With concentrated poverty on the rise, should ed reformers be worried?
The number of people living in concentrated poverty rose substantially over the past decade, according to a Brookings Institution report out today: ”After declining in the 1990s, the population in extreme-poverty neighborhoods—where at least 40 percent of individuals live below the poverty line—rose by one-third from 2000 to 2005–09.”
Education reformers who ascribe to the No Excuses movement have argued that poverty shouldn’t be used an excuse for writing kids off, and the recent release of scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress show that the gap between poor students and their more affluent peers didn’t grow during the recession.
Still, research has found that concentrated poverty is associated with lower academic outcomes, and that more poverty makes the job of educating children more difficult. Kids living in poverty often have to deal with other problems—homelessness, domestic violence, health issues—that make it hard for them to concentrate on their