- JCPS schools search for success against poverty’s stacked deck, By Chris Kenning, April 23, 2011, Louisville Courier-Journal: “It was just before 7:30 a.m., and youth-resource coordinator Lekiesha Davis was standing by Shawnee High School’s front entrance, exchanging hellos and handing out hugs to the students streaming into the hallway. But her task extended beyond the friendly morning welcome. Davis eyed each child closely for signs of exhaustion, dirty clothes or sullen, depressed glances that might signal a night of sleeplessness, domestic turmoil, or lack of food, electricity or supervision – problems that kids cart around every day in one of Louisville’s poorest neighborhoods, piling on to a lifetime of disadvantages that have already left them years behind their middle-income peers academically…”
- Solutions to high-poverty schools may lie outside the classroom, By Chris Kenning, April 23, 2011, Louisville Courier-Journal: “The solution to achieving success in America’s high-poverty schools must reach beyond the classroom, most educators say. That’s why several urban districts have turned their focus to finding their students social support -such as counseling, nutrition and after-school care -to help turn around their failing high-poverty schools. So far, however, many of those efforts have resulted in mix results – with no clear formula for lasting success, experts say…”
- Cincinnati’s Oyler Elementary finds winning formula to fight poverty, By Chris Kenning, April 23, 2011, Louisville Courier-Journal: “In the late 1990s, many of Cincinnati’s urban public schools were sliding into decline: Enrollments had shrunk, poverty had risen, achievement had fallen and voters were rejecting higher tax levies. Perhaps nowhere was that decline felt more than Oyler Elementary, tucked into Lower Price Hill, a poverty-stricken industrial neighborhood along the Ohio River built in the 1800s as factory housing by German immigrants. More than 80 percent of Oyler’s students never made it to tenth grade. It’s parents weren’t involved, and resources were scarce…”
Poverty-related issues in the news, from the Institute for Research on Poverty