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Why Do High-Poverty Schools Benefit Students?

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High-poverty schools often limit students’ ability to learn because they are typically less academically rigorous. Low-poverty schools offer three times as many Advanced Placement classes as their high-poverty counterparts. This discrimination of academic curriculum against those in poverty during high school greatly limits the opportunity for these students to attend college because they are not as academically competitive compared to their peers with this lack of AP classes. Another crucial difference among these schools is disciplinary problems. Researchers have found that high-poverty classrooms have four times the concentration of academic, attention, and behavioral problems as compared to low-poverty classrooms. This environment of disruptions often decreases student learning and teacher morale, which inhibits quality teachers from wanting to work in these types of schools. Extracurricular activities are found to provide crucial non-cognitive or “soft” skills that cannot be gained in the typical classroom setting such as teamwork, leadership, self-confidence, and positive-attitude. Unfortunately, “poor kids are three times as likely as their nonpoor classmates to participate in neither sports nor clubs,” which greatly impairs their ability to gain these non-cognitive skills …show more content…

Determinants of poverty include having a lack of resources and a larger amount of needs. One of the primary causes is low earning ability, which is attributed to a variety of factors including lack of education, family dysfunction, neighborhood effects, lack of transportation, and poor health. As depicted in the discrimination section, living in poverty, especially attending a high-poverty school, greatly impacts educational opportunity and, therefore, future human

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