Low Socioeconomic Status Essay

Introduction In the United States, there is an achievement gap between middle and upper class students and low-income students. Children who are from middle to upper class families are outperforming students living in poverty on standardized tests. Although, all children are learning the same information, but the experiences they endure outside of school has an impact the learning process. Poverty has a direct correlation in the quality of education certain children receive, and then it impacts test scores.

Directions: Based on your personal experiences and on the readings for this course, answer the questions in the green section of the matrix as they apply to each of the listed socioeconomic classes. Fill in your answers and post your final draft as directed by the course syllabus.

I’ve never taken into consideration how all of my experiences growing up has really formed the person that I am today. I’ve never really taken the time to think about my story of intersectionality until I took this class. I never realized how my inner, outer, experiential, relational, and developing identities have really constructed the person that I have become today. Many of my identities have influenced and changed my life especially my identities in social class, race and ethnicity, religion, citizenship and immigration status, first language I learned, my gender, and my gender expressions.

Rendon (1994) points out “students from underrepresented backgrounds often experience isolation, a lack of self-efficacy, and a lack of a sense of belonging in college contexts”(p. 48). Furthermore, one needs to take it one step back and realize that most students of color are much more likely to attend schools where most of their peers are poor or low-income. Therefore, socio economic status (SES) determines the education a person receives throughout K-12. Walpole (2004) also describes how “low SES parents are more likely to define success as a secure full-time job after graduating from high school. College attendance is not an expectation and often means enrolling in a community college or technical school when it does occur” (p. 47). When a student reaches the

Education is an integral part of society, School helps children learn social norms as well as teach them to be successful adults. The school systems in United States, however are failing their students. In the world as a whole, the United States is quickly falling behind other countries in important math and reading scores. The United States ranked thirtieth in math on a global scale and twentieth in literacy. This is even more true in more urban, lower socio-economic areas in the United States. In West Trenton Central High School was only 83% proficiency in literacy and only 49% of the students were proficient in math. These school have lower test scores and high dropout rates. Many of these students come from minority backgrounds and are often form low income families. There are many issues surrounding these urban schools. There is a severe lack of proper funding in these districts, and much of the money they do receive is sanctioned for non-crucial things. Schools also need a certain level of individualization with their students, and in many urban classes, this simply does not happen. While there are many factors affecting the low performance of urban schools, the lack of proper funding and distribution of funds, the cultural divide between teachers and students in urban districts, along with the lack of individualization in urban classrooms are crucial factors to explain the poor performance in these districts. Through a process of teacher lead budget committees and

“The socioeconomic achievement gap in education refers to the inequality in academic achievement between groups of students. The achievement gap shows up in grades, standardized test scores, course selection, dropout rates, and college-completion rates, among other success measures” (Ansell, 2017). Typically, when discussing the achievement gap, educators are comparing the academic progress of African-American students or Hispanic students to the progress of white students. More-often-than-not the white students will have more educational achievements than their non-white colleagues (Ansell, 2017). The most widely accepted theory as to why students with higher socioeconomic status (SES) do better academically is high parental involvement, access to economic resources and access to highly qualified teachers (Huang, 2015. Pg.6). Students of low socioeconomic status often live in poverty. This means that the student may not have sufficient school supplies or even someone at home to help him with his homework. There are numerous children in the United States’ school systems that are failing due to the achievement gap. These students are at a disadvantage because the school systems and teachers do not notice or even care about their home life and how it comes into play in their education. It is important for our nation to not only understand the achievement gap but take steps toward correcting it.

The topic is important to the teaching profession since more and more of our students are experiencing poverty. In 2011, over 15.9 million children under the age of eighteen were in poverty (NCES). In Texas, there was a forty-seven percent increase in the rate of children living in poverty between 2000 and 2011 (MacLaggan, 2013). In 2012, 1,777,000 Texas children lived in poverty and 749,000 lived in extreme poverty (Kids Count). Poverty and its stressors are linked to impairment of cognitive development and have implications for development of brain structure and function (Berliner, 2009). Children in poverty are twice as likely to be retained in school, are more likely to be placed in special education classes, perform less well on standardized tests, have lower grades, and are more likely to not complete their high school education (Berliner, 2009; Woolfolk, 2013,

According to Sanford Graduate School of Education research, almost every school district enrolling large numbers of low-income studies has an average academic performance significantly below the national-grade level average. Achievement gaps are larger in districts where black and Hispanic students attend higher poverty schools than their white peers. The size of the gaps has little or no association with average class size. The most and least socioeconomically advantaged districts have average performance levels more than four grade levels apart. According to Reardon and colleagues, one-sixth of all students attend public school in school districts where average test scores are more than a grade level below the national average. Also, one-sixth

Unfortunately, the school's lack of appropriate education results directly from poor government funding. So even with hard work, the lower-class student is still held down by his socio-economic status. Poverty-stricken parents are unable to offer their children the same attention and motivation as parents of a higher-class can, therefore never providing these children with the mindset that they are able to accomplish the American dream. According to Mantsios, 40 million Americans live in poverty, and the mental and physical affects the low standard of living has on them is undeniable (Mantsios 328). Citizens who live in poverty work long hours for little pay, yet return to a household that in no way symbolizes the hard work put forth. Within this environment, very few people have the positive outlook to mentor children successfully.

Literature on the effects of low socioeconomic status (SES) on one’s psychological well-being is well established. Prior studies show that low-SES not only impacts individuals’ mental well-being, but also affects their children’s developmental trajectories. This paper reviews one of these numerous studies and further discusses the influences of parental SES on one’s life outcomes, as well as intergenerational mobility and achievement gap through a developmental perspective.

1. How may a student's social class origin and related factors impact on her/his learning outcomes and how can teachers intervene to effectively address any resulting disadvantages and injustices for students?

The idea of social inequality dates back since the time of our founding fathers. The mistreatment and unlawful equality and opportunity that these foreigners received became embedded into our history—this endless list includes, just to name a few, the Irish, Chinese, Jews, and most notably the African Americans (Blacks), who became slaves to the American people. Here in the United States, the current social class system is known as the class system, where families are distributed and placed into three different existing class—the upper class (wealthy), middle class (working), and lower class (poor). Since then, improvisations have been worked on into the class system, establishing now roughly six social classes: upper class, new money, middle class, working class, working poor, and poverty level. Social stratification is a widely common topic of debate because there have since been many arguments and debates on this controversial situation of social inequality and how it relates to social class and social mobility. According to Economist Robert Reich, he states that "The probability that a poor child in America will become a poor adult is higher now than it was 30 years ago..." (Reich, par. 5), meaning the given amount of equality, opportunity, and support that these struggle families obtain have gone mainly unnoticed by the government that it has gotten worst. The constant uproar of social inequality and injustice that these middle and lower working class families stem

Socioeconomic status (SES) is one of the most widely studied constructs in the social sciences. Several ways of measuring SES have been proposed, but most include some quantification of family income, parental education, and occupational status. Research shows that SES is associated with a wide variety of health, cognitive, and socioemotional outcomes in children, with effects beginning prior to birth and continuing into adulthood. A variety of mechanisms linking SES to child well-being have been proposed, with most involving differences in access to material and social resources. For children, SES impacts well-being at multiple levels.

Everyone knows about the various stereotypes and social stigmas that come with socioeconomic status whether they will choose to admit it or not. Society has come to assume that a child who comes from a family of low socioeconomic status, that they will not do as well as a child who comes from a family of a greater socioeconomic status. Unfortunately these assumptions are so ingrained in our brains that we start to follow the self-fulfilling prophecy. When a child from a noticeably low socioeconomic status walks into a classroom, it is not uncommon for the teacher to automatically assume that the child will not perform well in class, and in turn either grades the child more harshly or does not give the child as much attention as the

Our society has many ethical implications of socioeconomic inequalities. It is a social fact honestly, when people think about social inequality, they generally put social inequality in the terms of socioeconomic class. The United States has the largest gap in wealth. This gap causes people to start arguing about lower,middle, and upper class. Depression played a major role in the gap as well. People who have wealth and money have the top social standings in the society and enjoy the greatest privileges as brought on by their money and their social status. On the other hand, people who end up poor or have very little or no access to these high privileges and are usually marginalized in the terms of education and social services.