The Challenge of Educating Poor Students - Part 2

       American Public Schools face many and varied challenges.  Funding, equity, and public support to name a few.  On the top of this list of challenges, I would include: The Achievement of Poor Students.

       It is easy to understand the underpinnings of this problem, and yet it is extremely complex to succeed in overcoming this problem.  The problem stems from two indisputable facts:

1. Poor students consistently demonstrate lower achievement than their non-poor peers.
2. The proportion of poor students in our nation's public schools is over 50% and is growing.

       I will examine this challenge from three perspectives:

1. Poor students who have succeeded in our schools
2. Understanding the special and different needs of poor students 
3. Expert advice on successfully educating poor students

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The Challenge of Educating Poor Students - Part 2

Understanding the Special and Different Needs of Poor Students

       People who grow up in a middle class (or higher) home environment may take for granted simple life experiences that poor students and their families never experience.  Well-meaning teachers may have never experienced living in a poor environment and working with poor people until their first year in the classroom.  Particularly since school teachers must have a college degree and it is rare for poor people to earn a college degree, teachers are generally from a middle class (or higher) background.  

       Here is a short list of challenges for most poor students:

1) Regular, quality medical care

       

       Middle class families generally have a regular doctor for their children.  When children are sick, they go to the doctor and they get better in a couple of days.  When poor students get sick, they don't have access to a doctor or to medicine; this makes them sicker.  When they are too sick to come to school, they generally miss more school days because it takes them longer to get better.  And if they come to school when they are sick, it is harder for them to concentrate on their school work.       

      A lack of medical care leads to other issues that are more prevalent among the poor such as untreated ear infections and hearing loss issues, greater exposure to lead, and a higher incidence of asthma (source).  All of these health issue contribute to higher absenteeism and lower engagement with class lessons at school.

2) Small vocabulary when they start school

       Students from poor households hear and use considerably less words than students from middle class households.  This puts poor students at an academic disadvantage from their first day of kindergarten.  Students who are less able to use words to express their feelings and to explain their thinking because frustrated and soon shy away from activities that involve reading because they don't want to appear less able than their peers.

      Opportunities to increase each students' personal vocabulary must be of primary importance for poor students.  We know from multiple studies that students who are not reading on grade level (or above) by third grade have a reduced chance of graduating from high school. (source)  This is a significant risk factor for poor students.  In 2013, the overall national high school graduation rate was 81.4%  but the rate for poor students was only 73.3%.

3) Fixed vs. Growth Mindset

       Stanford psychologist, Carol Dweck, and her book Mindset has taken the education world by storm over the past few years.  And so it should.  She has proved that students who believe that they are not smart will refuse to try to succeed.  This is the belief of the "Fixed" mindset; the one that says, "I have a fixed capacity for learning and no matter how hard I try I won't get any smarter."  In fact, nobody has a brain that isn't capable of learning more.

       But poor students are more likely to believe in the Fixed Mindset because they are less likely to see the many opportunities that will be offered to them in the future beyond high school and college graduation.  Poor students need to be praised for their effort and teachers need to point out when their thinking has led to a great solution to a problem.  Students with Fixed Mindsets believe that they just got lucky whenever they get a good test grade.  They need to understand that it is their effort and their learning that led to that good test grade.

       Teachers at every level (elementary, middle, and high school) can help poor students to succeed.  But we have to understand the deficiencies that they bring to school and we cannot label every lack of effort as "laziness".  Some poor students do succeed; they are the lucky ones.  They probably had great teachers and caring parents or caring authority figures at home.  Overcoming these deficiencies is a very difficult job for our public schools; but understanding the problem is certainly the first step.

       All teachers should receive some training in the education of poor students.

Everyone Should Go to Community College

       The Community College system in the United States is simply the perfect college option for many of our high school graduates in my opinion.  

       Here are some of my reasons for this statement:

1. Close to home.
2. Less expensive.
3. Small classes.

       Let's start with my first reason: Close to home.  I went to a college that had the initials TSC.  (This college has since been renamed.)  Among the students at this college, we referred to "TSC" as meaning "The Suitcase College" because just about everyone went home on the weekends.  I remember thinking at the time that high school students are always complaining about "living under the rules of their parents".  They want to be on their own; they want their freedom.  And, so, I thought that these people were hypocrites when, given the opportunity, would rush back home at every chance they got to do so.

       Of course, it probably isn't fair to categorize young people this way.  It is more likely that they rushed back home to be with their friends.  It is also likely that they really didn't hate their parents as much as they said.  According to the Higher Education Research Institute (and referenced here), 53% of college students attend a school within 100 miles of their home and 90% within 500 miles.  This tells me that most students want to attend college close (or relatively close) to their home.  Surely lower in-state tuition is part of the reason, but I think another reason is that newly graduated high school students are not completely ready to break all ties with their hometown by attending a college that is very far away.

       Community colleges provide the college experience with college courses and college teachers while still remaining close (sometimes very close) to home.  Students don't have to adjust to a new environment--perhaps with new foods and new expressions and maybe new fashions and (perhaps) a new climate--in addition to the (sometimes shocking) new experience of college-level course work.  Change is hard and a lot of change at once can be too hard for some students to endure.  The closeness of community colleges allows students to be close to friends and family and familiar settings, while they adjust to some aspects of college life.

       Reason number two: Less Expensive.  Full discloser; I am the cheapest cheapskate you will ever meet.  If I see something for free, I take two.  So my views of cost are probably skewed when compared to those of normal people.  However, I would think that lots of middle-class, working class, and (certainly) poor people are interested in finding good deals wherever they can be found.  And when you are talking about cost, Community Colleges are a very good deal.

       Tuition costs at community colleges are not merely "less" than those of public and private four-year schools; they are dramatically less--50% less; maybe even 75% less.  And students take the same courses and earn the same credit that they would at the much more expensive four-year schools.  To put a dollar figure to it, according to the College Board (reference found here)  the average cost of tuition and fees at a two-year school is only $3,131 which is just over one-third (60+% savings) of the cost for a year at a four-year institution.

       And here is a sobering statistic that we don't like to talk about, but when it comes to cost this is important.  Only slightly more than 50% of students who enter college eventually earn a degree.  Most people know someone who began college and then left college after one semester or after one year.  Imagine paying $25,000. or $35,000. and then your child drops out of college.  Isn't it better to risk only $3,131 to see if your child is college-ready?  For thirty thousand dollars you could have bought your child a car and rent for a year--during which time he/she could have been looking for job.

       Check out this recent study on the issue of college dropouts.

       Finally my third reason: Small classes.

       I have to be honest here; I'm not completely sure that community colleges can promise small classes or smaller classes that at four-year colleges.  I did find this reference and this one that mention community colleges having smaller classes.  But, to be fair, these references don't cite research.  I know that people often talk about large lecture halls at big, four-year colleges.  If it is true, then the "large lecture hall" is (yet) another major transition that students need to make when they begin college.  Most high schools keep classes to 30 students or less; maybe 35 or 40 would be the biggest class that any high school student would typically experience.  

       

       Smaller classes don't make students smarter, but they do open the possibility that the teacher would have better relationships with his/her students.  When students and teachers get to know each other, than students tend to do better in classes.  This is the factor that helps small class sizes to lead to better academic performance by students.

       The transition to college is a major life transition for 17 and 18 year old people.  Many new things are happening all at once.  A typical student might be able to handle some of these changes, but still struggle to handle all of these changes.

       Community Colleges help students to manage these multiple changes by being close to home, having much lower costs, and having small classes (similar to high school classes).  They also have all sorts of academic supports to help students to succeed.  Community Colleges are a great deal.  I think everyone interested in earning a BA or MA should consider Community College as a starting point.

I Shouldn't Be Here

     I am enjoying my 25th year working in education this year.  I've been a middle and high school mathematics teacher, a high school mathematics chairperson and district teacher specialist, I've worked in the research and accountability office, and am now a supervisor of secondary mathematics--overseeing the mathematics program for 20,000+ students in my school district.  Still, had things worked out the way they were "supposed" to, I should have never done any of this.



     You see, I grew up in a lower-middle income family--which is an overtly nice and formal way to put it.  I have a brother and two sisters; all born within a six-and-a-half year timespan.  I was among the first generation to benefit from the Free and Reduced Meals program.  I was in 10th grade in 1980, and the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES) did a national survey of students in my class back then.  They followed up with us ten years later and this is what they found:  Only about 5% of the students in my economic family situation graduated from college.  (Good news: NCES did the same study with the 10th graders from 2002 and found that 14.5% of the low-income students from that class ended up with a college degree by 2012.  That's better than 5%, but still much too low.)



     So, had I followed the path that most of my peers did, I should have never went to college; I certainly should have never graduated from college.  Which means, no teaching job, no promotions, and certainly no Master's degree later on.  Hence, I shouldn't be here.



     The reasons I AM here are many.  One of the biggest is simply public education.  My K-12 teachers never told me I couldn't go to college; they never told me I couldn't do whatever I wanted to do.  The ability of my parents to pay a greatly reduced price for lunch for four children was an incredible benefit to my family.  Who knows how much less my parents would have been forced to provide for us had this not been an option?  We always say that education is the gateway to successful, productive citizens.  There is no doubt in my mind that public, free education made a difference in my life.