I just finished an #Edchat that I left me with a feeling of not being able to add any authority to the discussion. For those unfamiliar, #Edchat is a weekly Twitter discussion on Education topics. This week’s discussion was based on this statement: There is a strong belief among some educators that poverty is the biggest factor in a failing education system.
It is difficult to have any discussion on this topic without people, including me, entering it with all of the biases built on myths and facts over the years. It is a mixture of biases not just of poverty, but race as well. It is not a comfortable place to be, since we are very aware of how incendiary these discussions can get with just a few poorly chosen words by well-intentioned people not thinking things through.
I am an average white guy who grew up on Long Island, New York in the 50’s in an all-white community that was designed to be just that, segregated. My college experience offered opposition to the Viet Nam War, and supported the Equal Rights Amendment in demonstrations that are now a part of history, and can now be only experienced through video clips on YouTube, or TV newscasts. I was a socially aware, late 60’s college student.
Nevertheless, I entered this Edchat discussion hoping to shed what little light I had on the subject of the huge effect that poverty has on today’s Education. To add to my total lack of credentials, I have never taught in a school that was considered to be in an impoverished community. In all honesty, when I devised this topic for the Edchat discussion, it was my hope that educators from poverty areas would join in to offer a credible voice on the subject.
It has been my experience that poverty comes in two large varieties, urban and suburban and they have both similarities and differences. Each community however, seems to have its own culture. How, and where education fits into that culture varies with every community. All are hindered by poverty and language barriers further hinder some. In a nation populated by immigrants, we are a host to many languages. If educators coming from English-speaking cultures to communities of non-English speaking students, that is a problem for education.
Many impoverished communities must deal with higher crime rates, as well as violence that are expressed with open gunfire. Communities are finding themselves under siege in many instances. How can Kids concerned about getting to school safely, making it through the school day there, and returning home safely, ever concentrate on learning?
The idea that the parents of poor students are sitting home all day without jobs is another myth. That prevents us from addressing poverty as a problem for education, and not as a bad result of some liberal social welfare programs. I was stunned to hear that the average age of fast food workers is 34 years of age. That tells me that people are trying to carry their families with jobs that are minimum wage dependent. How can anyone adequately support a family that way? It is however, the bulk of jobs that are available. Retail jobs, and service positions are also high on the occupation list for the poor. If most poor people are working, but not earning a living wage, that is another problem for education.
The very goal of what most educators strive for is that college education as the pot at the end of the rainbow. Educators see it as a way out for their students and can’t see why the kids drop out. If kids from poor families can hardly support the financial needs of a public school education, why would the goal of an over-priced college education be an incentive to graduate? The financial needs of the family often dictate the direction of the student’s need for education. That is another problem for education.
Research has shown us that nutrition and proper sleep are two components of a child’s home life that will determine his or her success in school. For a number of reasons, tied directly to poverty, this is rarely the case for students in poverty. This is yet another problem for education.
I have always supported the whole child approach to education expressed by ASCD:
Whole Child Tenets
Each student enters school healthy and learns about and practices a healthy lifestyle.
Each student learns in an environment that is physically and emotionally safe for students and adults.
Each student is actively engaged in learning and is connected to the school and broader community.
Each student has access to personalized learning and is supported by qualified, caring adults.
Each student is challenged academically and prepared for success in college or further study and for employment and participation in a global environment.
All of these are necessary for a student to succeed in school. The first three of the five are a struggle for students in impoverished schools. That is a problem for education.
I do not disagree with the belief that the most important element in a student’s education is the teacher. The teacher however is not the only factor in a student’s education. There is no level playing field here. That is a problem for education.
Educators adhere to Bloom’s Taxonomy of Learning Domains, but before schools in poverty can even get there, Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs is a more-needed consideration. This is a problem for education.
I am the last person who should be talking about poverty, but I do feel confident in talking about education. As an educator it is obvious to me that unless we deal directly with the issue of poverty, we will never address the issue of education in any way to improve it. I have heard it said that if we factor out the schools in poverty, the U.S. education system is very good. A blind eye never works in the real world. If we don’t deal with the real issue we will continue with the real problems. This is the biggest problem faced by education. Nobody is pulling themselves up by their bootstraps in this world of poverty. That is a ridiculous expectation!
My Island View 
[…] via The Poor have no Bootstraps to pull up. | My Island View. […]
I appreciate you writing this post. One of the things that I would add is that for many poor students of color, five of the five whole child tenets are at issue. So many students are being told that if they make it through any program of higher education they will have better life opportunities. But the reality is, is that is not always true, esp when students are being filtered into for-profit institutions and going into insurmountable levels of debt. The issue if poverty is deep rooted and cyclical in this country, I wonder what it will take to get more citizens invested in doing something about it
There is a third “large variety” of poverty urbanites and suburbanites often do not see: rural poverty. Rural poverty is seen in small towns as well as areas typically associated with rural living: the countryside and mountains, the deserts and reservation towns. Rural poverty has grown up in dilapidated homes, trailers, modular homes, and sometimes deserted looking farmhouses. Oftentimes, the low cost of living associated with rural communities make them an appealing destination for the poor. Sometimes, urban communities intentionally relocate residents of impoverished neighborhoods into rural communities as part of a gentrification move designed to attract high income residents as a cure for poverty’s ills. The issues are similar and different as those you describe for the poor of other locales across our country.
I was about to leave the same comment. I teach in a community that while it has its housing developments and subdivisions has a large percentage of students who are rural poor. Not only that, it’s a rural poor that runs very deep–my students are from families who have had stakes in this area for hundreds of years (whereas my family traces its ancestry back to Europe as quickly as the early 1900s), so the poverty and whatever feelings/attitudes that come with it are ingrained.
There is that idea of college being the “pot at the end of the rainbow” to some and that can be true, especially if the resources are there to help them reach that. I can never give enough praise to my school’s guidance department as well as the efforts of the local community college, which is one of the better in the state, to make higher education achievable or affordable.
But I’d like to also point out that in some cases, especially when you’re talking “rural poor,” a solid vocational/technical program can be a lifesaver as well. I’ve had many students whose career goals centered around a trade. They want to be mechanics, electricians, carpenters, roofers, nurses, or cosmetologists, and when you have a solid CTE program that encourages interaction with the community and helps get students certification and hopefully jobs, then you have another path toward a good future.
Not that this is a cure-all, but when you underfund programs like this, you exacerbate the problem.
Thanks for your follow-up. After I posted, I realized I hadn’t mentioned how deeply intergenerational rural poverty can be. I sometimes joke about being the daughter of a poor dirt farmer; when I was growing up, that was true. My grandfather insisted his sons go to college. But my father dropped out of college, continued in farming and worked a factory job to provide for us when the farm could not. Today, the few full-time farmers our country boasts (just over 1% of the population) are likely not among the poor. Modern rural poverty is different and to some degree for the reasons i stated above, grown even deeper. Our rural communities are poor. Our community of 1200 cannot sustain a grocery store. There are no jobs for high schoolers. As a teacher and a rural resident, I support vocational programs, community colleges, and business/school/community partnerships that build bridges of opportunity for both the rural and the rural poor. Again–thank you for the thoughtful follow-up!
What can be very frustrating is the politics that is sometimes involved. I’m at the only high school in a county of about 16,000 (which, incidentally, is slightly less than the population of the small town on Long Island where I grew up) and the county is deeply conservative. Since the school budget is not directly voted on, whether or not the schools get full funding is often up to the whims of the county board, who are loathe to raise taxes under any circumstances and have a deep distaste for the school district. It got to the point two years ago where the teachers, students, and parents of the district packed an open session about the budget and gave comments until 2 in the morning until the county board voted and to actually fund the schools.
So there’s that too.
Us, we and I, are the people who are doing something about it! Every day I go to school I work on this!
These are he sorts of students we are raising! The issue with poverty is it is a desease of the wealthy, but they are not prepared to own it! The language we use and the ways in which we talk as educators needs to change!
Read your article again from this light and you will see the issue!
Mark
Thanks for the inspirational and insightful video. I featured it in The Educator’s PLN for all to appreciate.
I used to do #EdChat regularly. I stopped because I’m a teacher in the School District of Philadelphia and all the “How do I integrate 1-1 iPads in my school?” talk just seemed too esoteric.
This took a lot to write. It is greatly appreciated.
Andrew, you expressed the same frustrations I have had, which is why this post was refreshing.
[…] The Poor have no Bootstraps to pull up. @tomwhitby tomwhitby.wordpress.com/2013/09/10/the… […]
In my last job I was a principle of the poorest school in the region. (90% poverty, 25% refugees) I made lots of home visits so I got to see poverty up close. The refugees were from over a dozen war zones and split evenly between black, white, Hispanic, and Asian. Many had spent long stays in refugee camps or prisons. Needless to say, they all came poor. Unlike the American poor kids, they almost never ended up in my office and did well academically once they learned English. One year my school was one of only three in New York State where the black students out performed the white students. The main reason for this was the high performance of the kids from Africa.
If a refugee student acted out, all I had to say is “do I have to talk to your parents.” With poor American kids, I was more likely to get “why are you picking on my kid?” if I reported misbehavior. Refugee kids almost always had two parents as single moms seldom get out of war zones. Refugee parents took any job they could get and often moved up and (sadly) out. The kids had two hard working role models at home. Their homes were humble but always clean and neat. They told me that they understood how important education was and their kids got this message. Refugee attendance was often perfect. For them our school was a palace and the school bus a carnival ride.
My poor American kids usually had a single parent who had anything but good memories of school and most had dropped out. Many were involved in drug use, prostitution, and welfare scams. They also were prone to sleeping in and not getting their kids to school on a regular basis. They were often involved in abuse or neglect and many moms had live-in boy friends who the kids usually hated. While some homes were well cared for, others were littered with garbage and pet feces. The TV was often on a channel that was not intended for young children, They also moved often from one school to another.
I wish schools had more control when kids go home but we are better off focusing on what we can do when the kids are with us. When we did reach out to poor parents, we tried to let them know that their child’s success was more likely if they talked to them a lot, encouraged reading and exercise at home, showed up every day, and didn’t hit them if they misbehaved. We were part of a program that made sure kids had books they wanted to read at home, which seemed to help. For kids who were with us for six years, we usually saw improvement and were able to form a cooperative team with parents who were initially resistant.
I guess the message for American poor parents is to take a look at what my refugees did. A strong work ethic may not guarantee a ticket to the middle class, but without it you have almost no chance.
Thank you for bringing this to light for so many readers. As an educator of low SES students for 16 years, this is of particular interest to me. My most recent blog post, “From the Trenches of Poverty” describes how my school addresses poverty. We are finding much success. Please read: http://newbieprincipal.com/
I work in a poor rural county in Indiana. It is the reason for my low teacher’s salary. I could go elsewhere…sure. Am I need for anything…no. Do I want more for my family…yes. The value of education is linked to life experiences. The poor economy is causing families to stay at home and dead-end experiences of learning. Education starts at home. It takes two parents who love and work together to meet the demands of a famliy. The need for spiritual guidance is empowering. Our youth that are involved in some faith based group are cared for when they are struggling the most due to lack of what they need. All of the above facts are cause for educations to be strong or very, very poor.