The Parent Gap by Income Level (Inside Higher Ed)

Parents Forum
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SAN FRANCISCO -- Many studies have found that low-income high school students and those whose parents are not well educated are less likely to enroll in college. And disproportionate numbers of black and Latino youth fall into this group.</p>

<p>One solution to this problem is to increase the availability of aid -- as the Obama administration and Congress appear to agree with their plans to increase the maximum Pell Grant significantly. But research presented here Saturday at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association suggested that without shifting the attitudes of parents of low-income students -- well before it’s time to enroll for college -- any increases may not have the full impact desired.</p>

<p>Deborah M. Warnock, a sociologist at the University of Washington, began her paper by citing numerous previous studies showing that students from low-income families (and others) are more likely to go to college if parents are engaged in the process, encouraging their children and having some sense of how to finance higher education.

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<p>News:</a> The Parent Gap - Inside Higher Ed</p>

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<p>I won’t disagree with the conclusion.My own inlaws for example were critical if not contemptible of our emphasis on education and wish to have our children consider college.</p>

<p>Parents of students in K-12, do not always feel more education is a good thing, and may even discourage their children from participating in programs and classes that are meant to reduce " the achievement" gap.</p>

<p>Some schools already have 100% need met, however, many students who do not realize until late high school that they even want to attend further education are not usually in a position to consider those schools.</p>

<p>Community colleges with their open door policy are improving, at least in my area and some have added dormitories &/or expanded to offer 4-yr degrees.</p>

<p>Unfortunately, also in my area, the most urban CCs have very uneven offerings and can be less rigorous than high school classes, leaving students unprepared to transfer to a university.</p>

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<p>This very much accords with all the direct experience I’ve had in education. Self-made people are rare. We are mostly the products of our environment. It is very tough to overcome expectations, or the absence of expectations. This is NOT race-associated, per se. When peer and parental commitment to higher education is ambivalent, so will be the student’s. I have tried to turn around very bright students when I meet them in 10th and 11th grades – students whose capability far exceeded their gpa’s, and the inadequate phrase “like pulling teeth” comes to mind. But imagine if you will attempting to extract an entire mouth of adult teeth with dental floss as your instrument, and you get the picture.</p>

<p>An extreme example of this occurred in a family I’ve known life-long. The entire family is intellectually and musically gifted. Dad IS a self-made man. He was so brilliant and talented that he entered a professional symphony very early (it might have been as a teenager), was multi-talented in other arts by merely training himself, and was extremely well read. (You would have sworn he had extensive higher education and training, but he didn’t.) Because he personally was very succesful without higher ed, he told his equally capable children that they also would not need a college education. Result: only 2 out of the 8 children earned degrees. (Several of them now regret that they didn’t. Most of them have managed to make successes out of themselves in various fields. Two are still floundering: these were the two, who by temperament would have most needed role-modeling as an aid to direction.) The family’s social group was exclusively upper-middle-class & highly educated. A number of their friends were <em>very</em> well off and <em>very</em> educated. But the father’s convincing viewpoint won the day.</p>

<p>Most of my families are less extreme, but all of them fall into the pattern, and that pattern is what is operative, not any stereotyping by race or ethnic group. I have Korean and Indian families whose high school graduates are in vocational or 2-year college tracks (and not to save on 4year college tuition). I have black families whose children are headed for college by all indicators. In all cases, parental expectations are driving the student’s expectations. </p>

<p>The ambivalence seems to be exacerbated in divorced families where one parent speaks fluent College and the other does not. Somehow the child parallels the duality of the household situation in an intensifed ambivalence about college. These are the students who are toughest to convert.</p>

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<p>I absolutely agree. Unless students are very self motivated and/or parents have high expectations, kids most often take the path of least resistance. I told both of my sons when they graduated from a small town, not very challenging hs that for most of their classmates, hs graduation will be the high point in their lives. Did they want to feel the same way? Neither of them do, and while S1 is still trying to find his path, S2 is well on his way to achieving his goals.</p>

<p>I was the 1st in my family to go to college, and although my parents did not “speak college” at all, they both had very high expectations academically for me. It was an English teacher who suggested I consider college, and my parents supported me.</p>

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<p>^ Me too. Both of my parents were college educated, and in our household it was expected that everyone would attend. Same for my kids. I think they’d have been shocked if someone suggested they skip college and do something else with their formative years.</p>

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<p>Of the programs designed to increase academic performance at my daughters inner city high school, few were open to white students above the poverty line.</p>

<p>( and with cost of living as high as it is in this area, even if you received the largest Pell grant, you are still going to have a very tough time meeting expenses of college)</p>

<p>However, they did have a program which includes first generation college students & has been very successful.
[College</a> Access Now!](<a href=“http://www.collegeaccessnow.org/]College”>http://www.collegeaccessnow.org/)</p>

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<p>That definitely was the big difference maker among my group of friends in high school. We mostly came from poor/working/lower-middle class families, and we ranged from really high ambitions to no ambition at all. Invariably, it has been a reflection of parental attitudes toward education. My entire life, my parents have always taught my siblings and I that education is important (be that in college or a trade) in order to have happy, stable lives, and have always encouraged us to succeed, even though my mom never graduated high school and my dad never went to college. </p>

<p>In other cases, my friends’ parents had no expectations at all, and generally these were the ones who dropped out of high school (with the exception of one whose mother’s illness made attendance difficult) or barely graduated with little motivation to attend college. Without parental guidance or encouragement, they make half-hearted attempts to start college but generally give up when financial aid becomes difficult (often due to parental refusal to file taxes) or when the logistics of purchasing books or getting to and from classes become too complicated to navigate alone.</p>

<p>I think a lot of this could be alleviated if there were programs for college and vocational guidance for low-income students that would assist in filing for financial aid, forming a college list, finding transportation and learning how to get prepared for a new semester, among other things. In other words, helping with many of the logistical concerns that might make starting college or vocational training too intimidating for someone without support at home.</p>

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<p>Let’s face it, on the whole the poor pretty much suck at everything.</p>

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<p>emeraldkity4, Thank you for posting the link the “College Access Now!”
What a great program.</p>

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<p>I am just a HS grad. I had my D on my own, and raised her by myself for all (nearly 20) years. I wanted more for her, so I did push her a bit very early, but found that it wasn’t necessary, she loved to learn. </p>

<p>I didn’t know about college, much alone elite colleges before finding this site before her senior year. Thanks to a couple of posters, she is now attending her dream school! </p>

<p>Epithamy, my D will be one of those self made people.</p>

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<p>A person of a low class (socio-economically) may struggle in lots of areas, but a person of an upper class can still have no class.</p>

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<p>^^^^^^^</p>

<p>Thank you 07DAD.</p>

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<p>Whatever, my post was half joke but it’s the truth. No matter what problem is being discussed the poor do a worse job of dealing with it and we need to make special plans to protect them from screwing up. If you can’t handle the truth, then that’s why we never actually solve any problems. People are afraid to say anything that could be hurtful. That solves nothing. See Bill Cosby.</p>

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<p>The 2007 census reports 22,284,000 white US citizens below the poverty line.</p>

<p>Can you imagine if “the truth” were told that 22 million poor whites are too “dumb” to get the aid available to send their kid to college and that the poor whites need to emulate the poor blacks in thinking about how to pay for college!!</p>

<p>You think Bill Cosby would see the humor?</p>

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<p>Sorry I don’t have a good white or Hispanic version of Cosby at hand. I never said it applied to any one ethnic group–just poor people in general. But most of what Cosby says is applicable to any poor group. Sorry I was not more clear. But I’m sure you don’t actually care about that. You are trying to ignore the message and shoot the messenger. Anyone who has seen an episode of Maury knows there are dumb poor people of all races.</p>

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<p>OK–assuming you’re not being facetious about needing to make special plans to protect the poor from “screwing up” the encouragement of their kids to attend college, do you have any suggestions about what those special plans should be?</p>

<p>If you have suggestions, what are they?</p>

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<p>Folks, have you ever been in a situation where you and others are having a nice, adult conversation and someone comes by and throws out a bald faced comment as a “joke,” kind of like throwing a lit match on gasoline?</p>

<p>It’s unfortunate but true that such people exist on these threads, and when called out, hide out behind their “truthfulness.” CC has political forums for these kinds of things, but some of these posters can just not control their habits.</p>

<p>Sorry, carry on with the thurst of this thread.</p>

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<p>Well, the problem everyone is tip-toeing around is that you have “family” pathologies that are both destructive and very hard to overcome.
As to my solutions–well that throwdown fits right in to something by my favorite black conservative blogger wrote:</p>

<p>"“So Where Are Your Solutions” = A Derivative Of “Keeping Conservatives On Trial”</p>

<p>On the surface someone demanding that you provide a solution appears to be a reasonable request prior to someone else asking that they change their ways. After all - each of us are into “solutions”, Right?</p>

<p>If you fall for this trick then you deserve to be lead around just as the Black Quasi-Socialist Progressive-Fundamentalist Racism Chasers who demanding this of you intend to do.</p>

<p>First they don’t want a ‘solution’. They want a ‘solution that is in line with their progressive biases’. Even if someone laid out a 30 year plan for the healing of the Black community yet made the mistake of requiring the people to be the primary agent in their own transformation and then accept the entire package of results - good and bad - this would be a deal breaker.</p>

<p>For them the essence of Black America is one of grievance and struggle. To expect one who has been “history’s victim” to be the primary agent of his own change is seen as an insult to some people.</p>

<p>Now That You Are The Incumbent You No Longer Have The Right To Ask Others To Show You What They Can Do</p>

<p>I coined the term “keeping conservatives on trial” because I actively seek to analyze people’s arguments as I engage with them. This is the primary pattern of argument. This itself is a derivative of the “Hypocrite Chasing” that is so important to the progressive. By putting their adversary on trial they insure that they themselves never are put on trial where they have to account for their own actions, being forced to change if it turns out that they have failed.</p>

<p>They may have control over every institution of the local area in question. This matters not. If they can’t shift the conversation to an adversarial figure to put on trial - they will shift the debate around and ask YOU to “provide them with a SOLUTION”.</p>

<p>Sorry - You no longer get to ask questions!!!</p>

<p>It is so critically important that you get them to review the “Promised Solutions” that they had bought into years ago upon their run up to power. Once they achieved office they made sure that the people were made happy over the increase in “head count” in the institutions rather than upon the actual deliverables that this person who is a part of the machine that they supported is supposed to deliver. They will be this person’s biggest defenders. He can do no wrong. Any criticism of him is done because of bigotry against him. Or the person “can’t stand to see Black people happy” and thus they attack.</p>

<p>Simply put, once the problems continue this person simply needs to stand in front of them and redirect them upon an EXPANSION MISSION. “We must stay unified. When we fracture THEY WIN”. </p>

<p>Thus the “victory” is NOT the attainment of our “Permanent Interests”. Instead our “victory” comes from fighting against the noted adversary. I have said plenty of times: “The worst possible condition for the progressive to be in is ALL ALONE, all by himself with his own policies used to define the society that he seeks”. Soon all of the theories that he has about free speech, civil liberties and an open society will perish.</p>

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<p>Barrons - I don’t understand most of that post. But I do agree with your first sentence: “Well, the problem everyone is tip-toeing around is that you have “family” pathologies that are both destructive and very hard to overcome.”</p>

<p>There is a branch or two of my own family with issues most people resolve in their teens. This despite many (spurned) offers of help. Thirty years and counting …</p>

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<p>Epiphany, I think what these kids need isn’t just a program to help with college apps; it’s a community of support that more successful children have at home. I think they need teachers who are pulling for them and are not punitive; they need adults who stay positive and tell them they CAN make things happen. That doesn’t mean a program to help with college apps isn’t very worthwhile-- it means it’s only part of the solution. The foundation those students need (emotional and academic) is critical to their success and that doesn’t always have to do with $. (By that I mean that some very well-educated or wealthy parents can be lousy parents and neglect to provide their children with the emotional stability and maturity they need to be successful in college.) I honestly think that’s why something like half of all kids get through college. Yes, some of that has to do with financial aid, but I also think it has to do with a lack of support and kids need that from home and school.</p>