from low-income families (Pagani et al., 2003). However, the

small sample size called for further testing of the results and the intervention strategy. Other

models of intervention also can be designed and tested by future research. Policymakers must

support such research, especially in view of the finding that the younger the children are, the

more effective the information seems to be.

The Oregon Simulation

Bowman et al. (2003) stated that teaching about poverty and family policy is a challenge

for family educators, both inside the classroom and in local communities. After a review of

public misconceptions of poverty and a critique of conventional pedagogy, they argued that

experimental activities, particularly simulations, are appropriate for promoting critical thinking

about and increasing empathy for families in poverty. Two simulations designed to allow

learners to rethink their policy assumptions and reflect on their values and attitudes about

poverty and social inequality are presented here. The poverty simulation is a role-playing

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workshop including limited resource families and agency representatives. The first model is the

Oregon Poverty Simulation, an interactive experience that places the participants in families that

have limited resources for 15-minute sessions for 4 weeks. The second simulation, Weber

Towers, is an online computer simulation representing social inequality in an apartment building,

acquainting students with families from different social classes. Multi-method evaluation

strategies, including a retrospective pretest method and qualitative data analysis, are utilized.

The Oregon Poverty Simulation was adapted from the welfare simulation purchased from

the Reform Organization of Welfare Education Association, and it was piloted with Human

Development and Family Sciences undergraduate classes and university faculty and volunteers.

Its initial effectiveness was diluted by the use of Aid to Families with Dependent Children forms

and standards that hindered the realism of the simulation. To address the issue, a team composed

of university faculty, students who were former welfare recipients, and representatives of the

Oregon agency that administers Temporary Assistance to Needy Families and food stamps was

formed to adapt the simulation to Oregon’s current welfare regulations. The team also tailored

the family profiles to reflect state demographics. Under the terms of the copyright license, all

changes were approved by the Reform Organization of Welfare Education Association.

In this poverty simulation, participants assume the roles of family members or agency

representatives for 4 weeks. The purpose of the simulation is to sensitize participants to the day-

to-day realities of life faced by limited resource families. Each family struggles during the

simulation to make ends meet, find or maintain a job, feed the family members, send the children

to school, and maintain shelter and utilities. Each family visits a variety of agencies around the

perimeter of the room to try to meet its needs. The agencies include the school, the food bank,

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the grocery store, the bank, the utility company, the rent or the mortgage company, the

employment office, the state welfare office, the police department, and a pawnbroker.

There are two types of roles in the poverty simulation: Family members and agencies or

organizations. The families include an elder couple with chronic health problems, a college

student, a middle-class family suddenly faced with unemployment, a single mother with two

young children, a single mother with one young child, a single father with two young children,

and a seasonal worker family with two adults and four children. Their packets of information

include an instruction sheet for each family member, a profile of the family, nametags, identity

cards, cash, personal belongings, transportation passes, pens and paper.

The agency or organizational packets include an agency profile, forms for clients, and

forms for the agency representative to use to track the resources or services given to clients,

stamp pads and stamps to date forms, money, transportation passes, pens and paper. In addition,

there are other items specific to each agency. For example, the employment office packet

contains recent newspaper employment ads, and the emergency food bank includes grocery store

vouchers.

The participants are encouraged to be realistic as they assume their role. Each role packet

contains some clear instructions and some intentional ambiguity. Each individual makes some

choices about how to play a role during the simulation. The poverty simulation can be conducted

with as few as 25 to 30 or as many as 100 participants, but the more participants, the more

chaotic the experience. In a college classroom setting, the simulation can be conducted during

one class, and the debriefing can be held during the next class. When conducting a simulation in

a community, a minimum of 3 hours is required to set up the room with the packets, conduct the

simulation and debriefing, and put all of the materials back together.

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Forty-four poverty simulations were conducted in 2000-2001, reaching more than 1,600

individuals. Simulations were conducted in Oregon, California, Washington, and Idaho. The

participants included adults and youth; human service professionals and volunteers, such as food

bank volunteers, journalists, community action agency staff; midlevel managers of state

agencies; agricultural and forestry leaders; church groups; and youth leadership groups. The

poverty simulation is part of new employee training for the Oregon agency that administers food

stamps. Typically, participation in poverty simulations is voluntary, although when they are

conducted as part of a college class or part of staff training, there may be an explicit expectation

of participation.

The evaluation data for this experiment were based on 11 poverty simulations conducted

in 2002 with 316 participants. These simulations were conducted with college students, new

police cadets, new staff at the state welfare agency, civic leaders, community coalitions, and

community action groups. The evaluation results consisted of a written evaluation instrument

and notes taken during debriefings after the poverty simulations.

A retrospective pretest was used as the design for the written evaluations. At the end of

the simulation, the participants assess their current level of knowledge and completed the same

self-report measure with reference to their level of knowledge when the seminar began. This

second measure was the retrospective pretest. Research and evaluation studies over the past 20

years have shown retrospective pretest designs to be effective in accurately measuring changes in

self-reported knowledge and behavior. The retrospective pretest was used for two important

reasons. First, compared to a traditional pretest/posttest strategy, the retrospective pretest takes

less time to complete and is more flexible. Second, research has shown that even when pretest

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and posttest information are collected, the actual effects of the program may be masked by an

initial overestimation of knowledge and skills on the pretest.

The outcome assessment results of the Oregon Poverty Simulation are provided below.

When the 4 weeks of the poverty simulation are completed, the participants are invited to share

their experiences in a group debriefing. The facilitator presents these questions as a guideline:

1. What feelings did you experience during your month in poverty?

2. How did you feel about yourself? Why did you think that way?

3. What happened to your family? What good things? What bad things?

4. How did other people respond to your needs? How did you feel about their

response?

5. Did your attitudes change during the month? If so, how?

6. Did you help each other out?

7. What insights or conclusions have you come to about the life experience of

limited resource families?

These four attitudinal measures are utilized: How would you rate your understanding of:

1. Financial pressures faced by low-income families in meeting basic needs

2. Difficulties improving one’s situation, becoming self-sufficient on limited income

3. Emotional stresses and frustrations created by having limited resources

4. Positive and negative impacts of “helpers” on people with limited resources

In the area of financial pressures, the participants are amazed by the amount of time it

takes to make ends meet. The simulation requires family members to purchase transportation

tokens to be used every time they visit an agency. This feature represents the cost of

transportation in people’s lives but it is also a source of frustration

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In the area of difficulties improving one’s situation, the financial position of many

families deteriorates during the simulation, but others stay fairly stable or even improve.

Interestingly, it is not the same families in each workshop that improve or decline in economic

self-sufficiency. One of the reasons is the role of chance or luck in the simulation. Each family

randomly selects a “Luck of the Draw” card during the simulation. Half of the cards represent

good fortune, and half represent bad luck. The cards reflect the lack of control that family

members experience, and they play a minor role in healing or stressing the family finances.

In the area of emotional stress, during the simulation and the debriefing, many

participants feel frustrated, out of control, irritable, and angry. Family members are frustrated by

the difficulty they are experiencing in accessing resources and services. They are not sure what

services are available, what the qualifications are to receive services, or where to go to receive

specific services.

In the area of impacts of “helpers,” some of the agency or organizational roles are fairly

complex because of the variety of forms available for different programs. The organizational

instructions for each role explain that there is some ambiguity embedded in the role, and they can

decide how to handle that, but some people are distressed by a lack of concrete instructions for

every situation.

Open-ended comments on the evaluation forms are another source of information about

the effect of the poverty simulations on attitudes and knowledge. In response to the question,

“Will you take any actions as a result of this workshop? If so, what?” Following is a sample of

comments:

Try to give people as much support as possible.Treat them with respect, realize they may be desperate. As an education major, I will have a better understanding of what children facing poverty are going through.

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It was a real eye opener. I think that the emotional aspects would be hard to understand unless put in a situation as these families are.More compassion and understanding when dealing with my clients and other walk-in-folks, more empathy towards the frustrations of poverty.I will definitely be more of an advocate for those less fortunate and steer away from stereotypes. (pp. 38-39)

The Weber Towers

The second experiment performed by Bowman et al. (2003) is known as the Weber

Towers. As previously mentioned in the annotated bibliography, this experiment teaches students

about poverty and inequality. It is an online tutorial that leads students on a series of tours

through a virtual apartment building to acquaint them with families of different social classes.

This experiment demonstrates the power of making poverty and inequality real through a virtual

experience. Weber Towers is a complex, text-rich, visual fiction that reflects real life. Upon

logging onto the Weber Towers, students are informed that they are now employed on the

janitorial staff of a 50-story skyscraper called Weber Towers. During the first week, they move

through the towers via an elevator panel that takes them in a predetermined order to visit four

apartments, where they become acquainted with four different families. A wealthy bachelor lives

in the penthouse, a single mother lives in the basement, a working-class man and his girlfriend

live just above ground floor, and a dual-career middle-class family lives between them and the

penthouse. Students never actually see the inhabitants; instead, they read pop-up texts that

provide transcripts of something the inhabitants say to them or to other people. Other pop-up

texts, linked to items in the apartment, explain something more about the life of the family whose

apartment they are visiting.

One strength of this hypertext approach is that students are urged to be inquisitive and

inductive in trying to learn all that they can about the inhabitants and about the links among these

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apartment dwellers. By clicking on “hot” items in the apartments, they locate clues that raise

suspicions about how one family’s actions influence another family.

Weber Towers not only illustrates concepts within any given tour but also seeks to draw

students into a story that will pique their emotions and reveal those things about which they are

passionate. Over the academic term, students begin to see a soap opera develop in the towers as

they complete tours. For example, after several weeks, they discover that the poor single mother

used to be married to the working-class man. When the poor woman’s daughter unexpectedly

dies, the students find out that the working-class man has been delinquent in his child support

payments and now comes through with enough money to at least pay for the cemetery plot.

Weber Towers also gives students opportunities to engage in research and writing

projects about poverty and power drawing upon the near fiction of the course. For example,

students are told that they must go up to the penthouse to collect some extra chairs from the

previous evening’s meeting of the residents’ council. They find a copy of the agenda for last

night’s meeting and a copy of the minutes from the previous month’s meeting in the penthouse.

The students then engage in content analysis, looking for and writing about evidence of political

power, institutionalized discrimination, and further evidence of class oppression.

A team that included a sociology professor, an instructional design expert, a computer

programmer, and a graphic artist created the Weber Towers computer simulation project. Weber

Towers is not a technological marvel. There is no animation. Instead, there are still life

watercolor pictures. The popup windows are delivered with Java language, but they could just as

easily have been included as simple .html popup windows. The pages are delivered by a

database, but they could readily be used with a standard server. There is no streaming video or

audio.

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An assessment of the Weber Towers Simulation showed that it provides an opportunity

for students to develop inductive inquisitiveness and to provoke emotional responses. At the end

of the last tour through the Towers, students offered the following unsolicited comments:

I found this tour the most upsetting. I think it is because of the children. Children are products, yet they suffer so terribly for social failures of their parents.The most striking thing to me about the Weber Towers was the ever present.Safety net for the upper classes, but the lower you got, the more disaster waited around the corner.This tour was sure infuriating.Wow, that was a special activity. I mean it was just harsh.The story really hits you hard, it makes you both sad and angry. All the little aspects of these people’s lives are things that most tend to overlook in everyday life. This story is so realistic, it is almost scary. It really makes you think twice about what you have and what you want. (p. 40)

Simulations have a great impact when they are carefully integrated into the subject matter and

not simply added on for the sake of novelty. The increased sensitivity to poverty that results from

a poverty or inequality simulation can be linked to community service projects for youth or

adults.

Like all teaching methods, simulations have limitations in communicating knowledge.

Simulations are intended to be microcosms of reality, albeit greatly compressed in time and

scope. As a result, it is possible that in the abbreviated format, students may actually regard their

one role play as reflective of all poor families. Thus, stereotypes may be inadvertently reinforced

if the instructor fails to adequately process the experience with students. Also, the design of a

simulation reflects the designers’ decisions about what to highlight and what to ignore, further

limiting the variety of experiences and processes that really do exist among poor families.

Psychosocial Environment of Poverty

Social support among clinically depressed adults is inversely related to education levels

as well. Mothers of lower SES offered less emotional support to their young children. Bowman

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et al.’s (2003) longitudinal survey of American families’ also uncovered greater instability in

peer relationships from preschool through third grade in relation to lower SES. Low-income

mothers of low birth weight, premature babies in a national sample received significantly less

social support when their children were 1 year old compared with their counterparts who were

not poor. Lower social class adolescents have smaller social support networks and are more

dependent upon their peers than upon adults for social support.

Social resources also vary by neighborhood quality. Disadvantaged neighborhoods have

less social capital than wealthier neighborhoods. Across multiple urban sites with representative

samples, residents of disadvantaged neighborhood, when compared with their more advantaged

counterparts, have weaker social ties, experience less interpersonal trust and norms of

reciprocity, and perceive lower levels of instrumental support and mutual aid. Poor

neighborhoods have fewer social resources and diminished capacity for informal social controls.

Low-income children experience substantially less cognitive stimulation and enrichment

than wealthier children. Low-income parents speak less often and in less sophisticated ways than

middle-income parents to their young children, and as the children grow older, low-income

parents are less likely than middle-income parents to engage jointly with their children in literacy

activities such as reading aloud or visiting the library.

Evans (2004) discovered that social class is inversely related to the function of parental

speech. The higher the social class of parents, the less likely they are to direct or order their

children’s behaviors and the more likely they are to speak to their children to initiate and sustain

conversation. Similar SES trends were shown by Hoff, Laursen, and Tardiff (2003) in a larger

sample studied at ages 2 and 4, both at home and in the laboratory. Moreover, significant

positive relations between SES and 2-year-old children’s growth in productive vocabulary over

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time were largely accounted for by shorter utterances of parental speech among lower class

mothers.

In a representative American sample, 38% of low-income parents read to their 3- to 5-

year-old children daily, and 22% had taken their children at least once in the past month to the

public library. In a nationwide study of American Kindergarten children, 36% of parents in the

lowest income quintile read to their children on a daily basis, compared with 62% of parents

from the highest income quintile. Children in low-income families also watch considerably more

television than their more affluent counterparts, with 18% of low-income American 13-year-olds

watching more than 6 hours of television daily, whereas 10% of 13-year-olds above the poverty

line watch this much (DHSS, 2000).

Parental involvement in school activities is strongly linked to income. In a national

survey conducted by the DHSS in 1999, 59% of American parents above the poverty line were

involved in three or more school activities on a regular basis; this contrasted with 36% of parents

below the poverty line. Parents in low-income communities volunteered less, attended school

functions relatively infrequently, and were typically inattentive to homework and other

assignments than the parents of children from middle- and upper income communities.

Adolescents in lower SES families feel less of a sense of belonging to their school than

do adolescents in middle and upper SES families. Disadvantages at the individual household

level and the school level are associated with feeling less connected to school. For example,

adolescents from single-parent families and those attending schools with a higher proportion of

single-parent families feel less connected to their schools.

Children in low-income schools are less likely to have adequately qualified teachers. For

example, 27% of high school math teachers in low-income school districts majored in

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mathematics in college. This contrasts with the 43% of high school mathematics teachers in

more affluent school districts. Student absenteeism and teacher turnover are greater in low-

income schools. The incidence of violence is greater in low-income American schools. A

nationwide study by Gallup (1993) reported that low-income adolescents are twice as likely as

middle-income adolescents to report the presence of weapons (12%) or the incidence of physical

assaults (32%) in their schools.

Physical Environment of Childhood Poverty

There is evidence of physical, environmental injustice among the poor in America. Low-

income families live closer to toxic waste dumps, and their children carry a heavier body burden

of toxins. As an illustration, the prevalence of unsafe lead levels in American children from a

national survey was 4 times higher in low-income families than in high income families (16.3%

vs. 4%; Brody et al., 1994). Statewide screening in Massachusetts of children ages 9 months to 4

years uncovered similarly strong links between childhood poverty and lead exposure. This study

also documented that lead exposure was largely coming from older homes, where lead-based

paint was prevalent at one time.

Brody et al. (1994) also found that low-income homes have higher levels of nitrogen

dioxide, carbon monoxide, and radon and allergen exposures associated with asthma. Access to

safe drinking water in both the developing world and America is inversely related to income. In

addition to the direct impact that inadequate water supplies and poor sanitation have on physical

health, there are additional costs. A disproportionate expenditure of time and effort by the poor

in developing countries often accompanies access to drinking water, latrines, and waste facilities.

In a national sample of low birth weight, premature babies, 1-year-old infants from low-

income families were more than twice as likely to live in crowded housing as families that were

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not poor. A nationwide British study showed that 78% of unskilled laborer families with children

under 18 years of age lived in homes with more than one person per room, compared with 14%

of professional families. The availability of open space and nature to families is tied to income

levels as well. In New York City, low-income neighborhoods average 17 square yards of park

space per child, compared with 40 square yards for the rest of the city. Manual laborers in Britain

are 4 times more like (14%) to have a home with a garden or a yard too small to sit in, compared

with the homes of managers or professionals (3%).

Children living at or below the poverty line are 3.4 times more likely to live in houses

with structural defects (22.3%), 3.6 times more likely to live in houses infested with rodents

(14.4%) and 2.7 times more likely to have inadequate heat in the winter than are children living

above the poverty line. Furthermore, several nationwide public health screenings have revealed

that poverty in America is strongly tied to childhood injuries related to risks in the home. Low-

income families live in homes with fewer smoke detectors and fire extinguishers, more ungraded

stairs, and more unlocked storage closets. In addition, they are more likely to have scalding tap

water. The provision of designated play space for young children in the home is also inversely

related to social class. National data also have shown that low-income families in America are

less likely to have amenities such as washing machines, clothes dryers, or air conditioning.

One of the reasons low-income children engage in fewer literary activities may be the

home environment. Fifty-nine percent of American children between the ages of 3 and 5 have 10

or more children’s books at home. Eighty-one percent of nonpoor families have 10 or more

children’s books in their home. Newson and Newson (1997) reported that 40% of the homes of

unskilled laborers contain fewer than 3 books; in comparison, none of the homes of professionals

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lack books. Moreover, as noted earlier, low-income children watch much more television than

their wealthier counterparts.

Low-income children in America are much less likely to have access to a home computer

or the Internet. U.S. census data (as cited in Becker, 2000) have revealed more than a fourfold

increase in home computer access in households with incomes greater than $75,000 in

comparison to households with incomes below $20,000. Ninety-four percent of inner-city

children in the United States have no Internet access, compared with 57% of more affluent,

urban children. In addition to having less access to computers, low-income children who have

computers have poor hardware and tend to use it in less sophisticated ways than more affluent

children do. Low-income schools also lag far behind schools serving more affluent populations

in terms of the availability and quality of computer technology.

Not only are the immediate home settings of poor children fraught with physical

inequities but the neighborhoods they live in also are frequently characterized by multiple risks.

Low-income neighborhoods have significantly more crime. The basic infrastructure of low-

income neighborhoods is often lacking, with substandard housing stock, more abandoned and

boarded-up buildings, inadequate municipal services, and fewer retail facilities. Low-income

neighborhoods often lack amenities such as retail and service merchants. Low-income

neighborhoods have 3 times fewer supermarkets, comparable numbers of small groceries and

convenience stores, and 3 times more bars and taverns as middle- and upper income

neighborhoods.

The neighborhoods in which poor children live also are more physically hazardous.

American elementary school-aged children from low-income families are exposed to more street

traffic, which largely accounts for the sixfold greater risk of pedestrian accidents among poor

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children. Poor children’s play spaces are more hazardous. Suceoff, Avner, Chou, and Drain

(1999) found 50% more hazards in playgrounds located in low- relative to middle- and upper

income neighborhoods in New York City.

Poverty is harmful to the physical, socioemotional, and cognitive well-being of children,

youth, and their families. A potent explanation for this situation may be the cumulative,

environmental risk exposure. Compared with middle- and high-income children, low-income

children are disproportionately exposed to more adverse social and physical environmental

conditions. They suffer greater family turmoil, violence, and separation from their parents. Their

parents are more nonresponsive and harsh, and they live in more chaotic households that have

with fewer routines, less structure, and greater instability. Poor children have fewer and less

socially supportive networks than their more affluent counterparts, who live in neighborhoods

that are lower in social capital and as adolescents are more likely to rely on peers than adults.

Low-income children have fewer cognitive enrichment opportunities at home and in their

neighborhoods. They read less, have fewer books at home, are infrequent library patrons, and

spend considerably more time watching TV than their middle-income counterparts.

Poor children reside in more polluted, unhealthy environments. They breathe air and

drink water that are both more polluted. Their households are more crowded and noisier, and

they have more safely hazards. Low-income neighborhoods are more dangerous, have poorer

services, and are more physically deteriorated. The neighborhoods where poor children live are

more hazardous and less likely to contain elements of nature. Poor children are more likely to

attend schools and daycare facilities that are inadequate. Although low-income children face a

bewildering array of psychosocial and physical risk factors, there is emerging evidence of

accelerating levels of chaos among American children across the SES spectrum.

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Persistent early childhood poverty has more adverse impact relative to intermittent

poverty exposure. Chronic poverty leads to a greater accumulation of social and environmental

risk exposure. Psychologists need to come to grips with the ecological reality of poverty and

resist relegating income and SES to unexplained, confounding variables in their models of

human behavior and well-being.

The Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort

The Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (ECLS-K,(1998-1999; National Center for

Education Statistics [NCES], 2004) was a representative sample of more than 22,000 children

who enrolled in approximately 1,000 Kindergarten programs during the 1998-1999 school year.

The researchers collected data from children, families, teachers, and school administrators to

examine multiple variables in the ecology of early schooling. The sample reflected the racial,

ethnic, and economic diversity of Kindergarten students in the United States.

The data for this project came from child, parent, teacher, and school administrator

responses gathered during the school years. The reading portion of the direct cognitive

assessment included items to assess children’s basic skill, vocabulary, and progressively

complex reading comprehension. This method yielded necessary information to generate item

response theory scale scores. The Item Response Theory Scale (IRT) scores represented

children’s likely scores on the entire assessment, had they completed it. Child, gender, race, and

ages at first assessment are provided in the ECLS-K dataset. Child gender first was determined

by researchers at the school-based assessment ant then confirmed with items on the initial parent

interview (NCES, 2004).

The NCES (2004) determined that the children who attended full-day Kindergarten

evidenced enhanced reading performance at the end of Kindergarten only. Children attending

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Kindergarten classrooms with higher percentages of students reading below grade level

demonstrated constrained performance in reading at the end of Kindergarten.

Children attending Grade 1 classrooms with higher percentages of students with higher

percentages of students reading below grade level demonstrated lower reading performance at

the end of Grades 1 and 3. Children attending Grade 1 classrooms with higher levels of

comprehensive literacy instruction demonstrated enhanced reading performance at the end of

Grade 1. There was no evidence that class reading abilities or comprehensive literacy instruction

at third grade affected children’s reading scores above and beyond child, family, and school

variables and the predicted reading trajectory. No data in this study supported research about

other grades (NCES, 2004).

Although Kainz and Vernon-Feagan (2007) provided needed information on reading

development for economically disadvantaged children, there were several limitations in their

study research. For example, the current project relied on teachers’ reports of literacy instruction

within classrooms. More precise information about the nature and effects of instruction would be

gained from frequent observations of literacy instruction. Another limitation of Kainz and

Vernon-Feagan’s research was that the analytic sample inclusion criteria may have compromised

the general basis of the results. For example, approximately 15% of elementary-age children

change residence each year. Student mobility results in lower reading performance during

elementary school and changes the composition of schools and the pace of classroom instruction.

Consequently, mobility is a challenge to longitudinal analyses of student achievement. Finally, it

should be noted that the findings reported by Kainz and Vernon-Feagan provided a unique

description of reading development for children from low-income families with an emphasis on

ecological validity.

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Summary

The Depth section of this KAM integrated educational concepts of classical theories

particularly, those of Payne (1996), with current findings on poverty and its effects on education

in the elementary school. Discussion included contemporary theories in relation to the world of

poverty and living in low-SES conditions. Ideas emerged to modify educational practices in the

areas of low-income so that these students can have a chance at a brighter future.

The notion of improving the living conditions of those living in low-income areas has

introduced new areas for exploration relating to housing and environmental conditions within

these low-income areas. The concept of the NCLB dominated the conversation concerning need

for children from a low-SES environment to succeed in school. In addition, the concept of the

psychosocial environment has created copious discussion on movement through various changes

to achieve a healthier lifestyle.

Finally, a discussion of the physical environment of childhood poverty linked many of

the theories developed by classical theorists and explained the effort to assist the low-income

population to motivate and change poor learning behaviors. Changes made in these early years

may decrease the risk for being left behind later in life.

The Application segment of this KAM utilizes a PowerPoint display to assist teachers in

improving instruction to students of low SES. Inspirations from the Breadth and Depth sections

developed into a need to apply for a grant to supply funds for after-school activities to help

students with their schoolwork; provide computer instruction for parents and children; and offer

tutorial classes for students in the four core areas of education, namely, English, math, science,

and social studies; homework assistance; GED classes for parents; character education for both

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parents and students; arts and crafts for parents and students; vocational classes for parents and

students; and etiquette classes for parents and students.

APPLICATION

EDUC 8138: PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE IN STRATEGIC LEADERSHIP AND SOCIETAL DEVELOPMENT

Introduction

The Application section of this KAM utilizes information from the Breadth and Depth

segments to prepare a PowerPoint demonstration. The needs of students living in poverty will be

determined by student-centered research, and those students not included in the study will be

referred to participate in a study to identify recommendations that will be needed to improve the

effects of education for students who live in poverty in the inner-city elementary and middle

school environment. The PowerPoint presentation will draw on the concepts of social

environment as an educational intervention to assist students to improve their academic skills.

Background

In 2001, the U.S. government passed the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) in the wake

of too many failing schools. It was designed to increase students’ ability to succeed at grade level

in the core subject areas. When the NCLB was first enacted, it was used to test students in

Grades 3, 5, and 8. Eventually, it became the basis for testing at all grade levels. The intent of the

NCLB was to improve student performance in inner-city school districts and other failing

schools. As a result of the NCLB, it was found that too many students were performing far below

grade level and were not ready to move on to the next level. The purpose of the NCLB was to

ensure that all children have a fair, equal, and significant opportunity to obtain a high-quality

education and, at a minimum, read proficiently on challenging state academic achievement

standards and state academic assessment tests. This purpose can be accomplished by ensuring

that high-quality academic assessments, accountability systems, teacher preparation and training,

curriculum, and instructional materials are aligned with state academic standards so that students,

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teachers, parents, and administrators can measure progress against common expectations for

academic achievement. In addition, according to the national Web site of the NCLB, the NCLB

was designed to fulfill the following criteria:

1. “Meet the educational needs of low achieving children in our Nation’s highest-

poverty schools, limited English proficient children, migratory children, children

with disabilities, Indian children, neglected or delinquent children and young

children in need of reading assistance.”

2. “Close the achievement gap between high-and low-performing children,

especially the achievement gaps between minority and nonminority students and

between disadvantaged children and their more advantaged peers.”

3. “Hold schools, local educational agencies and States accountable for improving

the academic achievement of all students and identifying and turning around low

–performing schools that have failed to provide a high-quality education to their

students, while providing alternatives to students in such schools to enable the

students to receive a high-quality education.”

4. “Distribute and target resources sufficiently to make a difference to local

educational agencies and schools where needs are greatest.”

5. “Improve and strengthen accountability, teaching, and learning by using state

assessment systems designed to ensure that students are meeting challenging state

academic achievement and content standards and increasing achievement overall,

but especially for the disadvantaged.”

6. “Provide greater decision-making authority and flexibility to schools and teachers

in exchange for greater responsibility for student performance.”

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7. “Provide children an enriched and accelerated educational program including the

use of school-wide programs or additional services that increase the amount and

quality of instructional time.”

8. “Promote school-wide reform and ensure the access of children to effective,

scientifically based instructional strategies and challenging academic content.”

9. “Significantly elevate the quality of instruction by providing staff in participating

schools with substantial opportunities for professional development.”

10. “Coordinate services under all parts of this title with each other, with other

educational services and to the extent feasible with other agencies providing

services to youth, children, and families.”

11. “Afford parents substantial and meaningful opportunities to participate in the

education of their children.”

The Program

The Application section of this KAM discusses the NCLB Act and its impact on and the

children who are living in poverty. The intended outcome of the Application section was to

develop an understanding of the effect of poverty on student achievement in the public

elementary and middle-schools in Jersey City, New Jersey. These public schools serve

approximately 25,000 students in 35 elementary and middle schools. Jersey City has no middle

schools. All elementary schools house Kindergarten to Grade 8. The ethnic background is

approximately 60% African-American, 20% Hispanic, 10% Asian-American, and 10%

Caucasian.

In 2004, the ABC Elementary School became a failing school for the first time. As a

result, new programs were initiated to improve student achievement in the core subject areas.

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The ABC Elementary School is now on the verge of a complete overhaul. There have been talks

of privatizing this school, along with other failing schools in the district, which could mean the

loss of many jobs. The NCLB has been a burden on most of the faculty, who are pressured to

produce students who are at grade appropriate ability when they are coming to school with no

skills and no desire to want to learn.

The intention of this KAM Application is to relate knowledge discovered in the Breadth

and Depth section to help faculty members become aware of the impact of poverty on students in

our schools and how the NCLB is working, or not working, to our advantage. The theoretical

frameworks in this Application are those of Dewey (1900, 1915); Durkheim (1956); Payne

(1996); and W. R. Smith (1917, 1928). The following section explains how the faculty were

introduced to these theorists, and it discusses current research on the link between poverty and

education.

A PowerPoint demonstration outlined the theorists and their views on education and

society. Part II of the demonstration identified recent research that has been accomplished in the

field of education regarding poverty and its effect on education. This project was undertaken

because there is a need for teachers to understand what they need to do to help their students

succeed. This project is important because it is necessary for teachers to understand the

challenges facing these children prior to attending school and what they deal with while they are

in school.

According to UNICEF, nearly one billion people entered the 21st century unable to read a

book or sign their names. Around the world, more than 115 million children of primary-school

age are not in school for such reasons as safety, local traditions, and poverty. Nearly 53% of the

children currently not attending primary school are girls. Uneducated girls grow up to be

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disadvantaged women. More than half (64%) of the 770 million adults in the world who cannot

read or write are women. Without an education, women have fewer employment options and

often earn less than men. I mention this statistic because state tests in New Jersey have shown

that girls in Jersey City are performing at a much higher level than boys. More than 50% of the

female population passed the New Jersey Assessment of Skills and Knowledge (NJASK), but

only 40% of the boys passed.

Overview of Poverty and Education

In the United States, income poverty is defined by the poverty threshold developed in

1959 and based on expected food expenditures for families of various sizes. Each year, the

threshold is adjusted for the Consumer Price Index cost of living. In 1999, the poverty threshold

for a single mother raising two children was $13,423. Researchers have criticized the poverty

threshold on numerous counts. First, government transfers such as food stamps and housing

subsidies, as well as tax benefits and tax payments, are not included when assessing the poverty

threshold. Second, regional and urban differences in the cost of living are not considered when

computing the poverty threshold. Despite the criticisms levied against the way poverty is

assessed in the United States, researchers continue to use this definition of poverty and

acknowledge its flaws.

Single comparisons between children in poor families and children in nonpoor families

using national datasets have indicated that poor children are more likely to do worse on indices

of school achievement than nonpoor children are. Poor children are twice as likely as nonpoor

children to repeat a grade, be expelled or suspended from school, or drop out of high school.

They are also likely to be identified during their elementary school years as having a learning

disability than their nonpoor counterparts.

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Measures of childhood educational outcomes in elementary school typically include

school achievement test scores, grade failure, and learning and attention problems. Among

school-age children, the effect of family poverty on academic achievement parallels the findings

for young children. Family poverty is significantly associated with lower reading mathematics

achievement scores for children ages 5 to 8. Other researchers have found associations between

family income-to-needs ratios and school performance and grade point average.

Children living in poverty scored 10 to 12 points lower than near-poor children on

measures of achievement and cognitive ability at ages 5 and 6 (Dukas, 2001). This effect also

was found for older children. Those children living in deep poverty scored 7 to 9 points lower on

the achievement measures at ages 7 to 8. The differential effects of persistent and transient

poverty also were seen in middle childhood. Five- to 8-year-old children who lived in poverty

scored 6 to 10 points lower on measures of cognitive ability and school readiness than children

who were never poor. Children who had experienced transient poverty scored 3 to 6 points lower

on average than children who had never lived in poverty. Pagani et al. (2006) found that

persistent poverty was significantly related to academic failure. Children who had experienced

poverty throughout their lives were twice as likely as never-poor children to be placed in a

nonage appropriate classroom.

Objectives of the Presentation

The purpose of the PowerPoint demonstration was to help teachers to identify effective

ways to empower students to overcome the barriers to learning that result from living in poverty.

The PowerPoint demonstration will provide classroom teachers and school administrators with

the knowledge, strategies, and skills to challenge the impact of poverty on student achievement.

To achieve this purpose, emphasis will be placed on Payne (1996)’s publication. In addition,

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equal emphasis will be given to the sociology of American schools and the cultural trap of

poverty. The presentation will offer many innovative and effective strategies to advance school

reform. The following objectives were considered in the planning of the PowerPoint

demonstration:

Upon completion of the demonstration, teachers will be able to:

1. Differentiate between internal and external poverty.

2. Use knowledge gained to develop ways to determine the time and extent of

poverty being endured by their students.

3. Gain insight into the role of language in academic achievement.

4. Identify the hidden rules of social class position.

5. Analyze ways to improve academic achievement for students enduring poverty.

6. Initiate the development of a framework to understand poverty.

7. Initiate a pedagogy for children from poverty.

8. Consider affective educational strategies necessary to build meaningful

relationships with students from poverty.

Presentation of the PowerPoint Demonstration

On September 2, 2008, I was given the opportunity to present my PowerPoint

demonstration to the faculty of the ABC Elementary School in Jersey City, New Jersey. I was

given 1 hour to present my findings. I began with an overview of the classical theorists and their

views on society and education. I emphasized Payne’s (1996) study on understanding poverty. I

discussed the studies presented in the Breadth component of this KAM. I concluded with

suggestions for teachers to improve their teaching skills to help them understand and improve

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their ability to teach students who come from high-poverty background. I presented this

demonstration with the aforementioned objectives in mind.

As mentioned previously, this project was important because we are faced with a school

comprised of students who are living in poverty. The ABC Elementary School is entitled to offer

a free breakfast and a free lunch program. The first portion of the presentation on the classical

theorists did not generate much excitement among the faculty. The second part, however, excited

them, especially when I presented them with and the findings from current research on children

living in poverty. Faculty asked many questions, and I answered them to the best of my ability

based on my research. Most teachers were very impressed with the information on Payne’s

(1996) research. They found many correlations between her findings and their experiences in the

classroom.

If I were to make any improvements to the presentation, I would concentrate on recent

findings and present them in another PowerPoint demonstration. I also would provide handouts

either in the form of a brochure or an outline highlighting key areas of the demonstration.

Another suggestion would be to observe teachers in the classroom as they use the methods

suggested by Payne (1996) to help them improve their instructional skills.

Summary

After implementing the ideas that were presented in the PowerPoint demonstration, I will

submit a grant proposal to ask for increased funding to assist schools with a high poverty

population. The funds will be used to develop a program to address the needs of students in high-

poverty situations. This money will be used to provide afterschool activities for students that

include homework tutoring, extra help in core curriculum areas, and technology skills training

for students and parents. With help from the government and local agencies, teachers will have

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the opportunity to provide a thorough education to students who are living in poverty so that they

may have the opportunity to be productive and successful adults.

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