Tuesday, February 5, 2013

UPDATE: Why growing concentrated poverty dooms school reform

Why growing concentrated poverty dooms school reform:




Why growing concentrated poverty dooms school reform


Until very recently, policymakers ignored the effect that concentrated poverty has on student achievement. Here’s a look at why more attention must be paid to the problem, written by Greg Kaufmann, who reports on poverty for the Nation, and Elaine Weiss, the national coordinator for the Broader Bolder Approach to Education. This appeared on The Nation’s website.
By Greg Kaufmann and Elaine Weiss
Researchers know a lot about how various factors associated with income level affect a child’s learning: parents’ educational attainment; how parents read to, play with, and respond to their children; the quality of early care and early education; access to consistent physical and mental health services and healthy food. Poor children’s limited access to these fundamentals accounts for a good chunk of the achievement gap, which is why conceiving of it instead as an opportunity gap makes a lot more sense.
But we rarely discuss the impact of concentrated poverty—and of racial and socioeconomic 

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