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Impact of poverty in education
The effect of poverty on education
Effect of poverty on education
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In our education system there is a long list of factors that can have an impact on one’s racial and ethnic background. There are three of these factors which are Tracking, the lack of Mentors and, Achievement Gaps. Tracking is the separation in the Education system of students and their performance. Lacking mentors is the ability for children of lower income populations to receive extra help that mentors can provide. Achievement gaps are the huge gaps between the academic performance between African Americans and Hispanics compared to White/European Americans. These factors are just small in compared to the amount of problems total in the education system of America.
Tracking: A technique that is used to pair groups of kids together in their academic groups organized by lower, middle, and upper. Hispanics and African Americans tend to stay at the lower groups of individuals based on their performance in school. The reason this is the case is because of their lack of resources they have due to money, poverty ridden areas, or a parental issues. Usually, the problems are a mix of these things in the communities of the poor and those who are in poverty. For the Higher level kids who are mainly White and or White European Americans, They Attend classes that are considered AP or accredited for college. The middle class of students remain somewhat of a melting pot
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These individuals have a chance to provide those in need with life changing advice and inspire them with change. In poverty ridden areas there is not a lot of money fluctuating around. Mentors require money most of the time working as tutors. If mentors are assigned into school problems like homework center or after school programs, most of the time their help is ignored because of lack of motivation. This disables people from minority groups from getting the extra help some people need in order to simply get back on track and succeed
The prejudice facing the Chinese, Native Americans, and Hispanics defined western society with different forms of legislature or economic pressures on these groups. The group had been subjugated since the formation of the United States and during its latest expansion was the Native Americans, who in this most recent expansion were moved to reservations, engaged in several bloody wars with white Americans, and forced to give up their lifestyle or their new created one in the land that was promised to them, like Oklahoma. Hispanics, though they had once dominated western society, soon lost control of their land, either due to seizure by whites or through economic competition, and found themselves on the bottom pegs of society, serving as farmhands or industrial workers; they were also excluded from the early governments in New Mexico and other areas. The Chinese, arriving from across the Pacific, found their treatment change from being welcomed to being seen as economic competition and being forced into lower jobs. Throughout the country, the Chinese were considered unwelcome as seen in the Chinese Exclusion Act. Western society found itself to be a society in which many races congregated to work together but also found itself to be a society built on racial tensions.
Authors Glenn E. Singleton and Curtis Linton in Chapter Five of Courageous Conversations About Race broach the topic of race, by asking the reader to evaluate his or her own consciousness of race. According to the authors, in order to address the achievement gaps between African American students and White students, educators should shift their energy towards focusing on the factors that they have direct control of inside the classroom rather than on the factors that influence this achievement disparity between races outside the classroom.
Tracking is where students are identified as gifted or placed in remedial classes. By doing this, students learn about their overall success and achievements in comparison to the other groups. In the documentary, the principal, Rob Gasparello, addresses why their school is not the greatest. He states that their school has a “terrible reputation” and that the numbers do not lie. Looking at the data would assume that the overall success rate is not as high as other schools. By knowing this, it can be detrimental to the students’ education. This can be detrimental because students who attend this high school may start believing that they will never be successful so why bother trying. Other students who do not attend this high school may not have respect for these schools and assume they are better because they believe that they go to a better school. This is an example of inequality in education and studies have shown that while education benefits everyone, it does not benefit everyone equally. An inequality in education mirrors and inequality in
A substantial amount of educational and psychological research has consistently demonstrated that African American students underperform academically relative to White students. For example, they tend to receive lower grades in school (e.g., Demo & Parker, 1987; Simmons, Brown, Bush, & Blyth, 1978), score lower on standardized tests of intellectual ability (e.g., Bachman, 1970; Herring, 1989; Reyes & Stanic, 1988; Simmons et al., 1978), drop out at higher rates (e.g., American Council on Education, 1990; Steele, 1992), and graduate from college with substantially lower grades than White students (e.g., Nettles, 1988). Such performance gaps can be attributed to any number of factors, such as socioeconomic status, academic preparation, and educational opportunities; however, Steele (1997) pointed out that even when background factors are held constant, subsequent achievement remains lower for minority students. Moreover, much research in this area has focused on how African American students’ lack of motivation and negative attitudes contribute to their inferior academic performance (Ogbu, 1990); yet many Black students often report high educational aspirations (Fordham, 1996; Fine, 1991; Ogbu, 1987, 1990; Hauser & Anderson, 1991), even higher than White students of comparable class background (MacLeod, 1995). What remains certain is the urgent need to explain what accounts for the persistent academic underachievement of Black students.
The achievement gap is defined as the disparity between the performance groups of students, especially groups defined by gender, race/ethnicity, ability and socio-economic status. The achievement gap can be observed through a variety of measures including standardized test scores, grade point averages, drop out rates, college enrollment and completion rates. The Black-White achievement gap is a critical issue in modern society’s education system. Although data surrounding the issue clearly indicates that the racial performance gap exists in areas of standardized tests, graduation rates, dropout rates, and enrollment in continuing education, the causative reasons for the gap are ambiguous—therefore presenting a significant challenge in regard to the most effective way to close the gap. The gap appears before children enter kindergarten and it persists into adulthood (Jencks 1998). Since 1970, the gap has decreased about 40 percent, but has steadily grown since. Theories suggest the Black-White achievement gap is created by a multitude of social, cultural, and economic factors as well as educational opportunities and/or learning experiences. Factors such as biased testing, discrimination by teachers, test anxiety among black students, disparities between blacks and whites in income or family structure, and genetic and cultural differences between blacks and whites have all been evaluated as explanations for the Black-White achievement gap (Farkas 2004). The research that follows will elaborate on these factors as they affect the decline in academic performance of black males—particularly the literacy achievement of black males.
Today's education is often viewed as failing in its goal of educating students, especially those students characterized as minorities, including African American, Hispanic, and Appalachian students (Quiroz, 1999). Among the minority groups mentioned, African American males are affected most adversely. Research has shown that when Black male students are compared to other students by gender and race they consistently rank lowest in academic achievement (Ogbu, 2003), have the worst attendance record (Voelkle, 1999), are suspended and expelled the most often (Raffaele Mendez, 2003; Staples, 1982), are most likely to drop out of school, and most often fail to graduate from high school or to earn a GED (Pinkney, 2000; Roderick, 2003).
The Achievement Gap in America has separated and divided America's youth into more or less, two different cultures of socioeconomic placement. The first being the predominantly Caucasian students at American elementary schools, high schools, and colleges that excel greatly in their education. Most of the time earning them middle to upper class jobs in the economy, the aforementioned group contrasts significantly with its opposite culture of American youth. The second culture, the population that is mostly made up of the minority races, takes it's place in the American education system as the population of students who are less interested in getting a decent education and taking advantage of the resources that are offered, for various underlying reasons. This in turn manufactures less people of this type of culture to be readily available for higher paying jobs, and often times unemployable for a job at all. The Achievement Gap in America is influenced by many cultural, environmental, and socioeconomic factors that separate lower and higher achieving students based on these factors, and leave a high amount of unemployed Americans as a result, if not incarcerated or deceased.
The United States places a great deal of importance on education and continuing to be a leader in the realm of education. If the United States wants to continue on this road it must take a good look at the achievement gap that has been created and growing. In a system where in high school 34% of black students are being held back, and are more likely to drop out before receiving a high school diploma it is essential to understand what has caused this gap and ways to help close it. When African Americans first came to this country becoming educated was not something they were allowed to do, they had to wait years and years to even learn how to write without there being consequences. When the opportunity did come along for African Americans to become educated and schools were created for them and by them, there have still being hurdles for them with chances of schools losing accreditation, and financial support for students. Policies, laws, and initiatives must really become priorities to help African Americans to ensure that they are allowed to succeed and achieve the same goals and lives as everyone else. Making sure there are able, understanding, and qualified teachers teaching students is also very important. Teachers play such a big role in the lives of students and helping them to succeed not primary and secondary school, but also continuing their journey’s into places of higher learning. This is a problem that can be fixed as long as we are serious about true equality and opportunities for
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.
Although education can be an escape from poverty, the people of color rarely have access to good schools or education systems.
Race and education are two very important topics that seem to have a very great effect on each other. We live in the land of opportunity, and this land provides “The American Dream”. However, the American Dream must come with equal quality education for all people regardless of their race. Education is one of the major obstacles today that stands in the way of giving everyone the same opportunity that they deserve.
In society, education can be seen as a foundation for success. Education prepares people for their careers and allows them to contribute to society efficiently. However, there is an achievement gap in education, especially between Hispanics and Blacks. In other words, there is education inequality between these minorities and white students. This achievement gap is a social problem in the education system since this is affecting many schools in the United States. As a response to this social problem, the No Child Left Behind Act was passed to assist in closing this achievement gap by holding schools more accountable for the students’ progress. Unsuccessful, the No Child Left Behind Act was ineffective as a social response since schools were pushed to produce high test scores in order to show a student’s academic progress which in turn, pressured teachers and students even more to do well on these tests.
The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES, 2004) reported that Black students continue to trail White students with respect to educational access, achievement and attainment. Research on the effectiveness of teachers of Black students emphasizes that the teachers’ belief about the Black students’ potential greatly impacts their learning. Teachers tend to teach black students from a deficit perspective (King, 1994; Ladson-Billings, 1994; Mitchell, 1998). White teachers often aim at compensating for what they assume is missing from a Black student’s background (Foorman, Francis & Fletcher, 1998). The deficit model of instruction attempts to force students into the existing system of teaching and learning and doesn’t build on strengths of cultural characteristics or preferences in learning (Lewis, Hancock...
Many young people just need to be motivated and given a fair chance at success. Young people need mentors to help them find their way and to help them stay focused. Mentors play an intricate roll in your lives and are sort of liaisons between your parents or guardians and your educators.
One of my mentors was able to show me life outside of poverty. They showed me doors of possibilities and started a fire in my heart that would set a blaze of zeal. Going from a life of no direction or goals to having a vision for my life and wanting to purse a better life for my future has done a lot for me. It’s important to help everyone in their current situation because you never know what the outcome will be for that individual. Not everyone has the ability and drive to get out of their current situation. Sometime people don’t want to change from their current situation. For me it was simple I wanted more for myself, I’m glad I made the choice to do something about it. It’s had a lasting effect on my life. My wife and two girls will never know poverty because of my life decision that I made. Making sure I got out of that environment and wanting something better in