Middle-Class Education Gap Analysis

A Framework for Understanding Poverty is a valuable tool to the helping profession. It has a lot of good information about the cultural differences between classes. It offers practical solutions to many problems commonly encountered when educators have problems with their students who live in poverty. The book helps educators to assist students who live in poverty survive in the middle-class world. Payne 's work has been eye opening in

As Connell, White and Johnston (1990,p.9) state, 'There is not a “culture of poverty”, nor any key “deficit” that makes poor people different from everybody else and therefore and educational problem'. Teachers and Education Assistants need to adapt into the culture of poverty and be sensitive and understandable to the extensive bar of needs that children of poverty bring to the classroom and they need to consider the cultural values of these children as they arrange their learning. The basis of Groundwater-Smith, Ewing and Le Cornu's opinions in the article is they position readers to view that the teachers dispositions low income students and that rarely the educators offer the same level or enough aid and attention than the other students and they are less likely to succeed in school when compared with the more advantaged children. According to Groundwater-Smith, Ewing and Le Cornu's and Geoffrey D. Borman and Laura T. Rachuba they both state that students from lower income families may not have as high expectations from their parents, teachers or their peers within the school. The students may also not be confident in their own abilities and

By giving insight into her own childhood experiences, Beegle informs readers about the effects of generational poverty and the natural lack of understanding by those who have never endured poverty first hand. In her essay, she explains how at the age of 15, a teachers absence of understanding failed to motivate and encourage her to stay in school. Beegle states that “If the teacher had been exposed to Poverty 101, she would have the skills needed to find out what motivators made sense to me.” (342) She also discusses the segregation among socioeconomic classes and the middle and upper class could relate to the poor.

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,

The education gap was bred by two factors: the delegation of educational responsibility to states and the diversity of race and socioeconomic class in America. The Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution reserves all powers not explicitly delegated to the federal government to the states. Thus, education is placed under the rule of the individual states. As a result, educational standards vary across the country. The diversity of race and socioeconomic class, in addition to the varying standards, influences school systems. From this educational gap grew a _____ of unused human capacity, resulting in a seemingly permanent recession.

From the societal centric viewpoint, we can define workforce development as an initiative which will educate and train specific people to maintainable competitive economic environment. Post-secondary education is an important part to meet of any states workforce and economic development goal. In addition, states, regions and communities are understanding that post secondary education does not just come with a set of involving letters only, but also covers a wide range of job training and educational assistances as well. For example, Arkansas states has focused on STEM degree holders and as a result, they raise median household income in a good way.

Growing up my family was considered middle-class, we had a typical nuclear family, my father was university educated and worked a white-collar job and my mother was a stay at home wife. I had attended private schools early in my education and public schools up until I completed secondary education. it was apparent to me that private schools typically geared students to strive towards white collared jobs whereas, the public school I attended was mostly geared towards students attaining blue collared jobs (Fletcher, 2017). Most of my friends in high school became tradesmen or service workers.

What parents do not want their kids to have it better than they did? They way to the middle class is even harder to obtain today. The old way to the middle class was a high school degree and a factory job. In the new flat world with outsourcing these jobs are no more. The new way to the middle class is a secondary education, and that costs lots of money. Even though free community college would cost US taxpayers 65 billion dollars in 10 years, it would make college education more accessible than ever before. We should also consider free vocational school. With education becoming free and more accessible, this would not only help the ambition gap, but also the gap at the bottom, and the gap at the top. Filling all of these gaps would help the US economy grow substantially.

Nowadays, with the improvement of the social culture and the transformation of the educational concepts, parents and the society have become more and more concerned with the education of children. However, as future of the country, children’s growth environment will be affected by many reasons like economic condition, race, parents’ attitude and so on. The most important one I think is that socio-economic. Poverty, especially in the extreme, can add to people’s sense of humiliation and powerlessness, particularly where the gap between rich and poor is growing. In this case, children who from the different family condition will have totally different childhoods, even the future.

I have complete books studies on Eric Jensen’s Teaching with Poverty in Mind and Engaging Students with Poverty in Mind. In addition, I am a member of Association of Middle Level Educators, which periodically post articles on poverty.

The pattern of attainment is measured at both primary and secondary education, on the basis of a comparison between different groups of pupils, achieving an expected standard (Gov, 2015:3). The expected standard being a level 4 in reading, writing and maths at the end of their primary education and 5 good passes including English and maths at GCSE, which is their secondary education (Gov,2015:3). This is important to my research because by acknowledging the patterns of attainment within both early years and secondary education, allows one to recognise differences in attainment achieved by the two different groups; pupils from economically deprived areas and their peers. This difference in attainment gives an insight into which group does better, thus allowing one to further research the variation in patterns of attainment and to address matters where some groups of young people at school show as attaining below expectation. This literature review will focus on the particular reasons why pupils from economically deprived backgrounds do worse than their peers, in both early years and secondary education. Also, to examine the responses set by the government on tackling this attainment gap. We must also recognise the reasons for these attainment gaps, reasons as to why pupils from economically deprived backgrounds do worse than their peers. One reason will be covered in this literature review, that reason being cultural

Socioeconomic background needs to be considered by teachers because its extent is considerable. The gap between high-income families and low-income families is widening (Grattan, 2014 June). And, at 12.8% (Ewing, 2013), people below the poverty line are a significant portion of the population. While these figures are already high, they do not represent the full scope of the problem which includes families above the poverty line but below the established middle class. A caveat to note here is that advantages and disadvantages exist among all

According to the American Psychological Association (n.d.), “Socioeconomic status (SES) is often measured as a combination of education, income and occupation. It is commonly conceptualized as the social standing or class of an individual or group.” Poverty, lower education level, poor health, among others, are part of having a low SES that affect our society (American Psychological Association, n.d.). Sometimes could be difficult to have equity in our classroom when the SES of the children and the teacher are very different. However, you can get balance by knowing your students and understand them. Students who live in poverty have a lot of problems in their home. According to The American Life (2012), if a

“A lot of our kids don’t believe it if they don’t see it, “well my water doesn’t boil at my house,” because they don’t have heat, it doesn’t make sense to them. If you are able to give them a hands on experience they’re going to be able to say “I remember that one time...” That’s what’s going to fuel them.” That is a direct quote from the Education Director at the Boys and Girls Club. Through an interview, the argument that social stereotypes to struggles of daily life to individuals psychological issues, all solidify the connection and interwoven web of poverty and education. The participant made many connects when talking about education and poverty as her club serves all children, but over 65% are considered

Teaching children of poverty can be very challenging. These children are more likely than their peers to experience poor nutrition, parents with low educational attainment and underemployment, broken families, child abuse and neglect, drug abuse, teen-age pregnancies and high rates of dropping out (Holt & Garcia, 2016). It has been my experience that these students are a little rough around the edges which may cause an educator the inability to see beyond the exterior of the child thus treating them more harshly than their peers. Being employed in a Title 1 school, I have had the pleasure of working with students and families whose major source of income is welfare. They often came from a single-parent household and arrived at school improperly dressed and usually hungry. I found that meeting the child’s basic needs helped them focus on school and took some of the stress off of their parents as they knew their child was in a safe, caring place. One thing that was vital in our classroom was firmness and consistency. Unfortunately, many teachers and schools do not possess the knowledge and experience required for success in these more challenging schools. Impoverished students often do not care about their education nor did their parents seem to care how their children perform in school (Holt & Garcia, 2016). I feel this can be attributed to distraction from just trying to survive. In order to have greater success in the classroom of impoverished students, teachers need to