Posted on 09/10/2014 1:26:39 PM PDT by Kaslin
My question may sound socialistic to some of my fellow conservatives; nonetheless it is a question that must be addressed. American high school graduation rates are at an all-time high, but the education gap between rich and poor continues to grow. Noble and expensive attempts to close this gap—including subsidized preschool and the controversial implementation of the Common Core State Standards—have largely failed. In the case of Common Core, where wealthy and middle class parents are hiring tutors to compensate for its weaknesses, the “reform” aimed at equalizing the playing field may actually be making the problem worse.
Why is it so difficult to elevate the academic performance of low income children? A growing body of research indicates that part of the answer may lie in the tremendous amount of brain development that takes place during the first three years of life. Babies are born to learn, and we now know many neural networks in the brain are significantly strengthened or weakened long before a child has entered formal schooling.
According to a 1995 University of Kansas study (Hart and Risley), children of educated parents hear 2,100 words an hour. In contrast, those with working class parents hear 1,200 words, and children whose parents are on public assistance hear only 600. The vocabulary and attentiveness of the primary caregiver—whether it is a parent, a nanny or a daycare worker—plays a central role in the cognitive skills children will demonstrate later in life.
Yet we know that some children from low income families are able to become highly successful adults. We read their stories—from Tyler Perry to Dr. Ben Carson—and we are inspired and provoked not only by what they have accomplished but also by what they have overcome. What almost all of these individuals have in common is an inward determination to overcome adversity, a quality psychologists call resilience.
Although much research indicates that the most important factor in developing resilience is the quality of the parent-child bond (again, developed largely in the first three years of life), a 2005 Time Magazine article, The Importance of Resilience, sought to discover if resilience could also be leaned:
Can kids learn particular skills to help them overcome adversity? The answer is a qualified yes. You can't teach resilience, but researchers have identified some skill—such as developing a sense of autonomy or being a good reader—that increase the chances that a child will become a productive member of society. Belief systems--whether something as straightforward as believing you have a future or as nuanced as practicing a religious faith--also play a critical role.
Can schools help students develop resilience in addition strengthening their cognitive reasoning skills? KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program) Schools—public charters which serve low-income children—believe they can. They call it “grit,” and it is one of the primary qualities teachers monitor in students and work to help them improve. KIPP schools emphasize a “no-excuses,” high expectation approach to education, even though almost all their students have faced very challenging obstacles in their short lives.
Since 1994, KIPP schools have gone from serving 47 students in a single school to 58,000 in 162 schools across the country. Student who complete eighth grade in a KIPP school have a 93 percent high school graduation rate, and 82% go on to college. And although the character development component is sometimes criticized for being too harsh, it is hard to argue with its effectiveness.
The need for resilience is particularly important for low income children because of the number of obstacles they are likely to face on their path to success. Unfortunately, many interventions designed to help low-income students try to offer support without giving them the tools to overcome their challenges. But more privileged children, who are coddled through childhood, receiving trophies for mediocrity and never being allowed to skin their knees; face challenges adjusting to the real world as well. The difference is that they have a much broader support base; most can simply depend on their parents until they figure things out.
This statement should not be taken to imply that lower income parents do not care about their children or their education. The fact that charter schools like KIPP schools and Urban Prep in Chicago (which in 2014 boasted a 100 percent college acceptance rate for every senior class for five years in a row) always have extensive waiting lists is evidence to the contrary.
We must make sure all parents know how vital the first three years of their children’s lives are to their long term success. We must also take steps to ensure that all parents can send their children to the school of their choice.
It is becoming quite common for well educated parents with good jobs to put their babies in daycare at 6 weeks. From 8-5 these babies are at the mercy of a $8 per hr worker who has 4 other infants to take care of.
hahah, where is the ‘edit’ button?? A Martian, of course.
I will not easily forget my few years teaching in (K-8) inner city schools here in So Cal - and my most recent volunteering in the same/ but Middle School. My overwhelming take-away was that the kids did not care a FIG for an education. It was not valued, reading was not valued, behaving was not valued, doing homework was not valued, and ‘being White’ (ie caring about the future/ investing in an education) was mocked. Money is not going to cure any of that.
Opening Catholic schools to those who want to better themselves might be the answer - worked 100 years ago in the Irish slums. They can toss rotten kids out. And yes, there are rotten kids. And the publics can do nothing.
I have a friend that was born on a farm in the midwest around 1950. His parents didn't get indoor plumbing until after he moved out. He turned OK and makes a fairly good living..
They can ignore the reality of IQ all they want. It’s still there. I wonder one hundred years from now will they still be wondering why some kids achieve and some don’t? I’d say yes. Libs never learn.
So what does it matter if your child gets great grades in K-12 if most parents cannot afford college? The government has made colledge too expensive, that should also be in this article.
I know this sounds heretical but parental imput is not nearly as important as what is innately inside the child. My parents didn't give much of a d..n what I and my other six siblings did. A few of my siblings now have wealth in the plus million territory and most of the others did extremely well. All with little encouragement or support from my parents.
The idea that parents have to have an all consuming interest in what their kids are doing in school for their children to succeed is bogus.
You are echoing the words of Robert Weissburg who in his book "Bad Students, Not Bad Schools" said much of the same thing. In his book he detailed not only how difficult it was to teach the majority of inner-city kids but how dangerous it was for the teachers who were constantly subjected to verbal and physical abuse not only from their students but also from the student's parents.
You win with that! Now that's poor. As a kid I did sleepovers at farms. It was fun seeing discolored water come out of the tap in the kitchen. I drank it. One day a tadpole came out. I asked my friend where the water came from. "Pumped from the pond we were playing in yesterday." Guess the filters weren't working. I drank it with no ill effects. When you're poor, you just accept it. But at least I had good plumbing! (We did have an icebox with a delivery of ice every week, before eventually getting a fridge.) Back to the discussion, a lot of us turned out okay because we were raised by good people - makes a difference.
I'm not disagreeing with you. Just that being poor doesn't mean you have to be a failure, which is what the article may be insinuating. My father only had a sixth-grade education, his father died when my dad was born, and his mom died when he was barely a teen. Raised by his older brothers, dirt-poor and all working. They came out okay. Even though my dad had no formal education, he raised five kids. He didn't buy books except for a set of encyclopedias which us kids used extensively. I switched gears with my kids, reading extensively to them when they were young. They graduated with honors and went on to high-paid careers. I think it helped them in not being failures. You don't have to have an all consuming interest in helping them, but it may make a difference in how well they do in life in terms of their education.
“Poor” = Racial minorities
Too many people want to believe having dedicated parents is the ultimate key to success for children, but my view is what's inside the child is far more important.
My great grand parents were more than happy to live like that to escape the poverty and destitution in their homelands...
The rat establishment WANTS to keep the poor from learning anything - that’s how they maintain control of their votes. Programs like Headstart fail because they are designed to fail. These kids will learn if put in an environment where learning is expected - so the rats make sure that never happens. If the GOP really wanted to make a splash when they gain the majority, they would fight to pass school choice legislation nationwide, then sit back and watch the poor grow up to be conservatives.
Anyone who has taught in the inner city and is honest will say the same thing. I often wondered if my SECOND graders were dealing drugs on the playground.
“By the time first grade rolls around too many have been conditioned to look upon natural curiosity as a quality to avoid or hide deeply.”
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The lack of curiosity is the first thing that strikes me about most kids now. When I was a child any kind of noise that we did not hear regularly brought an instant “What’s that” reaction from us. Now a bulldozer could come through the yard at full throttle and unless it pushed a tree down on top of the house most kids would not even notice.
Once in the locker room at the gym I heard a middle aged man say, “I’m an educated man, I have a master’s degree.” My first thought was that I have never heard someone who seemed to be really educated use such an expression. Later he told me that his degree was in sociology. I don’t think there is any possibility that he could have passed my high school final. His comprehension of reality was severely limited, he was apparently retired military but I don’t know how he managed to stay in for twenty years without being thrown out. He was struggling just to function and seemed to believe that all his problems were caused by others.
First you have to define poor. I grew up in conditions that most young people now might view as poverty but:
1. Our little forty acre farm and shack were paid for, no mortgage. The same property could probably be sold for two hundred thousand dollars now even though it is a mile off the nearest two lane blacktop.
2. As a child I could go out and roam for miles without worrying about being harmed by anyone. There were ponds belonging to others where I was welcome to fish, there were thousands of acres of woods and fields where I was welcome to hunt.
3. I had to work hard from a very early age which I thought was awful at the time but I learned things by the time I was fourteen that most adults never learn now and I learned by working.
4. I had more REAL education by the time I finished high school than any of the recent college graduates I know.
5. I went straight from high school into the US Navy and the Navy did far more for me than I ever thought about doing for the Navy and I did not have to put up with the PC garbage that has destroyed the current military.
6. At 21 with an honorable discharge, a high school diploma and a Navy electronics certificate I could land a job STARTING at what would be equal in today’s dollars to at LEAST 25 dollars an hour now with a real benefit package including medical insurance that was almost totally free to me. By the time I was 23 I was driving a new car, working in manufacturing engineering and earning pay and benefits equal to someone in the very high five figure to low six figure annual income range now.
That is the story of a “poor boy” born in 1944 in the “Cradle of the Confederacy.” I would hate to be a young person starting out now.
By the way, when I say “land a job” I don’t mean after a long struggle of months of applications, interviews, drug tests, background checks etc. I mean literally walking into the front office of a roller bearing plant, filling out an application and interviewing that same day and leaving with intstructions to report to work on Monday morning, I left the plant at three pm on FRIDAY! This was in a town with about five thousand population at the time.
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