“My high school had over 4,000 students. I couldn’t dress like most of the other students, couldn’t afford to go out to lunch every day … just didn’t fit in very well. I wasn’t just lost in the mob…. I was invisible. No one knew my name. No one cared if I came to school. So I didn’t.”
—Student, Miami, Florida
The number of poor students attending public school in the United States is staggering. Poverty exists in all ethnic groups and in every geographic region; it often plagues many generations in a family and thus perpetuates a vicious cycle of despair for the neediest children. Unfortunately, in recent years, the economic conditions for the nation’s children have further disintegrated. As of 1999, more than 12 million children were living in poverty in America (Payne, 2001). By 2003, the number of children living in poverty had risen to over 18% of all children in the United States—or over 13 million children (U.S. Census Bureau, 2005). In 2003, it was reported that 23% of America’s families lived at or below the federal poverty level of $18,400 for a family of four (Cauthen, 2006). Yet according to the National Center for Children in Poverty, it would take twice that amount to provide food and housing in most parts of the United States (Cauthen, 2006). Of the millions of America’s children residing in low-income families, 64% are Latino, 37% are African-American, and 34% are white (Cauthen, 2006).
In 1990, it was estimated that at least 40% of the children in the United States were minority, poor, and imminently at risk of school failure. These numbers continued to increase into the new century. There has also been a significant increase in enrollment of African-American, Hispanic, and Asian children in public schools: Between 1976 and 1996, the percentages of minority students in U.S. public and private schools increased from 24% to 36% (Goodwin, 2000). By the year 2010, that number could increase to 42%. From 1978 to 1998, enrollment of Latino elementary students increased over 150% (Latinos in Schools, 2001). Most states are projecting 20% to 40% increases in Hispanic student enrollment in public schools during the next 20 years (Land & Legters, 2002). A significant percentage of these minority students are poor (Land & Legters, 2002). Educating these at-risk students to proficiency presents a significant challenge for public schools.
Who Are the Students at Risk?
The children of poverty come from homes with few books and little or no technology other than a television. They too often suffer from poor nutrition, poor health care, and little educational stimulation. Research has documented that they come to school with a limited vocabulary and few reading readiness skills. In recent years, researchers have identified a number of specific factors that place students at risk of failing in school. By the late 1990s, more than 45% of our students were characterized by one or more of these factors:
Being culturally diverse and living in poverty
Having limited English proficiency
Having parents with less than a high school education
Living with a single parent (Land & Legters, 2002)
It is no surprise that being a minority, living in poverty, and speaking a language other than English top this list of critical factors. In 2004, researchers at the Center for Civic Innovation at the Manhattan Institute identified a more complex set of student factors that influence a child’s well-being and capacity to learn (Greene & Forster, 2004):
Readiness
Community
Race
Economics
Health
Family
The researchers used these factors as benchmarks of “teachability” to compare state efforts to teach children who possess these factors. The authors of this study analyzed state data on the factors and then created a “Teachability Index” that compared school achievement with the factors. The Teachability Index provides a far more comprehensive set of variables that may influence student achievement than earlier efforts to analyze the challenges in identifying at-risk learners. The 16 factors each have a documented relationship to student achievement. Since each variable contributes to the challenge of teaching a particular student, the Teachability Index provides a unique approach to developing an individualized profile for each student (Greene & Forster, 2004).
While each factor in the Teachability Index has a stand-alone impact on student achievement, the more factors that a particular student has, the more confounding the challenges of effective teaching and learning will be. For example, a student at the poverty level living in a single-parent family with a mother who is a Spanish-speaking high school dropout and is using a drug will often have a significantly greater challenge in learning than a student from a two-parent, English-speaking family living at the poverty level. Schools are using the Teachability Index to identify as early as possible students who have the greatest learning challenges. The personalized profiles developed for each student can be used as a basis for individualized learning plans. The Teachability Index factors are listed in figure 2.1.
Figure 2.1: The Teachability Index (Greene & Forster, 2004, p. 4)
Researchers have helped schools throughout the United States understand the life conditions that adversely affect student achievement. To ensure that all students learn effectively, schools must stop blaming students for their deficiencies and must develop programs and practices designed to address their needs. This is precisely what high-performing, high-poverty schools have been doing. Unfortunately, many school policies, practices, and programs continue to damage students and “manufacture” low achievement. Often it is not the students who are failing, but the schools who have failed the students.
“Poor Underachieving Children Can’t Catch Up”
The American public school system’s lack of effectiveness in teaching children and youth with low socioeconomic status is our nation’s single greatest educational failure. While there have always been isolated, but remarkable, examples of schools and classrooms with high-poverty, high-achieving students, they unfortunately stand in stark exception to a national tradition of failure and humiliation. The statistics of the failures of our public educational system are sobering:
One-fourth of all American youth drop out of high school. The vast majority of these students are poor or disadvantaged minorities. Few of these students ever achieve middle-class status during their lifetimes, thus perpetuating the cycle of poverty. Most of these students face lives of unemployment, or at best underemployment.
There is a direct relationship between students who are illiterate and those who drop out of school. More than 50% of the 1.8 million men and women in prison in the United States today are illiterate high school dropouts.
One-fourth of all high school graduates who progress to higher education drop out of college.
One-third of all college freshmen take remedial classes. (National Commission on the High School Senior Year, 2001)
In addition, a recent study funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation concluded that only two of every three students who enter high school will graduate (Bridgeland, Dilulio, & Morison, 2006).
A main reason for the failure of public education to educate poor children and youth is the serious misconception regarding poverty that was reinforced by the Coleman study of
