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Relationship between poverty and academic achievement
Effects of poverty on education
Educational effect of poverty
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Having grown up in a lower middle-class neighborhood myself, I have witnessed the challenges many students in these communities experience first-hand. I was lucky enough to attend a school with more resources, but many of my neighbors didn’t receive the same opportunity and struggled to keep up in school. For example, one of my neighbors didn’t have a car after his parents divorced and would miss school if he missed the bus. Other neighbors didn’t have access to computers or had to take care of their siblings while their parents worked, making it difficult for them to do homework. Knowing these children increased my awareness of how situations at home and financial struggles can affect a student’s education.
After coming to college I continued
working with students from low-income communities by volunteering with an after-school tutoring program for children in troubled homes. Tutoring these students has not only allowed me to develop my teaching skills, but has also taught me the patience and determination required to teach students who lack the same resources as wealthier students. For example, we once worked with a fifth-grader who grew up in an illiterate household and was unable to read or write. We practiced reading and writing with this student every day for the rest of the year to slowly build her literacy, and with her hard work and the support of her parents and teachers she was able to reach the same reading level as her classmates. This experience not only showed me the difficulties students are capable of overcoming, but the commitment, perseverance, and passion that make a teacher successful.
In Gwinnett county the average homeless person is 6 years old (Family Promise of Gwinnett County, 2013). As an educator, this is worrisome because these children in poverty will encounter many difficulties relating to their education. What difficulties are these children facing with and their education? According to Donald Hernandez (Hernandez, 2011), "Consequently, the children in poor families are in double jeopardy: They are more likely to have low reading test scores and, at any reading-skill level, they are less likely to graduate from high school." Growing up in poverty means there is very limited resources available to help climb out of poverty. Resources such as housing, clothing, and food are basic needs that have to be fulfilled for a child to grow up properly (Shaffer, 2014, pp158). When these basic needs are no...
“Despite decades of federal, state, and local programs intended to support young children’s preparation for schooling, children from low-income families continue to begin formal schooling at a disadvantage.... ... middle of paper ... ... Sometimes they won’t learn anything, they may have made some good friends, or enemies, but they never really realized how to do certain things the teacher wanted them to grasp.
Even when low-income schools manage to find adequate funding, the money doesn’t solve all the school’s problems. Most importantly, money cannot influence student, parent, teacher, and administrator perceptions of class and race. Nor can money improve test scores and make education relevant and practical in the lives of minority students. School funding is systemically unequal, partially because the majority of school funding comes from the school district’s local property taxes, positioning the poorest communities at the bottom rung of the education playing field. A student’s socioeconomic status often defines her success in a classroom for a number of reasons.
Low income students are generally found in low income communities which have fewer resources to devote to their schools. With inadequate funds and resources, these kids are not getting the equal opportunity in education as kids in high income communities. Kids...
Michael Oher was from an all-black neighborhood located in the third poorest zip code in the country. By the time he was a sophomore, he’d been to 11 different schools, he couldn’t read or write, and he had a GPA of 0.6. In his first-grade year alone, he missed 41 days of school and ended up repeating both the first and the second grade; he didn’t even go to the third grade. Oher was one of the thousands of children that have been identified as having four or more of the at-risk factors mentioned by the National Center of Education and Statistics (NCES). According to the NCES, poverty and race are high on the list of things that negatively affect students’ ability to succeed at school. Other risk factors include changing schools multiple times and being held back from one or more grades. Oher’s biography, The Blind Side by Michael Lewis, proves how socioeconomic status impacts a child’s academic success because placed in perspective, education is not as important as the hardships of reality.
Low income schools have a tendency to be truly hindered and mistreated by the privileged whites. It appears just as the privilege get the opportunity to choose the destiny of those whose they feel fall beneath their ways of life. Ways that this is being done is by the imbalanced distribution of academic resources , school financing, qualified and experienced instructors, refreshed course books, and innovations to socially rejected low income communities.
In affluent school districts which in most if not all cases are predominantly white students have “the best teachers, most up-to-date textbooks and computers, and superior academic facilities.” School districts made up of mostly wealthy and white students have the money to pay for superior resources and staff. However, struggling schools in equally struggling school districts do not have the money to pay for better resources and staff to improve the education of economically disadvantaged and racial minority students. Students inside of these economically disadvantaged school districts are left at a large disadvantage when it comes to competing for a higher education with wealthy white students with a high quality education. These disadvantaged students are left to fend for themselves without the support system and quality resources that are afforded to wealthy white students when looking for future opportunities such as applying for college. African Americans and other minorities restricted from buying homes and building equity has kept them in a state where they have little to no chance to improve their condition. Even if the people in low-income neighborhoods are very talented and have a large amount of potential they have no way to exercise and build on that potential because they don’t have an opportunity to attain an
Throughout the nation, education inequality affects many minority students that have low-income which reinforces the disparity between the rich and the poor. The amount of children that have a socioeconomic background of poverty in the United States is estimated to be 32.4 million (National Center for Children in Poverty, 2011). Since many of these children are from
Overcoming Obstacles Throughout a persons life, they are faced with different obstacles, and different challenges of all different types. My life in particular has been full of ups and downs, especially towards my soccer career. In the novel The Pact, three boys, George, Rameck, and Sam, are faced with many obstacles throughout their lives, where they must learn to overcome and achieve great success on their own will power. Essentially, I did the same thing. My soccer career has been one of my most difficult life challenges, creating the person I am today.
It is important to understand that not everyone entering college is ready for the experience. Although colleges and high schools are having conversations on how to address the problem as it relates to high school graduates being unable to test into college level courses, it is merely conversations (Remedial Education: The Skeleton in the Closet of Higher Ed). Each entity continues to play the blame game instead of sharing the accountability, politicians intercede and cause more dissention among them, teachers in school districts are forced to teach to standardized tests, college professors are frustrated with the lack of skills entering freshmen have, yet the reality of it all is there doesn’t seem to be a solution to the problem. Adult basic education is in a category by itself as it is essential for employment and to fight this stubborn illiteracy and poverty filled society. One way to accomplish this is to help low-income, first-generation individuals understand the importance of getting an education. There is a major focus on educating low-income, first-generation individuals, but some instructors cannot comprehend what it really means to come from a disadvantaged background. One of the local superintendents understands this, so each year he requires the district’s instructors to participate in a mandatory activity that exposes teachers to the lives of students they teach. Each year the veteran teachers and new teachers tour the poor neighborhoods from which their students come on the school buses. In addition, they are expected to go door to door in these neighborhoods to hand out flyers reminding the students and their parents of the back to school activities planned for the upcoming year....
Therefore, many children living in poverty are not able “to make use of their talent- to get the right education, to pursue the right career path” (Krugman,1). Because of this, social injustice has started to rapidly affect our education system, and for this reason, children living in poverty are getting fewer chances at a successful future. These kids are not entitled to a promising future because of their social background. To provide these kids the education they deserve, the government should spend more of our taxes on the low-income families. Then by providing the families more access to basic needs, their children become healthier and are designated to a better school and education. Social inequality is rapidly downsizing the rate of graduating students yearly, and as a society we must strive to end the inequality in America’s education
Family issues, poverty, and homelessness cause students to drop out of high school as it impacts education by placing stressful obstacles in children’s learning path. A National study found, “Overall, 22 percent of children who have lived in poverty do not graduate from high school, compared to 6 percent of those who have never been poor” (National Study). Lack of educational success can also contribute to throwing in the towel on school. Some students may not be receiving the additional supports to give them success in school. Imagine coming home on the bus after a ten hour day and having your ninth grader ask for help on their algebra. If you possessed the skills, which you likely do not, you may be too exhausted to help. In addition there is still dinner to cook and other household chores to complete. It is a daunting request that you may not be able to comply with. “Family poverty is associated with a number of adverse conditions — high mobility and homelessness; hunger and food insecurity; parents who are in jail or absent; domestic violence; drug abuse and other problem…” (Shonkoff & Garner, 2012 as quoted by Rumberger). Poverty is an obstacle to learning even for the brightest children. As a result few can overcome these stumbling
More and more people are falling into insular poverty. Insular poverty is rapidly growing, in our nation, into a huge problem today. It’s affecting student’s education causing them to work so much harder than the average American. To get a higher education in a poverty stricken home is almost impossible. Research is showing that poverty negatively impacts students during their educational
Living in poverty exposes children to disadvantages that influence many aspects in their life that are linked to their ability to do well in school. In the United States of America there are an estimated 16.4 million children under the age of 18 living in poverty (U.S. Census Bureau, 2010). “The longer a child lives in poverty, the lower the educational attainment” (Kerbo, 2012). Children who are raised in low-income households are at risk of failing out before graduating high school (Black & Engle, 2008). U.S. children living in poverty face obstacles that interfere with their educational achievement. Recognizing the problems of living in poverty can help people reduce the consequences that prevent children from reaching their educational potential.
Currently, relatively few urban poor students go past the ninth grade. The graduation rates in large comprehensive inner-city schools are abysmally low. In fourteen such New York City Schools, for example, only 10 percent to 20 percent of ninth graders in 1996 graduated four years later. Despite the fact that low-income individuals desperately need a college degree to find decent employment, only 7 percent obtain a bachelors degree by age twenty-six. So, in relation to ...