Schools can overcome the challenges of poverty — with the right interventions
When President Obama launched My Brother’s Keeper last month to help young men and boys of color reach their full potential, he shared what had made the difference in his own life: “I had people who encouraged me — not just my mom and grandparents, but wonderful teachers and community leaders — and they’d push me to work hard and study hard and make the most of myself…They never gave up on me,” he recounted, “and so I didn’t give up on myself.”
Every one of us knows that if there is a success we can point to in our lives, it’s because there were people we couldn’t let down, people who never gave up on us. Having them in our lives made it possible to become the people we became. My Brother’s Keeper — that’s what this really means.
But today, there are a lot of children growing up without enough people in their lives who encourage them, push them, and never give up on them. We must change that now, and one of the best places to start is our schools.
Pamela Cantor
Unfortunately, many of our schools are failing our black and Latino children, failing to educate them and quick to punish them. Today, by the fourth grade, 86% of African-American boys and 82% of Hispanic boys are reading below grade level, compared to 58% of their white male peers. Just 52% of black males and 58% of Hispanic males graduate from high school in four years, compared to 78% of white young men. And black students are almost four times as likely to be suspended as their white classmates; Hispanics twice as likely.
To change this, we must understand the true nature of the challenges children growing up in poverty bring into school every day, and we must intentionally design learning environments to counteract them.
More than one in three boys of color in this country are growing up in poverty. For many, this means experiencing a form of stress that comes with chronic insecurity, hunger, exposure to violence, and loss. Paul Tough explained it vividly in his book How Children Succeed, Grit, Curiosity and the Hidden Power of Character, describing this as “allostatic load.” These boys don’t shed their Schools can overcome the challenges of poverty — with the right interventions | Hechinger Report: