- Why aren’t there more Deidre Greens?, By Susan Troller, December 2, 2009, Capital Times: “Deidre Green got off to a rough start with a bad case of infant jaundice that overwhelmed her mother. She went to live with her grandmother, who showered her with attention that likely changed the arc of her life. ‘I suppose I got pretty spoiled,’ the UW-Madison freshman says with a laugh. ‘My grandma played with me all the time – she did puzzles with me, read to me. She always told me I was smart, so when I got to school, that was what I expected. It was what she expected, too.’ For Green, a variety of serendipitous factors – her own talent and hard work, supportive mentors in and out of school, a core group of good friends and key opportunities – helped her excel in Madison public schools. An educational pioneer in her family, she intends to also do well in college and then go to law school…”
- Report: Minorities, low-income students lag in college success, By Daniel de Vise, December 3, 2009, Washington Post: “A new report, billed as one of the most comprehensive studies to date of how low-income and minority students fare in college, shows a wide gap in graduation rates at public four-year colleges nationwide and ‘alarming’ disparities in success at community colleges. The analysis, released Thursday, provides a statistical starting point for 24 public higher education systems that pledged two years ago to halve the achievement gap in college access and completion by 2015. Together, the systems represent two-fifths of all undergraduate students in four-year public colleges…”
- Skills gulf near impassable for poor children, By Adele Horin, December 3, 2009, Sydney Morning Herald: “Children from poor families have fallen so far behind their peers by the age of six in language development and other measures they are in danger of never catching up, a study has shown. Researchers tracked 5000 four-year-olds and 5000 infants for two years and found stark differences in the cognitive development of children from different socio-economic backgrounds. The differences were evident by age four. As well, there were marked differences in the health of children from different backgrounds, with the most disadvantaged likely to have poorer general health, sleep problems, and ‘illnesses with wheezes.’ Dr Jan Nicholson, associate professor of psychology at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, said the results were worse than expected for cognitive development. The findings will be presented to the Growing Up in Australia conference this week…”
- How the economy is failing students, By J. Patrick Coolican and Emily Richmond, December 2, 2009, Las Vegas Sun: “The Clark County School District has always struggled with its sky-high population of poor children. The number of homeless students is expected to reach 8,000 by the end of the academic year, a 30 percent increase. And a full 44 percent of the district’s students receive free or reduced-price lunches, a commonly used indicator of childhood poverty. Family poverty, in turn, is correlated with lagging student achievement. Now, the deep recession threatens to make this problem worse, and do so for years to come. According to a study from two economists at the University of California, Davis, a parent’s job loss can increase by 15 percent the likelihood that a student will repeat a grade. This short-term damage, which is particularly acute in families where the breadwinner has just a high school degree, matches up with other data showing the negative long-term effects of poverty on student achievement…”
Poverty-related issues in the news, from the Institute for Research on Poverty