http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2010/06/08/35child_ep.h29.html?tkn=XYLFseQYQvKCZGKMnj9s%2BjKrr4z8bSCRoYpK&cmp=clp-edweek
This article in Education Week discusses the impact of the recession on families with young children. The recession is not just impacting families and children economically, but socially, emotionally, and academically. It is predicted that almost “15.6 million children will be living in poverty” by the end of 2010. This is a startling number, which has grown by 3 million in the past 4 years. Young children who come from impoverished homes are at risk both academically and emotionally. Parents of poor household spend their time trying to meet the family’s basic needs of shelter, food, and clothing. The intellectual needs of developing children tend to fall by the wayside. Children from a lower socioeconomic class are at a disadvantage entering school, compared with peers from wealthier households where time and energy is spent reading and exposing the children to literacy. In Malcom Gladwell’s book “Outliers,” he discusses the differences between how wealthy and poor families raise their children. Wealthy and middle class parents practice what he calls “concerted cultivation.” In other words, they expose their children to many things in the hopes that they will be successful at one. They instill a sense of entitlement and accomplishment that allows these children to be successful academically and socially. Lower class families practice what is called “natural growth” – they assume that their children will grow into whatever talents or skills they might possess. These children tend to be submissive and apathetic towards education.
It is important to note that both of these sources point out that socioeconomic differences – not race or culture, have the strongest impact on a young child’s development. As teachers we need to cultivate in our student’s, whether rich or poor, an appreciation and understanding of literacy. The achievement gap, that we so often focus on, exists on part because of class differences. Rather than allow impoverished children to fall behind, we need to expose them to print and literacy prior to school age so as to counteract the negative effects poverty has on their educational development. Many school systems are cutting early childhood programs such as Head Start due to lack of funding. Rather than cut these programs, we should be funneling money into them to provide students with the support and exposure to literacy that can prevent them from falling behind in elementary, middle, and high school.
Kelly, I couldn't agree with you more about the need for Head Start. I taught in an extremely impoverished neighborhood for 15 years in California near the Mexico border. There was only one Head Start program that fed into our district of 10,000 students. We were/are a "failing district" and so many children came from non-English speaking homes, illiterate in English or Spanish and definitely focusing on Maslow's lowest ring of hierarchy of needs - physiological needs. The need for these services are rising as the number of families are facing economic crisis.
ReplyDelete"Thrive by Five Washington" reported that students' performance in Montgomery County's all-day Head Start classrooms was particularly strong among African American students who were 94% more likely to meet the reading benchmark than their peers in the half-day pre-K programs. FARM students were 60% more likely to meet the benchmark than those in the half-day pre-K classes.
In addition Montgomery County's all-day Head Start classrooms "required half as many special education services per week as their peers" who weren't in the pre-k program, once both groups were in kindergarten. This raises the idea that special education may sometimes be unnecessary if a student receives a top-quality early education and that this connection is worth more research.
birthtothrive.thrivebyfivewa.org/post/2010/05/10/Quality-Head-Start-Cuts-Down-on-Special-Education-Services-in-Maryland.aspx
I thought that Kelly's arguments were right on. I currently work at a school that is right on the border of very wealthy neighborhoods and very poor neighborhoods and it is amazing to see the difference in students that we serve in our area. It's not that students from lower socio-economic households are any less smart than their peers but the complete disinterest and apathy towards their own education can be shocking. My co-teachers and I frequently talk about how to instill a sense of self in their own education without the need of extrinsic rewards.
ReplyDeleteWhat our school has done to make sure that ever student is reached has been to implement what we call the Integrated Approach which includes explicit teaching of specific skills embedded into our actual lessons. We pre and post-test for progress monitoring. This has caused our school which was previously failing to meet and surpass AYP goals in the double digits for three years now. In fact, we recently just had a meeting on how we can re-tool the system to reinforce skills that were not meet successfully by the majority of the students. While some may judge this as too rote, the data has shown that our students who did not have these prerequisite skills beforehand have succeeded where they previously had not.