Current Issue 1

Title: High-Achieving Students in Low-Income Families Said Likely to Fall Behind
Publisher: Education Week
Date: September 18, 2007
Author: Catherine Gewertz
Link: http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2007/09/19/04poor.h27.html

Summary:
The educational accountability movement is looking at and studying ways to improve NCLB’s scope and focus. In a study done by Civic Enterprises llc, a Washington-based research and public-policy group, and the Lansdowne, Va.-based Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, found that high-achieving students form low income families by the fifth grade started to show a lag in their education. The study showed that high-achieving students from low income families begin just as strongly as higher income families, but somehow their foundation contend that because students are high-achievers that NCLB tends to feel that they will do well and they continue to focus on the low-achieving student. While the study show that the students who are high achievers form low income families graduate in four years at a 90% rate, it stills does not show that they continue their education past that. What may happen is they go to less selective colleges and tend not to do as well as their high income counterparts. The opposition comes from Michelle M. Fine, a professor of social psychology and urban education at the City University of New York. Although she welcomes the findings of the study she feels the study was too narrow in that it only captured 6 to 7 percent of our country's k-12 students. She would like further studies to try to find out how race holds back low income students because the study revealed that of all races the low-income Chinese student tended to excel in math and remain successful. What is the cause of this?

This article is relevant to integrating technology into the ELA classroom because it not only does not show how technology was used and even if there was any technology in these schools where the low income students attended. I would venture to bet that in a low income neighborhood there is just not that much technology to help integrate students from this economic group into the mainstream. They lag behind because they are not familiar with and do not know how to use the latest technology because they couldn’t afford it and their school districts did not provide them with it. In the formal years students are not introduced as much to many types if technology because they have to learn the basics or reading, writing and spelling. This may account for the fact that there is not much difference between low income and high income students who are high achievers. The differences begin to emerge when one group has access to technology and the other does not.

My perspective on the relevance of my teaching assignment is that I feel lucky and blessed to be teaching at a school that fosters technology. It is a place where students have access to different types of technology and is encouraged to be creative learners. They are encouraged to use technology to help them and others learn. We foster alternative assessment and help other teachers through professional development.

Monique Powell-Thompson