Education Gap Grows Between Rich and Poor

<p>I think those kind of programs that give coats and mittens are simply designed to meet very immediate needs - to give coats and mittens to people who don’t have them. They serve a very important function, but they are what they are. They are quite different to programs to address wider family or societal issues though longer term interventions.</p>

<p>I think part of the difficulty in talking about interventions is that “the poor” are not some undifferentiated mass of people who all have the same needs. </p>

<p>I was reading a report recently about ESL provision in MA. The study found that the average income of immigrants who were fluent in English was $25,000+ p.a. higher than the income of those who were not. Even when you looked just at immigrants who had a college education, the difference was $20,000 p.a. But at any one time there was a waiting list of 10,000 people to get on an ESL course, and people could be on a waiting list for two and a half years. For those people, who want to learn, just having more money available to open up more slots in classes would help, but it wouldn’t address any of the needs of people who already spoke English or who lacked the education to take advantage of the ESL provision available.</p>

<p>When my mother took ESL courses, they included a component designed to educate parents about the US school system, about how their children could achieve at school and go to college, about the options available to them. But these particular courses were almost exclusively taken by people who were well-educated themselves (although I understand it is a bit different now, due to changing patterns of immigration, through the 90s when my mother went, the educational qualifications of the people taking the courses would put the average graduate school to shame!). They knew what achieving well in school could do for you, they wanted their children to go to college, but they needed information about how best to support their children in an unfamiliar system, how to do their best with the resources they now had available to them (and the English language skills to do this). When these courses are funded and people have time to attend them, they meet the needs of this particular population well, but it is a particular population of the low-income population as a whole. Other groups of low-income English language learners didn’t have the time, or didn’t see the point, of attending these more time-intensive courses, and of course they were not available to English-speakers.</p>

<p>Similarly, when I was at school, I was part of a program designed to prepare low-income and first generation children for college. It was a very good program, and very helpful, but all the very small number of children chosen for it were those who had already risen to the top of their classes, and who were already motivated and already achieving. It worked out great for those who were part of the program, virtually all of whom went on to college, but for the ones who were not chosen - the less motivated, the less already high achieving, the ones who had already given up on the idea of going to college by the time they started high school - it had no impact at all.</p>

<p>Some groups amongst the low-income population are much easier to target with interventions than others. Both financially and politically, it can make a great deal of sense to target your resources at the people who have the best chance of succeeding. To me, while you no doubt should assist the ones who are easy and help them to achieve what they can, the greatest challenge is how you intervene to help those that some people in this thread seem happy just to write off - all the messy, complicated, difficult… children.</p>

<p>As a parent I’ve had the chance to be involved in two very different school districts: 1st was the small, blue collar town in NJ were my kids started school; very diverse with plenty of immigrants from areas that we don’t usually discuss in conversations on CC (Eastern Europe, Portugal, etc.) that had a 40% free/reduced lunch rate. 2nd is the large, white collar suburban school district where we live now. Least diverse place I’ve ever lived; parents move here because of the schools; 1% free lunch rate in our Elementary school. </p>

<p>I don’t even know how to begin to articulate the differences between the conditions and outcomes in the two places. My first wake up moment about the difference was during the first “fall party” when we moved here. In our old district, I had been a room parent for every year in each of my kids classrooms, not because I “wanted” to, but because no one else volunteered; trying to even get a pack of juice boxes or a box of cookies was an effort because of: parents who didn’t understand English, families that didn’t have resources to send that in, parents who were too busy working 2-3 jobs and/or didn’t have a flexible schedule to help out, etc. At the new school, I show up to find people parking blocks away and walking in with their arms overflowing with freshly baked cookies and nicely crafted goody bags. Literally hundreds of parents, in many cases BOTH parents, attending the school event so they could take pictures and make crafts and talk to other parents & meet their kids classmates & teachers etc. </p>

<p>So extrapolate that out to EVERYTHING else in a childs life. And then think about how that affects what a school & teacher can do for their students. In our first district, teachers spent lots of time making their copies, preparing materials, trying to fund supplies that the school budget didn’t have room for. In our second district, we had a schedule so we could take turns making the copies for the teachers, cutting out the paper hearts for the valentines day projects, and a single email from the teacher about a classroom need would lead to instant replies to fulfill it. So if a teacher doesn’t have to do all those administrative tasks, guess what: they can spend more time with their students & differentiating work for those with different needs. Which makes the boat rise even higher than it already is when you’re dealing with students who get three square meals a day, adequate health care, intact families, who have been exposed to education & the arts from birth. </p>

<p>Some examples: (Both) D’s 1st grade teacher (in 1st district) telling me in January: Mrs. D you would cry if you were in my classroom; most of my class still doesn’t know the alphabet. D2’s 3rd grade teacher (in 2nd district): Mrs. D, my job is wonderful, I can’t imagine a public school teacher being in a better place. This is just like working in a private school. </p>

<p>I thought I knew what poverty was. I am the child of an immigrant and we didn’t have a lot of money growing up, but my mom managed to “keep a good table” as she said and I was expected to do well in school. One of our PTA supported projects in our first district was the “Adopt a Family” program at christmas. The school nurse gave a confidential list of families to our President and we provided at least one full holiday meal, a present for each child and a new outfit for each member of the family. We’d usually have 30-40 families with about 150 individuals. It was a massive undertaking. I knew what we provided every year, but it wasn’t until my DH helped with deliveries one year that I understood the circumstances that most of these families lived with (we had the H’s deliver since most of the mom’s knew the kids from school & didn’t want to embarrass them.) DH came home so shaken. Many of the homes were kids & their grandparents because the parents were absent (either due to jail, death or addiction) or working families who were holding down 4+ jobs between the 2 parents, or families that had limited English skills. He said all of the adults that they encountered had tears in their eyes and were thanking them profusely; the home that moved him most was one involving a grandmother, where the only “furniture” in the home were the mattresses on the floor. Believe me, there was no entitlement attitude from any of those families.</p>

<p>A heads up for those who do the adopt a family or angel tree during the holidays.</p>

<p>Right now TJ Maxx, Marshalls, Ross, Kohl’s, Amazon and other online retailers (Lands End, LL Bean, Bonton, Rothchilds, Old Navy) are clearing out their winter coats, gloves, hats, snow suits, heavier winter clothing at great prices.</p>

<p>TJ Maxx had yellow sticker prices on Columbia, Spyder, Ralph Lauren, Osh Kosh coats for under $10. some were even $3 for lighter weight ones. They had girls, boys, women’s and mens (very few left in boys/mens). Also some of the heavier blankets and winter socks are also very affordable.</p>

<p>Son’s med school adopts several families and the lists were large this year. Every person on the list asked for a jacket, blanket, sweater, jeans and socks. The children only asked for 1 or 2 toys, some a bike. So son said he wanted to start earlier this year (as in few weeks ago!) so it wouldn’t be so difficult at finals time.</p>

<p>Target also has some toys/games/books marked down in the 75% off range. </p>

<p>Buy a range of sizes and they all seem to be needed. </p>

<p>Kat</p>

<p>RobD, I’m surprised the school released the info to the PTA about the families that needed the holiday help. That would be considered confidential info here, and would
NOT be released to the parents.</p>

<p>CTTC-- Maybe they got consent forms with the applications… Confidentiality issues aside, the post was another poignant, first-person description of the differences between a low-income educational environment and an enriched one, with the caveat that the first school district described was more of a “working class” mix. Imagine now the situation with a school in which 80 to 90% of the students are on free/reduced lunch. And yes, expand the differences to the rest of the children’s childhoods, and that is the gulf that exists. I appreciated the compassionate tone of RobD’s post…No judgment toward the better-off parents for their overwhelming support of their children and their school, nor criticism of the economically challenged parents for life circumstances that curtail the same.</p>

<p>From OP’s article:</p>

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<p>According to this expert then, money and giving more stuff isn’t going to solve the problem. The dramatic increase in single parenthood over the period is noted as a contributing factor. What have we done to discourage single parenthood?</p>

<p>Also of note, the poorest have increased spending on their children by 20% over the period (but this is much less than the rich), and college attendance by the poor has increased from 5% to 9% (but not as much as the rich). The point being, that the poor are neither going backwards nor staying the same - things are improving for them but at a much slower rate.</p>

<p>Just have to say this, I am so proud of my daughter’s boyfriend. He comes from a family making about 20k per year. He has a 3.7 gpa, a 30 act and will attend Ohio State in the honors program this fall. Innate intelligence means a lot…more than people think maybe?</p>

<p>My husband doesn’t have a college degree but is operations manager for all of north America for an international software company. It is because he is brilliantly intelligent. That is it. Along with a good work ethic, but mostly because of his brain.</p>

<p>My husband also comes from a poor family but his mom and dad have always been married and he had stability. I think he ate a lot of rice and generic white bread but that’s ok. Lol.</p>

<p>I think kids who come from stable homes, or possibly just stable communities are able to succeed. There is a terrible cycle in some poor communities and homes that involve crime, drugs and just abject hopelessness. So maybe my husband and my daughters boyfriend benefited from their communities and homes in that there was stability and parents that cared. This allowed them access and utilization of their gifts. </p>

<p>Just my opinion.</p>

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<p>Single parenthood is not correlated with these problems in other countries, notably Europe. It is the very idea that we need to “discourage” single parenthood that is the problem because there is no way to “punish” the parent without punishing the child. </p>

<p>For example, the lessening of the stigma of being born to a single parent is a good thing. I find it hard to believe that anyone who puts the best interest of the child first would want to return to the “good old days” on this issue.</p>

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<p>You are exactly right. Of course, the stability must be the good kind. Families where mom and dad stay together but fight all the time are the wrong kind of stability whereas single parents can provide wonderfully stable homes.</p>

<p>Pugmadkate: I agree but I think as long as a kid has a solid support system in their lives, they can overcome an adverse home life. </p>

<p>My step dad was an abusive alcoholic who did drugs in front of me for years and my mom has severe depression and mental illness. The difference was my grandparents who took me to church every Sunday and made sure I could stay overnight with them (had my own bedroom there) when things were intolerable at home. I also had my Aunt and a slew of extended family watching out for me. Hilary Clinton is right, it takes a village.</p>

<p>I was made fun of all through elementary school because my parents were divorced and we lived in a trailer and my clothes smelled like smoke. But I had my grandparents and my brains, and a few wonderful teachers. In fifth grade I was put in a gifted reading program. And then I started to overcome. I was the one who got a 5 on her ap English and a 36 on her reading act. And that was like revenge for me against the mean people in the world.</p>

<p>Excuse my tangent, but I think it reinforces my point that intelligence and some sort of stability from somewhere, or a person who believes in you, can make all the difference in the worldm I thank my precious grandparents and even as a liberal, thank my conservative, religious community for keeping me safe.</p>

<p>We need more love in this world and less judgemental people who look with scorn at poor people, minorities…people who are different than them.</p>

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<p>But it is here.</p>

<p>Do you have evidence to support your statement? Material I’ve read shows that children living in single parent households in Sweden have higher rates of poverty than those living in two parent households.</p>

<p>When talking about the growing education gap between rich and poor, I think teen parenthood deserves a much closer look than single parenthood. </p>

<p>An estimated 22% of American young women are parents before age 20.</p>

<p>Teen childbearing is associated with reduced educational attainment. Teen mothers are substantially less likely than women who delay childbearing to complete high school or obtain a GED by age 22 (66% vs. 94%). Fewer than 2% of teens who have a baby before age 18 attain a college degree by age 30. [Facts</a> on American Teens’ Sexual and Reproductive Health](<a href=“http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/FB-ATSRH.html]Facts”>http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/FB-ATSRH.html)</p>

<p>Despite recent declines, the current level of births to adolescents continues to be much higher in the United States than in most other developed countries. … Adolescent childbearing is more common in the United States (22% of women reported having had a child before age 20) than in Great Britain (15%), Canada (11%), France (6%) and Sweden (4%); differences are even greater for births to younger teenagers. … The age of sexual debut varies little across countries, yet American teenagers are the most likely to have multiple partners. A greater proportion of U.S. women reported no contraceptive use at either first or recent intercourse (25% and 20%, respectively) than reported nonuse in France (11% and 12%, respectively), Great Britain (21% and 4%, respectively) and Sweden (22% and 7%, respectively). [Differences</a> in Teenage Pregnancy Rates Among Five Developed Countries: The Roles of Sexual Activity and Contraceptive Use](<a href=“http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/journals/3324401.html]Differences”>Differences in Teenage Pregnancy Rates Among Five Developed Countries: The Roles of Sexual Activity and Contraceptive Use | Guttmacher Institute)</p>

<p>The 2001 UNICEF study paints an absolutely dismal picture of the US compared to the rest of the world in terms of teen pregnancy and outcomes on the immediately impacted individuals and society generally. <a href=“http://www.unicef-irc.org/publications/pdf/repcard3e.pdf[/url]”>http://www.unicef-irc.org/publications/pdf/repcard3e.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>“Because their fathers were dealing drugs. Because their mothers were working two low-paying jobs and didn’t read to them.”</p>

<p>Hey - that’s sexist!</p>

<p>TXArtemis, Excellent points.</p>

<p>And yet the debate continues about whether or not women are “entitled” to birth control as a basic medical need. Maddening.</p>

<p>CTTC: I don’t believe the school released the information directly to the PTA. The school nurse was the intermediary; I think she identified families in need & passed on information on how to get on the list to the families. My house was the staging area for the food so I’d get a list: Family 1: 5 people (2 adults, children: aged 1, 5 & 9) It had no identifying info on it but it would help me make sure that if we had formula or baby food it would get to those families who could use it. The families had to provide some basic information (ages, # of people in the family, clothing sizes, a present request for each child, where to deliver, so there was implicit consent if not more; I never saw the forms.) Someone else handled clothing & someone else handled presents and they were always labeled by a family # not name.</p>

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<p>what was maddening was obama expecting religious employers to pay for something that goes against their teachings. Funny how some believe the constitution should be adhered to only when it is convenient for their purposes.</p>

<p>It has nothing to do with Obama. Many states already mandate the very coverage he is advocating for across the board. </p>

<p>Further, according to the very Catholic Justice Scalia, the Catholic Church is in the wrong. So take it up with them.</p>

<p>I am biting my tongue, hard, not to answer geeps, but I know this is not the place for this argument.</p>

<p>Suffice it to say, more birth control, less magical thinking if we are to reduce teen pregnancy.</p>

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<p>I’m not so sure about pugmadkate’s statement, and regarding Bay’s there’s some question as to what’s cause and what’s effect. </p>

<p>There’s actually a pretty rich literature comparing family structure, children’s educational attainment, and children’s eventual income as adults in Sweden and the U.S. It’s all a bit complicated and I certainly haven’t absorbed it all, but some of the studies I’ve read say single parenthood is negatively correlated with children’s educational outcomes and later earning capacity in both Sweden and the U.S. But as I say, it’s complicated. First off, there just aren’t very many children born to single mothers in Sweden—only about 3% of births fall into that category, and Swedish women have a lower birth rate than U.S. women to begin with. In contrast, about 20% of all births in the U.S. are to single women. On the other hand, more than half of all births in Sweden are now to cohabiting unmarried couples, a status that is more broadly socially acceptable in Sweden and increasingly indistinguishable from marriage in terms of parental rights and responsibilities. The studies also say that children born to cohabiting couples in Sweden do just as well educationally and in their eventual earning capacity as children born into traditional nuclear families (2 biological parents, married).</p>

<p>But some of the studies seem to say that in both countries, if you control for the educational attainment and income of the mothers, the effect of parental structure on children’s education attainment and lifetime earnings disappears. In other words, the children of poor and uneducated parents are likely to end up with fewer years of school, lower HS graduation rates, lower levels of college attendance, and lower eventual earnings whether those children come from single-parent families (of either gender), stable intact families with both biological parents, blended families (one biological parent and one stepparent), or whatever. It’s just that the women who have children as single mothers tend disproportionately to have lower incomes and lower levels of educational attainment. The authors of the study inferred from this that it’s not single motherhood per se that affects the children’s level of educational attainment and later earning capacity, but rather the lower-income and less-educated backgrounds of single mothers (whose children do about as well educationally and economically as the children of married or cohabiting parents of similar income and educational attainment).</p>

<p>Of course, that raises a knotty chicken-and-egg question: Is the mother’s childbearing itself preventing her from advancing educationally and advancing her earning capacity, and therefore relegating her children to a category likely to have lower educational outcomes and lower income? Intuitively that seems likely. The studies I’ve seen seem to say that in Sweden single parenting (i.e., neither married nor cohabiting) is more common among lower-income women with less education, just as in the U.S., and that Sweden’s stronger safety net doesn’t seem to make much difference in that regard. But on the other hand the studies I’ve seen don’t have an explanation for Sweden’s strikingly lower rates of birth to single mothers. Could it be that Sweden’s social welfare policies somehow contribute to a lower single-mother birth rate–along with, possibly, easier access to birth control and abortion (coupled with different cultural attitudes toward both)? As a consequence, although a child born to a single mother in Sweden is just as likely as one born in the U.S. to have a poor and uneducated mother—and that child is just as likely to have less education and lower lifetime earnings than others born into more advantageous circumstances–there are just far fewer Swedish kids born into that category. </p>

<p>Finally, one study seems to say that in both Sweden and the U.S., the number of siblings and the number of years spent with siblings are negatively correlated with a child’s educational attainment and lifetime earnings, and that this effect is much larger than any effect of differing parental structures. The authors speculate that, especially at lower ends of the income scale, siblings spread the household’s resources too thin and limit investments in any one child. Dunno. I’m glad we have two, and I’m glad we stopped there.</p>

<p>bclintonk, Thank you for sharing that. That is part of what I remembered from my college days (which were not that long ago as I was a non-traditional student.)</p>

<p>It’s a very complicated question. I think if more money was the only answer, I would be the first one to say spend whatever it takes to close the gap, because there are few things more important than making sure the opportunity exists across the socioeconomic levels to better one’s self.</p>

<p>But, I suspect the real problem is the lack of a mandate from parents for their kids to achieve. This factor is demonstrated over and over in the cultural differences between say Asian families and Anglo families. There are exceptions on both sides, but generally Asian families emphasize achievement. Simply graduating is not nearly enough, as it seems to be in many other cultures.</p>

<p>The money needs to be spent in changing this factor, but how to go about doing it has both practical and political problems. </p>

<p>One would think that parents would always want their kids to do better than they did, but sadly too many parents seem to think that their poor status quo is good enough for their kids.</p>