Post by N/A on Jul 26, 2016 11:13:20 GMT -6
Hello everybody,
During the very beginning stages of our research into the difficulties of low income and minority students, our research team divided the possible factors into three areas: outside school environment, inside school environment, psychological/cognitive development of individuals. Jessica and I did our research on the outside of school situational factors. What are “outside of school situational factors?” Our research has encompassed primarily two areas: the role of parents and family in the development of literacy, and community services which have shown promise in combating the achievement gap. According to Hackman and Farah, the socioeconomic status of an individual in their childhood will affect the level of development in later years (Farah et. al.) It is extremely telling that neuroscientists like Hackman and Farah concern themselves with socioeconomic status (SES) when studying cognitive development; in many processes, which otherwise seem independent of environment, SES seems to sneak in (Farah et al.). Genetic expression associated with intelligence, for example, seems to be subtly, but significantly, influenced by SES. Although brain systems for those of high SES and low SES function in very much the same ways, the early development of language seems to depend far more on the natural abilities of low SES children than it does for high SES children. This indicates, according to Farah and Hackman, that these differences in ability can be overcome by the enriched environments of the high SES children (Farah et al.). Inversely, children in high SES families can develop to the highest potential of their genetically endowed intelligence where low SES children will be capped by the availability of nutrients in their environment (Farah et al.). As to the question “why does SES have these effects?” neuroscience can only speculate; however, our research seeks to uncover some of those reasons. Our research has asserted thus far that the following factors play a significant role in the development of literacy (early literacy in particular): parental involvement in the preschool years makes a huge difference, and evolves over time. The resources that a community has for low income families can make a difference for children whose parents need to work full time and may not have as much time to spend with their children.
Parental involvement is a blanket term which refers to a combination of parenting styles and activities which parents engage in with their children in order to promote literacy and communication. Under the subheading ‘why has the achievement gap grown,’ Reardon posits that not only has income gaps (SES as well) resulted in greater polarization in family incomes, but families with high incomes are likely embracing new ideas which encourage them to “intellectually stimulate” young children to prepare them better for school and testing (Reardon 18). Jane Waldfogel, a researcher and professor at Colombia University in New York, states in her article The Role of Out-of-School Factors in the Literacy Problem that parents verbally interacting with their children make “major contributions to vocabulary,” and that a practice called “dialogic reading” is “particularly important” in the development of early literacy (Waldfogel). Data gathered by Betty Hart and Todd Risley, featured in their book, Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experiences of Young American Children, indicates that not only vocabularies of children from different SES’s differed but the way they used the words they knew differed dramatically (Orr). Waldfogel also notes that parent involvement matters once school does begin, indeed one literary review of over 51 studies done by the Southwest Educational development laboratory found strong evidence to support this. Not only was “outreach to parents” shown to be one of the most effective intervention strategies for title 1 students (title 1 students are low income students), but schools which had strong parent teacher associations (PTAs) tended to do better in testing compared to those which did not (Henderson et al. 27, 28). Of course, parent involvement at the grade school level is also associated with income and education levels, “researchers observed that white middle-class families are more comfortable with school staff because they share ‘social and cultural capital’” (Henderson et al. 38). It is clear that parent involvement is a crucial factor in understanding the persisting achievement gap present between low, middle, and high SES children in America. The relationship between parent involvement and student achievement seems to be very well understood, the logical next question is then how does one help parents become more involved?
Part of that answer seems to lie in the services and institutions that are available to parents in the community. There are basically two different types of community services that have been looked at in our research so far: services which reach out into homes and services that supplement the home environment, outside of that environment. Waldfogel concludes her discussion of out of school factors by stating that “summer programs can raise student achievement” and that “home-based […] programs that provide books to children” have had a particularly strong impact on “low income children.” (Waldfogel). A service which provides books for low income students to keep would be considered a service which ‘reaches into the home.’ The Reach Out and Read organization (ROR) is one such service; one article discusses the strategies used by ROR describing the results as “mixed” (Billings). The data from the study has shown that providing books to families is effective in part, however, it is limited by the selection of books that were available and the “cultural capital” gained from the books that were available (Billings). The upshot of the discussion being that programs have difficulty accounting for the “literacy perspectives, values, and experiences” of the different people who they serve. Reach Out and Read is part of a nontraditional form of outreach which uses pediatricians and doctors to give “prescriptions to read” in an ROR supported health clinic; arguably, an ingenious way to get to certain groups of people while they have young children. Some other programs mentioned frequently in education journals, are programs like Head Start, a preschool program which gives low income families an opportunity to put their children into a preschool. Our research revealed little about how these organizations worked or their effectiveness. This is an area where more research could be done on our part.
I want to conclude by pointing out that we have many questions than answers at this point. We know that parental involvement plays a key role in the success of children as they enter school; we also know that the problems that come with low socioeconomic status dampen the cognitive development of children in measurable, albeit mysterious, ways. Finally, we know that changing parental involvement and environmental factors can be achieved through community services. However, it is unclear what kind of community services are most effective at doing this. Is it removing the children from the toxic environment at home, or is it educating parents on the important of engaging in literacy activities with their children? I suspect that all of the former and latter will be needed. Further, this discussion did not include the effects of nutrition, drugs, toxic substances, violence or many other factors on the development of these low income students. These topics might be involved in further research.
Work Cited
(Farah et al.) - www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3575682/
(Reardon) - cepa.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/reardon%20whither%20opportunity%20-%20chapter%205.pdf
(Waldfogel) – Role of Out of School Factors, Future of Children. files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ996186.pdf
(Billings) – Prescriptions to Read: Early Literacy Promotion Outside the Classroom. files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ867301.pdf
(Orr) - literacy.rice.edu/thirty-million-word-gap
(Henderson et al.) – A New Wave of Evidence. The Impact of School, Family, and Community Connections on Student Achievement. files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED474521.pdf
Works explored but not cited
School Readiness: Closing Racial and Ethnic Gaps www.princeton.edu/futureofchildren/publications/docs/15_01_FullJournal.pdf
Barnett, W. S. (2008). Preschool education and its lasting effects: Research and policy implications. Boulder and Tempe: Education and the Public Interest Center & Education Policy Research Unit. 07/26/2016 from epicpolicy.org/publication/preschooleducation
During the very beginning stages of our research into the difficulties of low income and minority students, our research team divided the possible factors into three areas: outside school environment, inside school environment, psychological/cognitive development of individuals. Jessica and I did our research on the outside of school situational factors. What are “outside of school situational factors?” Our research has encompassed primarily two areas: the role of parents and family in the development of literacy, and community services which have shown promise in combating the achievement gap. According to Hackman and Farah, the socioeconomic status of an individual in their childhood will affect the level of development in later years (Farah et. al.) It is extremely telling that neuroscientists like Hackman and Farah concern themselves with socioeconomic status (SES) when studying cognitive development; in many processes, which otherwise seem independent of environment, SES seems to sneak in (Farah et al.). Genetic expression associated with intelligence, for example, seems to be subtly, but significantly, influenced by SES. Although brain systems for those of high SES and low SES function in very much the same ways, the early development of language seems to depend far more on the natural abilities of low SES children than it does for high SES children. This indicates, according to Farah and Hackman, that these differences in ability can be overcome by the enriched environments of the high SES children (Farah et al.). Inversely, children in high SES families can develop to the highest potential of their genetically endowed intelligence where low SES children will be capped by the availability of nutrients in their environment (Farah et al.). As to the question “why does SES have these effects?” neuroscience can only speculate; however, our research seeks to uncover some of those reasons. Our research has asserted thus far that the following factors play a significant role in the development of literacy (early literacy in particular): parental involvement in the preschool years makes a huge difference, and evolves over time. The resources that a community has for low income families can make a difference for children whose parents need to work full time and may not have as much time to spend with their children.
Parental involvement is a blanket term which refers to a combination of parenting styles and activities which parents engage in with their children in order to promote literacy and communication. Under the subheading ‘why has the achievement gap grown,’ Reardon posits that not only has income gaps (SES as well) resulted in greater polarization in family incomes, but families with high incomes are likely embracing new ideas which encourage them to “intellectually stimulate” young children to prepare them better for school and testing (Reardon 18). Jane Waldfogel, a researcher and professor at Colombia University in New York, states in her article The Role of Out-of-School Factors in the Literacy Problem that parents verbally interacting with their children make “major contributions to vocabulary,” and that a practice called “dialogic reading” is “particularly important” in the development of early literacy (Waldfogel). Data gathered by Betty Hart and Todd Risley, featured in their book, Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experiences of Young American Children, indicates that not only vocabularies of children from different SES’s differed but the way they used the words they knew differed dramatically (Orr). Waldfogel also notes that parent involvement matters once school does begin, indeed one literary review of over 51 studies done by the Southwest Educational development laboratory found strong evidence to support this. Not only was “outreach to parents” shown to be one of the most effective intervention strategies for title 1 students (title 1 students are low income students), but schools which had strong parent teacher associations (PTAs) tended to do better in testing compared to those which did not (Henderson et al. 27, 28). Of course, parent involvement at the grade school level is also associated with income and education levels, “researchers observed that white middle-class families are more comfortable with school staff because they share ‘social and cultural capital’” (Henderson et al. 38). It is clear that parent involvement is a crucial factor in understanding the persisting achievement gap present between low, middle, and high SES children in America. The relationship between parent involvement and student achievement seems to be very well understood, the logical next question is then how does one help parents become more involved?
Part of that answer seems to lie in the services and institutions that are available to parents in the community. There are basically two different types of community services that have been looked at in our research so far: services which reach out into homes and services that supplement the home environment, outside of that environment. Waldfogel concludes her discussion of out of school factors by stating that “summer programs can raise student achievement” and that “home-based […] programs that provide books to children” have had a particularly strong impact on “low income children.” (Waldfogel). A service which provides books for low income students to keep would be considered a service which ‘reaches into the home.’ The Reach Out and Read organization (ROR) is one such service; one article discusses the strategies used by ROR describing the results as “mixed” (Billings). The data from the study has shown that providing books to families is effective in part, however, it is limited by the selection of books that were available and the “cultural capital” gained from the books that were available (Billings). The upshot of the discussion being that programs have difficulty accounting for the “literacy perspectives, values, and experiences” of the different people who they serve. Reach Out and Read is part of a nontraditional form of outreach which uses pediatricians and doctors to give “prescriptions to read” in an ROR supported health clinic; arguably, an ingenious way to get to certain groups of people while they have young children. Some other programs mentioned frequently in education journals, are programs like Head Start, a preschool program which gives low income families an opportunity to put their children into a preschool. Our research revealed little about how these organizations worked or their effectiveness. This is an area where more research could be done on our part.
I want to conclude by pointing out that we have many questions than answers at this point. We know that parental involvement plays a key role in the success of children as they enter school; we also know that the problems that come with low socioeconomic status dampen the cognitive development of children in measurable, albeit mysterious, ways. Finally, we know that changing parental involvement and environmental factors can be achieved through community services. However, it is unclear what kind of community services are most effective at doing this. Is it removing the children from the toxic environment at home, or is it educating parents on the important of engaging in literacy activities with their children? I suspect that all of the former and latter will be needed. Further, this discussion did not include the effects of nutrition, drugs, toxic substances, violence or many other factors on the development of these low income students. These topics might be involved in further research.
Work Cited
(Farah et al.) - www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3575682/
(Reardon) - cepa.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/reardon%20whither%20opportunity%20-%20chapter%205.pdf
(Waldfogel) – Role of Out of School Factors, Future of Children. files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ996186.pdf
(Billings) – Prescriptions to Read: Early Literacy Promotion Outside the Classroom. files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ867301.pdf
(Orr) - literacy.rice.edu/thirty-million-word-gap
(Henderson et al.) – A New Wave of Evidence. The Impact of School, Family, and Community Connections on Student Achievement. files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED474521.pdf
Works explored but not cited
School Readiness: Closing Racial and Ethnic Gaps www.princeton.edu/futureofchildren/publications/docs/15_01_FullJournal.pdf
Barnett, W. S. (2008). Preschool education and its lasting effects: Research and policy implications. Boulder and Tempe: Education and the Public Interest Center & Education Policy Research Unit. 07/26/2016 from epicpolicy.org/publication/preschooleducation
