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.
More moneys the answer.....that’s the ticket.
There must be some kind of a “gap”. Most celebrities and politicians send their kids to private rather than public schools.
That's very interesting. There were plenty of reasons why we read stories to our babies, but little did I know then that it would mean having a greater educational advanatage later in life.
What is it about leftists that they just can’t fathom that those with more resources are going to have more and better choices available to them?
That and a parenting gap.
Absolutely. If you can teach a kid to read well and truly inculcate the ideas that hard work is good and commie fascists are Ebola, then he'll do well, unless he's overwhelmed with millions of gibsmedats. Even then, he'll do better than he would as yet another of them.
You learn this as a parent with each child but you don't really get to appreciate until you interact with your grandchildren in that age range. It floors me every week on Wednesday when we keep the oldest granddaughter, age 2-1/2 years, at the increase in language from one week to the next.
Actually, it’s low IQ and fetal alcohol syndrome. It is causation, not correlation. Not many children make it because they suffer the effects of their parents’ choices.
And that doesn’t even consider the effects of government intervention and forced dependence.
It is tremendously important to read to your (little) children. Jim Trelease (see his website) speaks on this often. It is as important in the later years as well. If children grow up in a millieu of words, they ingest them and turn around and use them, value them. I tutor Middle School kids in writing, and those that struggle invariably have working parents, perhaps a nanny who doesn’t speak English well, not a lot of verbal interaction with the parents or anyone, often not a family dinner where conversation is encouraged.
When I encourage them to read with their kids, they look at me as if I were a Marian.
Yes, and I bet most of those 600 words are four-letter words. That's what I have observed, hearing welfare moms and dads screaming at their kids "RJ, get the f*** in here!". That kind of talk does not help one get into college.
Fake parents who squeeze out babies and use the additional government income to buy more booze, drugs and lottery tickets don't work so well.
The key is to encourage more intact families and less fake families.
Who benefits from an uneducated/undereducated class???
Who FIGHTS the very idea of a ‘charter school’??
Who indeed.
Author, and maybe editor, are grossly inflating parents concern and commitment to their childrens education.
If the parent or parents are semi-literate the child has no model for learning. And will have no reading material beyond micro-wave meal packaging and 40 oz malt liquor labels. 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. Next time a recycle truck passes by, ask the crew how many newspapers or magazines they collect from poor neighborhoods.
“White privelege” refers to the massive degree of speciousness that white people believe they are entitled to engage in when concocting convoluted theories as to why they are the guilt-ridden benefactors of forces over which they have no control and do not wish to control. Especially when you compare the kind of rhetoric the typical Atlantic Monthly intellectual slings around compared to “Yo homie, dat be like da shizzle upside yo drank mama Ritchie Cunningham slave-ass”.
Thirty years ago when I read to my baby every day, continued to do so even after she had learned to read, I/we knew exactly that. And we were 100% right.
Yes there is a “Privilege” Gap. Our kid had it & still does. It's the privilege of having two parents (one of each sex) that love each other and care for the well being of their offspring. Two parents that nurture and educate their child. Raise her to be a self reliant, moral person.
It is a "privilege" that the left wants to take away from good parents to "level the playing field", to "equalize" things.
I fought those bastards when she was growing up & I never backed down. Most of the time I won, and I was not liked by the educational establishment in Polk County, FL.
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