John Thompson: Is Rising Poverty Sinking Hopes for College?
Guest post by John Thompson.
From the Clinton Administration's welfare reform until the Bush first term, my senior Government students loved to dissect the writings of Jason DeParle and, later, Paul Tough. We made the standard accommodations for low-skilled readers as they wrestled with the work of New York Times Magazine writers. Each student was provided photocopies with the key passages highlighted and the definitions of challenging words were written in the margins. The students then brought personal stories to the profound class discussions that followed.
Back in the 1990s, our school was 2/3rds low income and we had a steady stream of former students returning from college. Our alumni said that these lessons, built on real world experiences and challenging them to think analytically, were the best preparation they had received for college; some said that our class was the only preparation they had received. By the time my students read DeParle's "Raising Kevion" and Tough's accounts of the Harlem Children's Zone, however, our school was well on the way to becoming 100% low income. Since then, the few returning alumni were warning that almost none of our graduates were making it in college, and
From the Clinton Administration's welfare reform until the Bush first term, my senior Government students loved to dissect the writings of Jason DeParle and, later, Paul Tough. We made the standard accommodations for low-skilled readers as they wrestled with the work of New York Times Magazine writers. Each student was provided photocopies with the key passages highlighted and the definitions of challenging words were written in the margins. The students then brought personal stories to the profound class discussions that followed.
Back in the 1990s, our school was 2/3rds low income and we had a steady stream of former students returning from college. Our alumni said that these lessons, built on real world experiences and challenging them to think analytically, were the best preparation they had received for college; some said that our class was the only preparation they had received. By the time my students read DeParle's "Raising Kevion" and Tough's accounts of the Harlem Children's Zone, however, our school was well on the way to becoming 100% low income. Since then, the few returning alumni were warning that almost none of our graduates were making it in college, and