Improving Children 's High Academic Achievement

Family involvement plays a major role when helping students prosper in the school setting. In order for children to be successful, as a teacher, we have to provide support to the parent’s to make an effort in wanting to play apart in that success. Communication plays a major part in the effective relationship between families and school. Giving the parents a sense of idea as to how their child is doing in school is built through the student’s academic needs.

Children who grow up in a poor area go to school where there are 50 kids in one class and individual attention is never given, and children of high class families will go to schools that have smaller class sizes and individual attention. Even when a poor child goes to a better schoolteachers will question if the work done is their own and also only expect hard work from the rich kids. “if you are a child of low income parents, the chances are good that you will receive limited and often careless attention from adults in your high school.” Theodore Sizer “Horace’s Compromise,” “If you are the child of upper-middle income parents, the chances are good that you will receive substantial and careful attention.” (203) These quotes from another author showcase that school in America is often times based on the social standing of the parents.

America’s school system and student population remains segregated, by race and class. The inequalities that exist in schools today result from more than just poorly managed schools; they reflect the racial and socioeconomic inequities of society as a whole. Most of the problems of schools boil down to either racism in and outside the school or financial disparity between wealthy and poor school districts. Because schools receive funding through local property taxes, low-income communities start at an economic disadvantage. Less funding means fewer resources, lower quality instruction and curricula, and little to no community involvement. Even when low-income schools manage to find adequate funding, the money doesn’t solve all the school’s

Lareau, in Unequal Childhoods, focuses on socioeconomic status and how that affects outcomes in the education system and the workplace. While examining middle-class, working-class and poor families, Lareau witnessed differing logics of parenting, which could greatly determine a child’s future success. Working-class and poor families allow their children an accomplishment of natural growth, whereas middle-class parents prepare their children through concerted cultivation. The latter provides children with a sense of entitlement, as parents encourage them to negotiate and challenge those in authority. Parents almost overwhelm their children with organized activities, as we witnessed in the life of Garrett Tallinger. Due to his parents and their economic and cultural capital, Garrett was not only able to learn in an educational setting, but through differing activities, equipping him with several skills to be successful in the world. Lareau suggests these extra skills allow children to “think of themselves as special and as entitled to receive certain kinds of services from adults” (39). Adults in the school system are in favor of these skills through concerted cultivation, and Bourdieu seems to suggest that schools can often misrecognize these skills as natural talent/abilities when it’s merely cultivated through capital. This then leads to inequalities in the education system and academic attainments.

Almost all the family incomes are over $100,000...The incomes in this school represent less than 1 percent of the families in the United States,” (256) compared to working-class families who earn incomes “at or below $12,000” (256). Anyon presents these examples to compare the backgrounds of each school and uses this as logos to persuasively reason her claim that quality of education is offered to people who can afford it. Public schools that working-class and middle-class families can afford do not offer the same education private schools that upper-class and capitalist families can afford. Wealthy children who are privileged get an advantage early on in their education career because they are able to afford better quality teachers and lessons. This varied quality of education found in curriculums is what creates the unequal divide between educated individuals in different social classes. An audience of scholars and teachers would be persuaded by this claim because Anyon’s data transparently shows the uneven distribution of resources and opportunity found in the social class schools.

In the 1997 article, “Public Goods, Private Goods: The American Struggle over Educational Goals” by David Labaree, Labaree describes three goals that have been at the core of educational conflicts over the years. The first goal mentioned is democratic equality, which is meant to create good citizens and enable educational access to all. The second goal is social efficiency, which creates workers and is viewed by taxpayers and employers as a goal to prepare students for market roles. Lastly is the third goal of social mobility, where individual success for attractive market roles is the main purpose. This primary goal of education has been ever fluctuating. The argument of this essay is that social mobility has now triumphed over democratic equality and social efficiency as the primary goal of education due to parents. This view of social mobility by parents is negative to due its numerous consequences, significantly the growing disparity between the wealthy and the underprivileged, and additionally, the health of children, their behavior, and the degree to which they learn educational material are all affected.

Reading “Chapter XVI: The life of the peasants” from Harper and Brother’s Life on a Mediaeval Barony lead me to contemplate the work life and attitude toward the education of the less glamorous lifestyle that medieval peasants lived, “Their help is so important that many peasants look on large families as assets of so much unpaid labor, rather than as liabilities… Education is almost unknown” (Davis). I contemplated what this attitude towards education could mean in modern society and how it relates to the lifestyles of urban families of a lower income. In “A Letter to My Nephew” by James Baldwin, Baldwin addresses the socioeconomic education status of the early 20th century to his nephew, “The limits to your ambition were thus expected to be settled. You were born into a society which spelled out with brutal clarity [that]... You were not expected to aspire to excellence”(Baldwin). Baldwin is stating that students of a lower social standing are automatically assumed to not succeed in school due to limitations on resources. I found this to be a very applicable concept in the education system of urban schools because numerous students that attend urban schools are of a low social standing with limited opportunities for success. Students can only take full advantage of their education in respect to the circumstances that they are raised in. According to Torrey Marable, a recent graduate from Phelps High School, many students who attend urban schools have

In Christopher Hayes article Twilight of the Elites the author puts into perspective the inequality low-income students face. The author argues that the test prep industry is a booming multi million-dollar business; the best way to predict a student’s score on standardized test is to look at the child’s parent income. The more money the parent’s have the more money they can contribute to tutoring and test prep materials. It’s quite unfortunate that children from low-income families are left out of the loop it is an unfair disadvantage. Children from low-income families have just as much capability to thrive however; the resources and tools needed for them are not there. The system is set up in away that the upper class will always make

In t.v. shows the display how rich kids are the talk of the party, everyone evese rich kids and if someone wasn’t rich the where kick to the curb or even bullied. According to the news page on University Herland, they did a study on how the kids that had parents that made over 160,000 are found to be more likely to be depressed and have high anxiety. The reason why they found kids that had the rich parent to be depressed and have high anxiety is because their parents thrust unnecessary pressure on them to succeed. “Suniya Luthar, the psychologist from Arizona State University said that majority of the children are unable to fulfill their parent's demands.” We see the same type of behavior in Catcher In The Rye, the main character, Holden

In the article “Generation Struggling Rich kids are Losing” Dr. Brian Carr expresses rich kids or losing. First Carr states “high rates of substance abuse, depression, cheating and stealing give a new meaning to have it all.” The author shows that problems are occurring at the end of the spectrum among youth who are on trying to attend the most prestigious schools. In addition, he points out that substance-abuse may be a much higher in this privilege to group as they binge drink and use drugs at other rates higher than their less well-funded peers. Moreover he emphasizes that pride and performance becomes important and negative responses are heaped on the child who is not achieving. Finally carr concludes that we are losing our children

All families want their children to be happy, healthy, and grow. Social classes make a difference in how parents go about meeting this goal. In Annette Lareau book, Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life, she promotes middle class parents as concerted cultivation. Middle class parents encourage their children’s talents, opinions, and skills. For example, engaging their children in organized activities and closely monitoring children’s experiences in school. According to Lareau, middle class children gain an emerging sense of entitlement through this pattern of converted cultivation. This causes a focus on children’s individual development. There are signs that the middle class children gain advantages from the experience of concerted cultivation. However, the working class and poor children do not gain this advantage.

The focus is to tease out underling issues that separate the education level between impoverished and more affluent families so that everyone has access to the same education. Furthermore, the authors wanted to see what it would take to get the “underachievers” to succeed and stay in school versus giving up on their education. With help from the Griffins, the authors conducted their first experiment to incentivize students to do better in school so as to keep them from dropping out and encouraging them to continue with their studies. The experiment involved giving students who maintained certain requirements such as high grades, no excused absences, and no behavioral issues a monetary award. In doing so, Gneezy and List were hoping to nudge students to care about their education. The end result of the experiment aided in facilitating 50 borderline students out of 400 to meet specific achievement standards. The authors also discover that student’s performance increased slightly if their parents received the monetary award rather than the students. I believe this incentive structure nudges parents to be more concerned and involved in their child’s efforts to perform better in

Today in America, parental influence and money plays an immense part in the way children get educated and go on to become successful. There are parents in the United States that buy property in neighborhoods that have the best public school systems, and these properties are typically placed in extremely expensive neighborhoods. If wealthy parents do not want to move for a better public school, then no problem. They can spend $30,000 dollars for the best private school near their house. Once their child attends the best public or private school, then wealthy parents can further their child’s advantage to be successful by paying for private tutors and SAT tutors. Wealthy parents worried that their child does not have a chance to get into an Ivy League or a top university? No problem. Just use the internet and pay a hefty fee to buy a college application essay that will knock the socks off an admissions officer. If parents are not able to use money to obtain the best public or private school for their child, then simply having supportive and caring parents who can give a child basic necessities places a child above thousands of others in the competition for attractive market roles. The children in great position of the natural lottery typically obtain these high-salaries market roles.

Keeping kids grades up is very important to the school. There is more than one way to keep kids engaged in the classroom and promote good grades or effort on their work. The school can suggest a lot of things to get students to achieve a good academic performance level. They can offer rewards, such as a school currency system, periodic parties, treats for good academic performance, etc. Additionally, the school could suggest the outcomes of bad academic performance. The facts and the cold hard truth would definitely motivate kids to study to guarantee a successful future.

Breaking from family norms is a difficult process for any individual to obtain. Studies showcase that if an individual is grown into wealth they will become wealthy by following suit of the goals and characteristics of the environment provided by the heritage. Children raised within an environment of poverty have a slippery and steeper slope to achieve this life style. The odds and studies suggest that they are behind with the heritage by the characteristics or values that they have received. Studies highlight that poverty stricken parents pass the habits to their children and it is likely that they will grow up “unhappy, unsuccessful and poor.” (Corley, Thomas C.)