a good school will have little effect on the achievement of poor children. This flawed conclusion reinforced the racism and class prejudice of educators and provided a faulty motivation and rationale for decades of disastrous school policies, practices, and programs that helped to impede generation after generation of poor or minority students. Since it was believed that underachieving, poor children could not catch up, few if any were surprised when these students failed, were retained, or were placed in slow-learning or special education classes and ultimately dropped out of school.
Because of the belief that many poor children could not catch up to the level of their advantaged peers, federal, state, and district policies, programs, and practices evolved that have subsequently failed generations of poverty-level youth. Several decades of research have documented the disastrous effects of these ineffective educational approaches. The vast majority of poor children have traditionally been assigned to poor schools and school districts where the per-pupil funding is dramatically lower than in affluent communities. They have often been subjected to less-qualified teachers in less-challenging courses. They have been disproportionately retained, tracked, and assigned to special education or have frequently been assigned to in-school suspension or detention when they act out in frustration or anger. They have been excluded and expelled. In many states, poor, underachieving students have been removed from regular classrooms and placed in pseudo-alternative schools and programs where the goal is behavior modification rather than academic acceleration. The majority of students segregated in these flawed interventions have been poor, male, and minority (Barr & Parrett, 2003; Levin, 2006). Many poor children in the U.S. receive Title I or other pull-out reading support, but until very recently, the majority of these students never learned to read effectively. They have been victims of an insidious bell-curve mentality and, along with their families, have been blamed for frequent mobility, lack of motivation, and low performance.
Scholars have continued to document the disastrous effects these practices have had on low-socioeconomic-status and minority students. The belief that poor children could not catch up has not helped poor students; rather, it has stigmatized, isolated, and abandoned the very students who are in the most desperate need of our help.
Destructive Policies, Programs, and Practices
Many destructive school policies, programs, and practices used for decades in this country have resulted in long-term negative effects on low-performing minority and poor students. These approaches exacerbate and complicate the problems of poor and minority students, and seriously affect their ability to learn effectively, succeed in school, and achieve economic success in later life. Many of these approaches are still used widely in public schools throughout the United States—in spite of research documenting their tragic effects on students (Barr & Parrett, 2001, 2003). Everyone who is committed to ensuring that all students reach proficiency and achieve success in school should be aware of these approaches and work to eliminate them.
Lack of choice
Inequitable school funding
Inexperienced, poorly prepared teachers
Ineffective teaching practices
Retention and tracking
Misassignment to special education
Over-reliance on medication to modify behavior
Pullout programs
Schools that are too big
Suspension and expulsion
Educational neglect
Lack of Choice
Poor students and parents have traditionally been denied choice in the vast majority of public schools. Most students, even today, are assigned to schools, teachers, programs, and educational tracks based on a street address. Many affluent and middle-class parents choose their place of residence based on school performance, or they choose private schools. Poor families are often trapped in underfunded, failing schools (Nathan, 1989, 1996).
Inequitable School Funding
Distressed neighborhoods or communities are usually served by schools with significantly fewer financial resources. Analysis by the Education Trust and others show that many states provide the lowest levels of financial support to their highest-poverty school districts. Students who depend the most on public education for their academic development are often getting the least (Carey, 2003).
Twenty-two states continue to fund high-poverty schools and districts at a lower rate than affluent school districts (Haycock, 2003). Most recently, California has committed $188 million as the result of a class-action lawsuit that contended that the state neglected its low-income students. The money will repair buildings and purchase textbooks for 2,400 low-performing schools (Asimov, 2004). More experienced, better-trained teachers with higher salaries and graduate degrees are more likely to be found in more affluent schools. Funding public education with property tax revenue creates a tragic economic “funding gap” that continues to dramatically separate public schools into the rich and the poor (Kozol, 2005).
Inexperienced, Poorly Prepared Teachers
Low-socioeconomic-status students are five times more likely than affluent students to have inexperienced teachers. In every subject area in high-poverty schools, students are more likely to be taught by less well-prepared teachers. In math and science, only about half of the teachers in schools with 90% or greater minority enrollment meet their state’s minimum requirements for certification (Fenwick, 2001). In Florida, teachers at poor schools were 44% more likely to have failed the basic skills test than those at rich schools. The gap in teacher scores is even more pronounced in predominantly minority schools (Associated Press, 2004). Unfortunately, these patterns can be found in poverty-level and minority schools regardless of the measure of teacher qualification, experience, certification, academic preparedness, or performance on licensing tests. Kati Haycock concludes, “We take the students who most depend on their teachers for subject-matter learning and assign them to teachers with the weakest academic foundation” (Jerald, 2001, p. 1).
Ineffective Teaching Practices
Many schools fail to effectively teach poor and minority students the essential skills necessary for success in school. Many poor and minority students arrive at school unprepared to learn, and without intensive remediation, they fall further and further behind. If students do not learn to read by the end of the third grade, they face a number of unfortunate consequences (Barr & Parrett, 2001, 2003; Karoly et al., 1998). If students do not learn to read—and read well—in their early school years, they cannot do their homework or school work. Many will ultimately drop out of school. Few of these students are any more successful outside of school than they were at school, and far too many will live out their lives unemployed or unemployable.
Retention and Tracking
In too many schools, students who do not master basic skills are required to repeat the grade level again, or they are tracked into basic classes with low expectations. Students who are retained and tracked almost never catch up to their age-group peers, and many fail to ever advance from the slow-learning track (Fager & Richen, 1999; Loveless, 1998). Many children of poverty are also assigned to in-school suspension or expelled. In many states, poor, underachieving students have been removed from regular school and placed in low-performing or failing alternative schools and programs where the goal is behavior modification rather than acceleration. Most of the students segregated into these interventions have been poor, male, and minority, and the results have been tragic. A recent review of a Texas program (Alternative Disciplinary Schools) serving over 100,000 predominantly African-American, Hispanic, and poor male K–12 students found these students were:
Assigned
