1) Carter, C. J. (2013, May 19). Why Aren’t Low-Income Students Succeeding in School? Retrieved from https://www.huffingtonpost.com/carol-j-carter/why-arent-low-income-stud_b_2909180.html
Background: Many low income first-generation college students are reading and doing math at a seventh or eighth grade level and are admitted into college. Annually, as many as 1.7 million first-year students entering both two- and four-year colleges have to take remedial courses to learn the skills they need to enroll in a college-level course.Academic challenges they face are due to the past education they have received. Lack of exposure to books, language barriers, lack of stability, lack of role models, and first generation are all aspects of their struggles put on them from early on in education.
How I Used It: I used it to show that the problem does not end after high school. The effects get worse as we get older. These are the reasons why these children sometimes do not excel in school.
2) How Does Poverty Affect Education? | LSU Online. (2017, April 10). Retrieved from https://lsuonline.lsu.edu/articles/education/how-does-poverty-affect-education.aspx
Background: Poverty puts a toll on a child’s physical readiness, social-emotional readiness, and cognitive readiness. When a child is raised in a low-income home, they are often left alone to fend for themselves while their parents work multiple jobs. They can only provide fast, easy food to make for themselves, which is usually junk food. This leads to unresolved health conditions, which cause major problems in the future. What a child endures at home could be so distracting that they can not pay attention in school, leading to poor performance and an emotional cut-off from everybody in the classroom and the school. If a child does not understand what is in the text book, they feel foolish and silly and do not ask questions. They would rather act up than to be embarrassed in front of the whole class for something they don’t know.
How I Used It: Growing up in a low-income area has a major impact on the children living there. The schools are not good enough to have quality learning and teaching. These children suffer in many ways each and every day. These factors listed are all detrimental to a child’s life, well-being, and to their success.
3) Isaacs, J. B., & Magnuson, K. A. (2016, July 29). Income and Education as Predictors of Children’s School Readiness. Retrieved from https://www.brookings.edu/research/income-and-education-as-predictors-of-childrens-school-readiness/
Background: Studies have shown huge gaps when testing school readiness in young children due to income of their families and also material education. Most children from a poor, low-income family perform poorer than those from a high-income family. A test is being conducted to test how children perform and why- what causes the poor performance>
How I Used It: This article shows how income plays a huge role in the success of young children, as it is the deciding factor for their success. It explores the idea of parent’s education and family income and how they come into play when it comes to children’s education.
4) Poverty and Education. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.childfund.org/about-us/education/
Background : The lack of education could lead to a lifetime full of struggles, hardships, and difficulties. It is hard for children to accomplish more things when they lack a full education. A program called ChildFund India raises money for children’s needs for schooling. In most areas where ChildFund is, schooling itself is free, but the uniforms, books, buses, are often too expensive for families to pay.
How I Used It: The significance of a good education and what it can do for children in the long run. Without a quality education, children are steered onto the wrong path, and it is hard to get out of.
5) Reardon, S. F. (2017, July 24). The widening academic achievement gap between the rich and the poor: New evidence and possible explanations. Retrieved from https://cepa.stanford.edu/content/widening-academic-achievement-gap-between-rich-and-poor-new-evidence-and-possible
Background: Discusses family socioeconomic characteristics and the difference in academic success over the last 50 years. Income achievement gap is the “Average achievement difference between a child from a family at the 90th percentile of the family income distribution and a child from a family at the 10th percentile”. It is now double the black-white gap, a gap that used to be one and a half to two times larger than the income achievement gap.
How I Used It: The relationship between income and achievement has grown tremendously and income is now a deciding factor for children’s success.
6) Richmond, E. (2015, June 08). How Ineffective Government Funding Can Hurt Poor Students. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/06/how-funding-inequalities-push-poor-students-further-behind/395348/
Background: Fourteen states are currently spending less money on public school funding to poor areas and communities. The states are forcing schools to make do with the bare minimum for their students, as well as give no extra money to support funding in classrooms. Public school funding remains unfair and unequal for the 11 million poor students in the U.S
How I Used It: Property tax to support public school funding is tearing down the fundamentals of education. Students are left with little to nothing in schools and acquire not all of the necessary materials. They are forced to make do with what they have. These children are simply not receiving a quality education that will help them today, and in the future.
7) Schaeffer, U. (n.d.). Knowledge is power: Why education matters | DW | 03.05.2012. Retrieved from http://www.dw.com/en/knowledge-is-power-why-education-matters/a-15880356
Background: No other resource will ever be able to live up to the benefits of education. Education empowers students and gives them the confidence to participate in society. All human beings should have direct access to an education, but in 2009 only 89% of children attended school, and the process has slowed down since then. In many poor communities, every 4 out of 10 students stop going to school before they reach elementary school. Children in rural areas have a less chances to be educated.
How I Used It: In my opening paragraph I used quotes to show the importance of education so that my reader was thinking about how much they have grown from education, and then introduced the fact that low-income students are struggling in poor conditions in schools. I was hoping to hit their emotions with this one.
8) Skinner, K. (2015, April 13). How does underfunding actually affect schools? Four questions with Greene County Superintendent Richard Fleming. Retrieved from http://hechingerreport.org/how-does-underfunding-actually-affect-schools-four-questions-with-greene-county-superintendent-richard-fleming/
Background: Richard Fleming, the Superintendent of a school in Mississippi, states that his school has barely enough materials to get by. His program has been underfunded for years, he claims. He has had to cut positions that he really needed to have in his schools. His schools is in survival mode, and is in “nuts and bolts”, about to fall apart. They cannot offer extra-curricular activities or clubs to children. The textbooks are old and falling apart, always behind in technology, buildings from the 1930’s.
How I Used It: Money is essential to give students a quality education. When the spending is unequal for different schools, it creates diverse problems between the students and their success is impacted negatively.
9) Taboh, J. (2017, August 27). Lack Of Materials Hinders Student Success. Retrieved from https://www.theodysseyonline.com/lack-of-material
Background: We cannot obtain a quality education if it is not offered to us. Schools lack funding, which in turn creates a lack of materials. The ability to give proper materials to students is a recurring problem. There is not enough collection of data to tell schools what they need and what they are doing okay with. There is a deficiency of staff, which results in an inadequate number of supplies
How I Used It: Without the right materials, children have difficulty learning and understanding to their fullest extent. Children are suffering in schools because they are not funded enough in order for them to be successful.
10) Zhao, E. (2012, February 14). Dropout Rates For Minority And Poor Students Disproportionately High. Retrieved from https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/20/high-school-dropout-rates_n_1022221.html
Background: As badly as administrators yearn for the minorities and poor students to graduate, a large number of them dropout. Someone who drops out of high school will make about $630,000 less than someone who got their high school diploma. High school dropouts are not able to work in 90% of America’s jobs. In October of 2009, 3 million 16-24 year-olds were not enrolled in high school and did not have their GED. Minority students dropped out at extremely higher rates than their White classmates in 2009, when 4.8 percent of of blacks and 5.8 percent of Hispanics between 15 and 24 dropped out of grades 10-12, compared with 2.4 percent for white students. Low-income dropouts was 5 times greater than high-income students- comparing 7.4 percent to 1.4 percent.
How I Used It: I used these facts to show how dramatic the difference in dropout rates are between low-income and minorities than high-income and white students. These students do not dropout because school is hard, they dropout simply because they are in low-funded schools with not enough materials or teachers to supply their learning. They decide to dropout and get a job to start supporting themselves, since they have given up on school due to their conditions.
Rowan Counterintuitive 