Children in Poverty: Why are they not Successful in School?

1. Children in Poverty: Why are they not Successful in School? By: Roberta Lattin

2. Facts About Childhood Poverty • Children that experience poverty during their childhood are substantially more likely to be poor as adults. • About 1/3 of all children experience poverty at some point during their childhood. • The more time a child spends in poverty the less likely they are to graduate high school. • Children whose mothers have never been married or have divorced are two to three times more likely to live in poverty. • African American and Hispanic children are more likely to experience poverty than White children. • Children that live in low-income neighborhoods are more likely to experience behavioral problems than children living in higher-income neighborhoods. • Children in poverty are more likely to be referred for learning disabilities, behavior problems, ADHD, and social/emotional problems and less likely to be referred for AIG .

3. Childhood Poverty is a Growing Epidemic

4. Childhood Poverty in the United States • Nearly 14 million children in the United States (19% of all children) live in families with incomes below the federal poverty level ($22,050 a year for a family of four). • Research illustrates that, on average, families need an income of about twice that level to cover basic expenses. • The poverty rate in the United States is substantially higher than that of most other major Western industrialized nations. • Across the states, child poverty rates range from 7% in New Hampshire to 28 percent in Mississippi. *Based on information from 2008

5. Poverty Affects Children of Every Race

6. Poverty Affects Children In Our State

7. Childhood Poverty in North Carolina • 20% (452,000) of children in North Carolina live in families with incomes below the federal poverty level ($22,050 a year for a family of four). • 73% (330,220) of children in poverty live with a single parent. • 24% (181,249) of children living in poverty are under the age of 6. • 21% (124,928) of children living in poverty live in urban areas. • 16% (94,179) of children living in poverty live in suburban areas. • 27% (197,091) of children living in poverty live in rural areas. • 33% (77,260) of children living in poverty are children of immigrant parents. • 19% (374,023) of children living in poverty are children of native-born parents. * Based on information from 2008

8. Children in Cabarrus County

9. Children in Poverty in Cabarrus County

10. Childhood Poverty in Cabarrus County • 14.4% (6,244) of children in Cabarrus County live in poverty. • 14.4% do not have health insurance. • 0.4% of children ages 12-36 months have elevated blood lead levels. • 3.5% of children ages 0-3 are enrolled in early intervention services. • 49.4% of economically disadvantaged children passed both the reading and math End-of-Grade tests (2008-2009) compared to 78.9% of children that are not economically disadvantaged.

11. Education Makes a Difference

12. “The educational level of mothers is the most important influence on the educational attainment of children.” *Lewis, Anne C. “Breaking the Cycle of Poverty.”Phi Delta Kappan. November 1996. Volume 78. Number3. p. 186.

13. Facts About Poverty and School Success • Children in poverty are twice as likely to repeat a grade. • Children in poverty more frequently change schools. • Chronic health problems cause children in poverty to miss more school. • Schools that serve low-income students have fewer resources. • Schools that serve low-income students are located in low-quality facilities. • Schools that serve low-income students have a harder time recruiting highly qualified teachers. • Schools that serve low-income students face greater challenges in meeting students’ needs. • Schools that serve low-income students experience lower levels of parent involvement. • Poor children are less likely to grow up in homes that are cognitively stimulating and more likely to be raised by parents with fewer years of education. • Many children in poverty enter school significantly behind their classmates academically, socially, and physically, which puts them at greater risk for dropping out of school, retention, and referral to special education. • A $3,000/yr. lower family income in early childhood is associated with 17% lower productivity in adulthood, whereas lower income later in childhood appears to have little affect on later productivity.

14. Factors of Poverty that Impede School Success • Low birth-weight and non-genetic prenatal influences which often attribute to low height/weight ratios. • Inadequate medical, dental, and vision care which sometimes leads to chronic illnesses (usually due to a lack of health insurance). • Food insecurities and substandard nutritional status. • Environmental pollutants (mercury, lead, smog). • Instability and family stress (homelessness, numerous moves, child abuse). • Neighborhood characteristics (violence, drugs, sexual offenders). • High teenage pregnancy rate (three times more prevalent). • Delays in cognitive development and the ability to learn. • Higher probability of behavioral, social, and emotional problems. • The “Hidden Rules” that children of poverty bring with them conflict with the middle-class rules that schools employ.

15. Low Birth-Weight and Non-Genetic Prenatal Influences • African Americans are twice as likely as Whites to have a low birth-weight child and are 270% more likely to have a very low birth-weight child. • Low birth-weight babies have a low Apgar score, which is a composite based on five variables measured immediately after birth: Appearance, Grimace, Activity, and Respiration. • Low Apgar scores indicate various problems that often include neurological damage. • Many low birth-weight babies display cognitive and behavioral difficulties soon after birth, especially memory. • Many birth-weigh related deficits do not show up until the child begins school. • Children of LBW are 2.6 times more likely to display Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). • The correlation between birth weight and IQ (or gestation time and IQ) is about .70. • Intrauterine exposure to alcohol, cigarettes and cocaine are related to reduced head circumference, reduced cortical gray matter, and reduced total brain volume, as measured by MRIs taken at school age. • The greater the number of exposures to the different substances, the greater the loss of brain volume and cortical gray matter. • Maternal obesity is more prevalent in women of poverty and often leads to diabetes which can cause serious birth defects, preterm births, and growth retardation. • Women of poverty often experience more stress and anxiety during pregnancy which may lead to low birth-weight, sleep disturbances, temperament and attention disorders, and displays of inappropriate behavior at school age.

16. Inadequate Health Care • Children with inadequate health care often experience more frequent and/or longer-term illnesses. • These health issues which are often associated with poverty increase the absenteeism rate of children in poor families. • Excessive absences make it even more difficult for children who enter school already behind to make up any learning gaps that may exist. • Untreated dental cavities affects a child’s behavior and interferes with learning. • Children without insurance who fail a vision screening usually never see an eye doctor. • Children in poverty are six times more likely to be in poorer health and experience a wider variety of illnesses and injuries, compared to other children. • Children in poverty demonstrate poor motor skills (gross and fine); exhibit low height and weight for age, are at greater risk for accidents and injuries; are more likely to have physical impairments that restrict their activities; and are more likely to engage in risky and health-compromising behavior such as smoking and early sexual activity.

17. Food Insecurities • In 2007 food insecurity was recorded in more than 10% (13 million) of U.S. households. • About 1/3 (4.7 million) of these households or just over 4% of all U.S. households, were classified as having very low food security. • Rates of food insecurity are 3.4 times higher in households with incomes below the official poverty line; 2.7 times higher in households with children headed by single women; 2 times higher among black households; and almost 2 times higher among Hispanic households. • Babies and toddlers with inadequate diets are at risk for poor health, increased hospitalizations, and developmental delays, which can jeopardize their mental and physical readiness for school. • Psychologists, nutritionists, and physicians agree that there is strong evidence that nutrition is linked with school behavior and achievement. • There is no “safe” level of inadequate nutrition for healthy, growing children. • Undernutrition along with environmental factors associated with poverty can permanently retard physical growth, brain development, and cognitive functioning. • Low nutritional intake typically results in low motivation, attentiveness, and emotional expression, which can negatively affect critical developmental processes, such as parent-child attachment and communication, play and learning.

18. Environmental Pollutants • Many poor communities are close to medical and municipal waste incinerators and to coal-fired power plants which emit mercury into the environment. • Mercury is known to be a neurological poison that can cause a wide variety of symptoms that resemble ADHD when they occur in school children, including hyperactivity and loss of focus. • Lead is found in many older homes in poor communities. • Lead exposure causes neurological damage, learning disabilities, lower IQs, speech and hearing problems, and behavioral problems such as attention deficit disorder and hyperactivity, all of which are long-term problems that may not be reversible. • Toxic pesticides are found in agricultural workers and their families, who usually live in poverty. • Smog effects are usually largest in the inner cities, where the poor live in the greatest numbers. • Dangerous air quality can cause asthma and other respiratory problems in children.

19. Family Stress and Instability • When the economy is bad and unemployment rises, reports of child abuse and neglect increase. • It is estimated that some form of serious family violence occurs annually in 10-20% of U.S. families. • Family violence occurs much more frequently among the poor than the middle class or wealthy. • The number one killer of African American women between 15 and 34 years old is homicide at the hands of a current or former partner. • Domestic violence impairs the ability of parents to nurture the development of their children. • Children that experience family violence are more likely to display social and emotional problems such as: aggressive behavior, depression, anxiety, decreased social competence, and diminished academic performance. • Between 3 million and 10 million children witness family violence each year. • Children exposed to violence suffer symptoms similar to posttraumatic stress disorder (increased rates of bed-wetting or nightmares, and they are at greater risk than their peers of having allergies, asthma, gastrointestinal problems, headaches and flu.)

20. Neighborhoods • Studies have shown that students from different class neighborhoods that have an identical prior achievement background, an identical family background, and an identical school membership, displayed differences in educational achievement estimated to be a difference of between the 10th and the 90th percentile on an achievement test. • Neighborhoods independently have significant effects on achievement, usually by weakening parental influences on their children. • Many parents have their decent family values undermined by neighborhood youth cultures that are oppositional, dysfunctional, or both. • Neighborhoods affect the verbal achievements of children. • The size and the linguistic competencies of members of the speech community in impoverished communities may be restricted. • Widespread distrust, fear of violence, and isolating physical environments, public communication patterns for both adults and youth in impoverished communities with low levels of collective efficacy are likely to be severely inhibited. • Poor neighborhoods expose children to more pollutants which increase the likelihood of childhood illnesses and high absenteeism rates.

21. Teen Pregnancies • Teenage birth rates are higher among teens in poverty. • Poor teens give birth at three times the rate of other teens. • Teen mothers are more likely to drop out of high school and are less likely to receive a college degree. • The children of teenage mothers are more likely to perform poorly in school. • The children of teenage mothers are 50% more likely to repeat a grade, and have lower performance on standardized tests.

22. Cognitive Development • Children in poverty are more likely to experience low cognitive scores, learning disabilities, low verbal skills, and other health problems. • Before starting kindergarten, the average cognitive scores of children of high socio-economic status (SES) are 60% higher than those of low SES. • Family SES and early language development are positively related to later language development, academic achievement, and school success. • First graders from families who are not poor are more proficient in understanding words in context and in performing multiplication and division than first graders from poor families. • Children in poverty are 1.3 times more likely to have developmental delays or learning disabilities than other children. • Children in poverty are more likely to experience school “unreadiness” which affects more than 40% of American children that are not prepared for kindergarten. • More than 1/3 of children in poverty enter kindergarten already behind their peers and by fourth grade more than 50% of these children will not meet the state standard for reading.. • School success is most vulnerable to the effects of poverty during the preschool years.. • A child’s rate of academic achievement decreases the longer a child is in poverty, with deficits in verbal, mathematical, and reading skills that may be two to three times larger than higher SES children.

23. Illustration of the Affects Poverty has on Cognitive Development Average mathematics scores of U. S. fourth grade students by percentage of students in public school eligible for free and reduced lunch.

24. Affects of Poverty on Brain Development Poverty affects three factors in brain development: the child’s relationships, learning resources, and stress. Children develop in an environment full of relationships including their immediate and extended families, caregivers, neighbors, and community. Poverty can compromise these relationships. Brains are built from the bottom up, with simple skills and circuits forming a foundation in early childhood for more complex circuits and skills that are built later. The factors that are needed to create a strong structural design of brain circuitry are abundant, safe opportunities to learn and active, reciprocal relationships with adults that can be described as “serve and return” interactions. When children receive few opportunities for positive serve-and-return interactions, which occurs when the responses from adults are sporadic, inappropriate, or missing entirely, they are not getting the stimulation their brains need to develop in a healthy way. Parents in poverty are usually struggling to make ends meet and are less able to provide those experiences for their children, whether through having the choice to stay at home or by having access to high-quality child care. Families in poverty are also less able to afford books, educational trips, and other learning resources which could improve their child’s cognitive development. Scientist agree that exposure to excessive adversity, or “toxic stress,” can disturb the development of a child’s brain. Toxic stress occurs when a child does not experience consistent supportive relationships, and often leads to lifelong problems with learning, behavior, and both physical and mental health. Excessively stressful conditions early in childhood are linked to numerous changes in the brain that impede healthy development.

25. Teachers Can Help Build Cognitive Strategies • Use graphic organizers. • Identify methods of having a systematic approach to the data/text. • Establish goal-setting and procedural self-talk. • Teach conceptual frameworks as part of the content. • Use a kinesthetic approach to teaching. • Use rubrics. • Teach the structure of language. • Teach students to make questions. • Sort relevant from irrelevant cues. • Teach mental models.

26. Social, Emotional, and Behavioral Problems • Key risk factors for poor social-emotional development in children living in poverty include: persistence of poverty, single-parent status, maternal educational level, English proficiency, parent psychosocial problems, homelessness, chronic illness, neighborhood violence, and substance abuse. • Emotional, social, and behavioral problems in children of poverty are often due to an increased exposure to parental depression, domestic violence, substance abuse, and alcoholism. • Poor children with depressed mothers may also suffer from aggression, problems forming relationships with other children, trust issues, and future vulnerability to substance abuse. • Children in long-term poverty often experience heightened feelings of anxiety, unhappiness, and dependence. • The economic stress of poverty which often elevates parental stress, increases parents’ tendency to discipline their children more harshly and inconsistently while ignoring their children’s needs for physical and emotional support and comfort contributes to poor social-emotional development in children. • A child’s ability to create and maintain early, important relationships with parents, peers, and teachers upon entering school is a strong predictor of school success. • Teachers can also contribute to poor children’s negative school experience by paying less attention to poor children and ignoring developmental and behavioral problems that need to be addressed.

27. Characteristics of Children in Poverty Displayed at School • Disorganized, frequently lose papers, don’t have signatures, etc. • Have numerous reasons why something is missing, or the paper is gone, etc. • Don’t do homework. • Physically aggressive. • Like to entertain. • Only see part of what is on a page. • Only do part of assignments. • Don’t seem to know how to get started (no procedural self-talk). • Unable to monitor their own behavior. • Laugh when disciplined. • Will only do work for a teacher they like. • Tell stories in the casual-register structure. • Don’t know or use middle-class courtesies. • Dislike authority. • Talk back and are extremely participatory. * Taken from: A Framework for Understanding Poverty by Ruby Payne

28. Ruby Payne’s Suggestions for Teachers

29. Ruby Payne’s Suggestions for Teachers

30. School Support Systems for Children in Poverty • School wide homework support: schools provide tutors to assist children with homework during the school day or after school. • Supplemental school wide reading programs: schools provide programs to encourage children to read. • Looping: schools keep students with the same teacher for two or more years (long term relationships are built between teachers, students, and their families). • Teach Coping Strategies: this can be done in small groups with guidance counselors or one-on-one. • School wide scheduling: schools place students in subgroups based on ability for reading and math. • Direct-teaching of classroom skills: teachers teach students simple classroom rules (where to put your things, appropriate behavior during group time, etc.). • Daily goal-setting and procedural self-talk: goals would be written and reviewed at the end of each day; procedural self-talk would be written down for children to follow step-by-step when needed. • Team interventions: all teachers of a child meet with the child’s parents to discuss plans to help the student become more successful.

31. Reduce the Effects of Childhood Poverty • Decrease the rate of low birth-weight children. • Provide programs to reduce drug and alcohol abuse. • Decrease pollutants in our cites and move people away from toxic sites. • Provide universal and free medical care for all American citizens. • Provide food programs to ensure that no one experiences food insecurity and malnutrition. • Provide programs to reduce the rates of family violence in low-income households. • Provide programs to improve mental health services among the poor. • Provide equitable distribution of low-income housing throughout communities. • Reduce both the mobility and absenteeism rates of children. • Provide high-quality preschools for all children. • Provide summer programs for children in poverty in order to reduce summer losses in their academic achievement.

32. Payne’s Key Points to Remember • Poverty is relative. • Poverty occurs in all races and in all countries. • Economic class is a continuous line, not a clear-cut distinction. • Generational poverty and situational poverty are different. • An individual brings with him/her the hidden rules of the class in which he/she was raised. • Schools and businesses operate from middle-class norms and use the hidden rules of middle-class. • For our students to be successful, we must understand their hidden rules and teach them the rules that will make them successful at school and at work. • We can neither excuse students nor scold them for not knowing; as educators we must teach them and provide support, insistence, and expectations. • To move from poverty to middle class or middle class to wealth, an individual must give up relationships for achievement (at least for some period of time). • Two things that help one move out of poverty are education and relationships. • Four reasons one leaves poverty are: It’s too painful to stay, a vision or goal, a key relationship, or a special talent or skill.

33. Bibliography Armstrong, A. (2010). Myths of Poverty: Realities for Students. Education Digest, 75, 49-53. Berliner, David C. (2009). Poverty and Potential: Out-of-School Factors and School Success. Boulder and Tempe: Education and the Public Interest Center & Education Policy Research Unit. Retrieved June 10, 2010 from: http://epicpolicy.org/publication/poverty-and-potential. Cabarrus County. (2009). Retrieved June 08, 2010 from Education First NC School Report Cards: http://www.ncreportcards.org. Child Poverty in North Carolina: A Preventable Epidemic. (2008). Retrieved June 10, 2010 from National Center for Children in Poverty: http://www.ncchild.org. Children and the Long-Term Effects of Poverty. (2004). Retrieved June 12, 2010 from: The Connecticut Commission on Children:http://www.cga.ct.gov/coc/pdfs/poverty/2004_poverty_report.pdf. Children's Index. (2009). Retrieved June 10, 2010 from National Center for Children in Poverty: http://www.ncchild.org. Family Poverty and Its Implications for School Success. (2004). Retrieved June 12, 2010 from University of Cincinnati Evaluation Services Center: http://www.uc.edu/EvaluationServices/completed/Family%20Poverty%20and%20School%20Success%20June%209%20final%20version.pdf. Payne, R. K. (2005). A Framework for Understanding Poverty. Highlands, TX: aha! Process, Inc. Profile for Cabarrus County. (2009). Retrieved June 06, 2010 from Kids Count Data Center: http://datacenter.kidscount.org. U. S. Census Bureau. (2009). Retrieved June 10, 2010 from U. S. Census Bureau: http://quickfacts.census.gov.

34. This project work is original and I have not submitted it for credit in any other course at ECU or any other higher education institution.