Poverty and Education The Problem and the Solution

Abstract
Poverty or destitution is a severe problem that has a considerable effect on the ability of children to learn and to progress academically in school. To this perspective, income poverty, parental inputs, and family background, all have a considerable impact on the cognitive development of young children. The impact of income poverty on children's cognitive development is negative and significant. This negative effect is more significant for persistent poverty as it is more harmful to cognitive development than period to period poverty. It is noteworthy that teachers could play an essential role in helping students from low-income families when students face economic and educational challenges. The solution is developmentally appropriate, and culturally sensitive interventions such as the EAP could help young children from low SES families to improve their literacy skills, prepare better for kindergarten and perform better when they get to kindergarten. There is a need to look at structures as a problem when designed literacy intervention problems instead of the often used student-as-problem approach. Looking at structures-as-problem provides new ideas that can help improve reading and literacy. It is essential to re-design and pedagogical repertoires to ensure teachers become more prepared to help young students from low SES families.
Thesis Statement
Poverty drastically affects children's ability to learn.  However, many studies show how the negative effects of poverty on education can be overcome.
THE PROBLEM
Researchers Compton-Lilly and Delbridge (2019) recently investigated the matter of how poverty affects children's ability to learn. The researchers utilized Bourdieu's theory of capital and statistics from longitudinal studies to investigate how poverty affects learning for two students from a poor urban community. In the study, the researchers particularly investigated the manner in which poverty affected the ability of poor parents to support their dependents in school. The researchers also particularly investigated how social capital and cultural capital can be leveraged in a bid to help families despite their social-economic position. The study is based on two case studies, as mentioned above. The two cases studies are of two students – the first is Bradford, who finds it difficult to read and learn, and the second is Alicia, who does not find it difficult to read and learn and generally performs better than average in school. Upon reviewing studies and research papers on United States schooling, race, class, and discussing Bourdieu's (1986) capital conceptualizations, the two researchers find out the challenges or difficulties that poor parents go through as their offspring move through the school system and become educated. They do this by interviewing two parents – one parent for the first student and the other for the other student. Data was then gathered in the study from the two parents and the families they represent and subsequently analyzed to find out the role played by academic economic capital (specific experiences and resources which require finances and usually result in academic success) in how their children were progressing in school. The researchers gathered the data by interviewing the parents. The results of the analysis revealed that the community the parents came from, the schools to which they sent their children, and their homes did not have sufficient academic capital, and this hurt how the children were progressing in school. Nevertheless, the results of the analysis also revealed that the parents and their families had access to other types of capital, including academic, social capital, and embodied academic capital. Based on their analysis and the results, the two researchers concluded that poverty or destitution is a serious problem that has a considerable effect on the ability of children to learn and to progress academically in school. They two researchers also noted that teachers could play an important role in helping students from low-income families when the students face economic and educational challenges,
Researchers Hampden-Thompson and Galindo (2017) also investigated how poverty affects the ability of children to learn. In their study, these two researchers investigated the role played by two things – the level of satisfaction felt by parents on schools, and the relationships between families and schools – on the educational achievement of students. The goal of this particular study was to enhance educational practice and policy through formally investigating and analyzing the potential benefits of positive links or relationships between schools and families, including how the links can help young people to become successful later in life through academics. The study was particularly centered on answering two research questions: (1) How are family-school relationships and the educational achievements of young people related? (2) To what degree does the parental level of satisfaction in a school affect the relationship between family-school relationships and the academic performance of young people? To answer the above two study questions, the researchers utilized a special data collection measure known as LSYPE (Longitudinal Study of Young People in England). This measure evaluates the factors which affect how student transit through high school, through higher education, and into the labor market. The initial or first batch of data utilized was data that was gathered when the young students in the longitudinal study were between thirteen and fourteen years old. As time moved on, more batches of data were collected annually through interviews conducted by LSYPE researchers. The interviews were mainly conducted when the students were about to transition to the next academic year. Utilizing the data collected in LSYPE, which included over ten thousand students, the researchers conducted a multivariate analysis. The analysis revealed that positive family-school relationships or links almost always resulted in better student achievement but that the relationships are affected by the extent to which parents are satisfied with the school their children go to. Based on the findings of the study, the researchers concluded that there is a need for good family-school relationships and for good levels of parental satisfaction in schools to improve the likelihood of young people to achieve educational success. Thus, school practices and policies that improve the links with parents and aim to improve parental satisfaction should be encouraged since they almost always improve the likelihood of students, especially from difficult backgrounds, to succeed.
Researchers Thompson et al. (2019) also investigated how poverty affects the ability of children to learn, and their study is the third one on this paper. The objective of this Thompson et al. (2019) study was to add to the body of literature on the interactions between socioeconomic status (SES), literacy skills, and curriculum. The study had three study questions: (1) Does the PALS- K (Phonological Awareness Literacy Screening) show a continued relationship between socioeconomic status, literacy skills, and curriculum? (2) Do students from low socioeconomic status have a lower kindergarten level literacy and learning curve compared to those from high socioeconomic status backgrounds? (3) Does the interaction between students from different socioeconomic groups result in an interaction effect? The students used in the study numbered 33. They were sampled from a public and a private kindergarten. The researchers categorized the young students from the private kindergarten as coming from a high SES family and those from the public kindergarten and qualifying for the free federal lunch as coming from a low SES family. The tool utilized to assess the students' literacy skills was the PALS-K mentioned above. The results from the PALS-K tool revealed that the literacy scores for the students from the different SES families did not vary much at the nursery or kindergarten level. However, the results from the PALS-K tool also revealed that there were considerable differences in the mean scores of the two groups at the kindergarten level and at the pre-kindergarten level. The researchers came to the conclusion that it is essential to enhance the literacy skills of children coming from low SES families at an early level since they show the potential to improve from increased instruction at the early level. According to the researchers, making sure that homes have improved access to literacy activities and resources at the pre-kindergarten level can help to enhance nascent literacy skills before the children get into kindergarten.
The study by researchers Dickerson and Popli (2016) is the last in this current paper. Dickerson and Popli's (2016) paper evaluated the impact of poverty or destitution on early cognitive development in children. The two researchers utilized the United Kingdom Millennium Cohort Study (MCS) that included over 19000 young students born around the year 2000. The MCS traces the cognitive development of young students utilizing various uniform tests until the students turn seven years old. The study focuses on how poverty affects the cognitive development of students. It assesses both persistent and episodic poverty so as to find out the collective effect of both types of poverty. The researchers utilized a value-added plus lagged inputs approach to investigate cognitive development. In this approach, the primary assumption is that a young student's present cognitive ability is based on their previous cognitive ability and the inputs over the years (including parental inputs). The other assumption in this approach is that both the parental investment (input) in a student and the student's cognitive ability are latent. The study was conducted through a survey, and data were collected via interviews. The survey questions included questions that interrogated multiple demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of children from their parents. The results of this study revealed that young students from low SES families have considerably lower test scores when they are three, five, and seven years old. The results also reveal that young students whose families persist living in destitution for a long time usually experience a cumulative negative impact on their mental (cognitive development). For young students whose families continue living in poverty until they turn age seven, their mental or cognitive development scores at the age are usually much lower than that of kids who are from well-off families. This is true even when parental investment and background characteristics are controlled for. After examining the results, the researchers concluded that that income poverty, parental inputs, and family background, all have a considerable impact on the cognitive development of young children. The researchers say that the impact of income poverty on children's cognitive development is negative and significant. They also concluded that persistent poverty is more harmful to cognitive development than period to period poverty.
THE SOLUTION
A recent study suggested a solution to the problem of poverty affecting children's ability to learn. The research was by Borre et al. (2019). The research was conducted to find out the effects of a year-long literacy intervention program for young children. The literacy intervention program is known as EAP (Early Authors Program), and it takes into account cultural sensitivity and family involvement in trying to improve the literacy skills of children. This particular program entailed improving the literacy skills of children between three and five years old from Hispanic and Black families through having them self-author books about themselves and where they come from. This intervention is based on providing early literacy experiences that are authentic and developmentally appropriate, which is what is nowadays recommended by educationists in preschool literacy. After this literacy intervention program, a follow-up study was conducted. The study included 82 children who participated in the program and 33 children who did not and were used as a comparison group. As mentioned, the intervention stressed on cultural sensitivity and family involved and entailed the young students writing books about their families and themselves. The data for this study was gathered via observation. The analysis of the results from this follow-up study revealed that the young students who were subjected to the intervention program achieved better scores on school readiness "tests" compared to the children who were not subjected to the intervention. The results also revealed that the children who were part of the intervention had better nascent literacy skills compared to those who were not part of the intervention. Moreover, the study also revealed that the benefits of the intervention program extended beyond the intervention months to the kindergarten level, where the intervention children outperformed the non-intervention children. The researchers, therefore, concluded that developmentally appropriate and culturally sensitive interventions such as the EAP could help young children from low SES families to improve their literacy skills, prepare better for kindergarten and perform better when they get to kindergarten. The researchers also concluded that the intervention program is more effective for boys from low SES families.
In another study that also investigated a solution to the effect of poverty on the ability of children to learn, the researcher, Loh (2016), found several solutions. In the study, Loh (2016) wanted to investigate if inequalities in education should be addressed through grounded comparative analyses of reading practices and policies which focus on bringing real social change by stressing geographical and spatial aspects of injustice and justice. The study was conducted by mapping spaces in a library of a top boys' school in Singapore in a bid to investigate how an area that is usually linked to the inculcation of the reading culture and habits can be utilized as an area for differentiated learning or education. The method of study involved comparing two separate case studies done at different times. The case studies build on one another, and comparing them juxtaposes one library (the one in the top school) against another to challenge the imagination and reveal hitherto unknown areas of intervention. The study data was gathered through observation. The comparison revealed that one of the stand out differences between the libraries in comparison was how they were decorated. Another stand out difference between the two libraries was the location of computers. The physical comparison reveals what is expected. That top or elite schools have libraries with more space, more books, and more digital resources. The researcher, Loh (2016), interpreted the results of the study as indicating that there is a need to look at structures as a problem when designed literacy intervention problems instead of the often used student-as-problem approach. The researcher says that looking at structures-as-problem provides new ideas that can help improve reading and literacy. Loh (2016) concludes that comprehensive interventions that are both individual-oriented and structure-oriented can help to bridge the literacy skills gap between children from separate SES families.
Lastly, the study by Comber and Kamler (2004) also proposes a solution to the problem of poverty affecting children's ability to learn. In the study, the researchers show ways through which teachers can adopt a researcher's point of view toward the children they teach. Through these ways, the two researchers reveal that they helped two early childhood education teachers to re-examine their assumptions about children from low SES families. They argue that through getting teachers to change the way they think about children from poor backgrounds, teachers can become more involved in trying to help those children. The objective of this research was to find ways in which better learning outcomes can be achieved via curriculum changes. The research was conducted in two states and involved school communities and teacher workshops. Twenty teachers participated and were paired in the study, and data were collected via interviews. The results show that teachers can be helped to change their methods to bridge the academic gap between children from low SES and children from high SES families. Moreover, the changes can have powerful positive effects. According to these findings, the researchers argue that it is essential to re-design and pedagogical repertoires to ensure teachers become more prepared to help young students from low SES families.
Bibliography
The Problem
Compton-Lilly, C., & Delbridge, A. (2019). What Can Parents Tell Us About Poverty and Literacy Learning? Listening to Parents Over Time. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 62(5), 531–539.
Dickerson, A., & Popli, G. K. (2016). Persistent poverty and children's cognitive development: evidence from the UK Millennium Cohort Study. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series A (Statistics in Society), 179(2), 535-558.
Hampden-Thompson, G., & Galindo, C. (2017). School-family relationships, school satisfaction, and the academic achievement of young people. Educational Review, 69(2), 248–265.
Thompson, K., Richardson, L. P., Newman, H., & George, K. (2019). Interaction Effects of Socioeconomic Status on Emerging Literacy and Literacy Skills among Pre-Kindergarten and Kindergarten Children: A Comparison Study. Journal of Human Services: Training, Research, and Practice, 4(1), 5.
The Solution
Borre, A., Bernhard, J., Bleiker, C., & Winsler, A. (2019). Preschool Literacy Intervention for Low-Income, Ethnically Diverse Children: Effects of the Early Authors Program Through Kindergarten. Journal of Education for Students Placed at Risk (JESPAR), 24(2), 132–153.
Comber, B., & Kamler, B. (2004). Getting Out of Deficit: Pedagogies of reconnection. Teaching Education, 15(3), 293–310.
Loh, C. (2016). Leveling the reading gap: a socio?spatial study of school libraries and reading in Singapore. Literacy, 50(1), 3–13.