Re: Poverty, Family Life and Academic Performance

[Horace B Lucido <hbl04@csufresno.edu>]

Go to the 2007 UNICEF report on: A comprehensive assessment of the lives and well-being of children and adolescents in the economically advanced nations ( 21 ): http://www.unicef-irc.org/publications/pdf/rc7_eng.pdf
There you will find that, assessed on six dimensions of child well being, the United States is next to last ( United Kindom holds that down ). How can we have great expectations of 'competing in the global economy' and all that crap when we cannot even take care of our future- we are dead last in children's health and safety?
With all of our riches, how can this be possible? What policies and practices do we have to employ to make significant changes in how we care for our children? If we cannot satisfy their basic needs, how can we effectively educate?
We have begun to wake up and see that we need to care for our planet if we plan on surviving, so why is this child care issue so difficult to see? If those of us who are the 'haves' cannot empower the 'have nots' we are fighting a loosing battle in education and accross the board.
Rog
Rog ( Horace ) Lucido, Physics Instructor, Ret. 
Program Evaluator 
Adjunct Faculty, Fresno Pacific University 
Educational Consultant 
Educators and Parents Against Testing Abuse ( EPATA ) 
Assessment Reform Network Central Valley Coordinator 
Phone: 559-277-1312 
Cell: 559-355-4215 
email: lucid4@cvip.net 


----- Original Message ----- 
From: Bob Schaeffer <bobschaeffer@earthlink.net> 
Date: Saturday, December 8, 2007 6:46 am 
Subject: [arn-l] Poverty, Family Life and Academic Performance 
To: ARN Main List <arn-l@interversity.org>, arn2-strategy <arn2-strategy@yahoogroups.com>, ARN State <ARN-state@yahoogroups.com>, CARE List <care@yahoogroups.com>, FCARForum@yahoogroups.com 

> IN GAPS AT SCHOOL, WEIGHING FAMILY LIFE 
> New York Times "Parenting" Column -- December 9, 2007 
> by Michael Winerip 
> <> 
> The federal No Child Left Behind law of 2002 rates schools based 
> on how 
> students perform on state standardized tests, and if too many 
> children 
> score poorly, the school is judged as failing. 
> 
> But how much is really the school’s fault? 
> 
> A new study by the Educational Testing Service — which develops 
> and 
> administers more than 50 million standardized tests annually, 
> including 
> the SAT — concludes that an awful lot of those low scores can be 
> explained by factors that have nothing to do with schools. The 
> study, 
> “The Family: America’s Smallest School,” suggests that a lot of 
> the 
> failure has to do with what takes place in the home, the level of 
> poverty and government’s inadequate support for programs that 
> could make 
> a difference, like high-quality day care and paid maternity leave. 
> 
> The E.T.S. researchers took four variables that are beyond the 
> control 
> of schools: The percentage of children living with one parent; the 
> percentage of eighth graders absent from school at least three 
> times a 
> month; the percentage of children 5 or younger whose parents read 
> to 
> them daily, and the percentage of eighth graders who watch five or 
> more 
> hours of TV a day. Using just those four variables, the 
> researchers were 
> able to predict each state’s results on the federal eighth-grade 
> reading 
> test with impressive accuracy. 
> 
> “Together, these four factors account for about two-thirds of the 
> large 
> differences among states,” the report said. In other words, the 
> states 
> that had the lowest test scores tended to be those that had the 
> highest 
> percentages of children from single-parent families, eighth 
> graders 
> watching lots of TV and eighth graders absent a lot, and the 
> lowest 
> percentages of young children being read to regularly, regardless 
> of 
> what was going on in their schools. 
> 
> Which gets to the heart of the report: by the time these children 
> start 
> school at age 5, they are far behind, and tend to stay behind all 
> through high school. There is no evidence that the gap is being 
> closed. 
> “Kids start school from platforms of different heights and 
> teachers 
> don’t have a magic wand they can wave to get kids on the same 
> platform,” 
> said Richard J. Coley, director of E.T.S.’s policy information 
> center 
> and co-author of the report with Paul E. Barton, a senior 
> researcher. 
> “If we’re really interested in raising overall levels of 
> achievement and 
> in closing the achievement gap, we need to pay as much attention 
> to the 
> starting line as we do to the finish line.” 
> 
> What’s interesting about the report — which combines E.T.S. 
> studies with 
> research on families from myriad sources, including the Census 
> Bureau 
> and Child Trends research center — is how much we know, how often 
> government policy and parental behavior does not reflect that 
> knowledge, 
> and how stacked the odds are against so many children. (The study 
> is at 
> www.ets.org/familyreport.) 
> 
> Being raised by a single parent in itself steepens the odds 
> considerably. Keep in mind that findings are based on statistical 
> averages, and we all know people raised by a single parent who 
> have 
> thrived; I count seven nieces, nephews and cousins in my own 
> extended 
> family. But on average, the child with a single parent is 2.5 
> times more 
> likely to repeat a grade. That child on average scores a third of 
> a 
> standard deviation lower on tests — the difference between 500 and 
> 463 
> on the SAT. 
> 
> And the demographics are not promising. In 1980, 77 percent of 
> American 
> children lived with two parents compared with 68 percent today. 
> For 
> black children the numbers are more stark: 42 percent lived with 
> both 
> parents in 1980, versus 35 percent today. In contrast, in Japan, 
> 92 
> percent of children live with both parents. 
> 
> Single parents on average will have less income and less time for 
> a 
> child, given all the demands. While 11 percent of white children 
> live in 
> poverty, 36 percent of black children and 29 percent of Hispanic 
> children are poor. Half of black children live in families where 
> no 
> parent has year-round full-time employment, according to the analysis. 
> 
> By age 4 the average child in a professional family hears about 35 
> million more words than a child in a poor family. While 62 percent 
> of 
> kindergartners from the richest 20 percent are read to at home 
> every 
> day, 36 percent of kindergartners in the poorest 20 percent are 
> read to 
> daily. 
> 
> The report also found that 24 percent of white eighth graders 
> spend at 
> least four hours in front of TV on a weekday compared with 59 
> percent of 
> black eighth graders. 
> 
> These issues are intertwined in complex ways. A child watching 
> five 
> hours of TV can be a case of neglect or it may mean a single 
> parent is 
> trying to make ends meet by working two jobs and is not around to 
> supervise. Absence rates are higher for poor children, whose 
> families 
> are more transient than wealthier families. 
> 
> But whether it is a parent’s fault or the societal pressures on 
> the 
> parent, the results are hard on the child: The average scores for 
> black 
> and Hispanic children on reading and math assessments at the start 
> of 
> kindergarten are 20 percent lower than for white children. 
> 
> And when those children are ready to apply to college, one of the 
> surest 
> predictors of how they will perform on the SAT is their family’s 
> income: 
> for every $10,000 of additional family income, the SAT score 
> climbs an 
> average of about 10 points, according to statistics from the 
> College Board. 
> 
> The report describes how much we rely on child care from an early 
> age — 
> half of 2-year-olds are in some kind of nonparental care — and how 
> much 
> worse that care is for poor and minority children. According to 
> the 
> report, poor children are twice as likely to be in low quality 
> care as 
> middle and upper class children, black children more than twice as 
> likely as white children. 
> 
> And it is black families who rely on day care most: 63 percent, 
> compared 
> with 49 percent of whites and 44 percent of Asians. Says Mr. 
> Coley, “Our 
> day care system may be reinforcing the gap rather than closing it.” 
> 
> Another way to support parents of young children is paid leave 
> when a 
> child is born, which is routine in most of the world, but not in 
> the 
> United States. 
> 
> According to Dr. Jody Heymann, director of the Institute of Health 
> and 
> Social Policy at McGill University, 172 of the 176 countries she 
> surveyed this year offer guaranteed paid leave to women who have 
> just 
> had babies. The four that do not? Liberia, Papua New Guinea, 
> Swaziland 
> and the United States. 
> 
> The United States guarantees 12 weeks of unpaid leave under the 
> federal 
> Family and Medical Leave Act, but many parents do not qualify for 
> even 
> that, since employers with fewer than 50 workers are exempt. 
> 
> To better support young families, California in 2004 became the 
> first 
> state to pass a law providing paid leave for new parents. A few 
> more 
> states, including New Jersey and New York, are considering similar 
> legislation. 
> 
> Mr. Coley believes this kind of government support is necessary if 
> we 
> are serious about closing the gap. “We don’t seem to get it,” he 
> said. 
> “Or maybe we think we can’t afford it, I don’t know.” 
> 
> http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/09/nyregion/nyregionspecial2/09Rparenting.html 
>