Poverty Impact

This analysis compares National Free and Reduce-Price School Lunch Program Eligibility data with NAEP Reading and Math score data to examine correlations between poverty and student performance.

As rich and poor families have increasingly moved into separate communities, the character of neighborhood life in the United States has changed. This paper attempt to outlined several concrete steps to reduce economic segregation, rebuild communities, and narrow the opportunity gap. 

This report reviews the research and strategies for achieving high levels of student performance in high poverty schools.

This study examined how uncertainty, both about students and the context in which they are taught, remains a persistent condition of teachers’ work in high-poverty, urban schools. Their conclusion: Traditional public schools are open systems and require systematic organizational responses to address the uncertainty introduced by their environments. Uncoordinated individual efforts alone are not sufficient to meet the needs of students in high-poverty urban communities.

This study examined the complex linkages between teacher quality and socio-economic-based disparities in student achievement. The gap in teacher quality appears to arise from the lower payoff to teacher qualifications in high-poverty schools. In particular, the experience-productivity relationship is weaker in high-poverty schools and is not related to teacher mobility patterns. Recruiting teachers with good credentials into high-poverty schools may be insufficient to narrow the teacher quality gap. Policies that promote the long-term productivity of teachers in challenging high-poverty schools appear key.

The fact that well-qualified teachers are inequitably distributed to students in the United
States has received growing public attention. By every measure of qualifications—
certification, subject matter background, pedagogical training, selectivity of college attended,
test scores, or experience—less-qualified teachers tend to be found in schools serving
greater numbers of low-income and minority students.

One of the most critical issues facing K-12 education is the impact that poverty has on school performance.  This study first examines school performance using traditional metrics for school poverty levels (percent of student body that qualify for free and reduced lunch: FRL) and school performance (school achievement based on the aggregate test scores of its student body).  The results support prior research documenting the negative relationship between the level of poverty in a school and student achievement (the higher the poverty the lower the achievement).  However, when replacing the student achievement metric with a student growth metric, the relationship is significantly different.

As Secretary of Education from 1993 to 2001, Richard Riley had serious concerns about out-of-field teaching. The practice— which places in core academic classes instructors who have neither certification nor a major in the subject field taught— just didn’t make sense to him.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of a classroom-teacher-delivered reading intervention for struggling readers called the Targeted Reading Intervention (TRI), designed particularly for kindergarten and first-grade teachers and their struggling students in rural, low-wealth communities. 

Districts across the country are facing severe shortages of teachers—especially in certain
subjects (math, science, special education, career and technical education and bilingual
education) and in specific schools (urban, rural, high-poverty, high-minority and low-
achieving).

This report provides extensive data on the high-poverty schools and the students who attend them. It also provides information on principals, teachers, and staff who work in them.

The Bridging the Word Gap Research Network conducted a review of literature to identify effective interventions to facilitate the communication development of young children in hopes of identifying ways to reduce the well-documented word gap among children associated with socio-economic class. As part of this effort, we focused on the ways in which caregivers (teachers, parents, and others) were taught to implement evidence-based practices for facilitating language learning and use.

In this article, multiple-baseline across participants designs were used to evaluate the impact of a precision teaching (PT) program, within a Tier 2 Response to Intervention framework, targeting fluency in foundational reading skills with at risk kindergarten readers. From the outcomes of the multilevel model, PT can be considered as a promising Tier 2 intervention to increase reading fluency with individuals who are at risk of reading failure.

Rich opportunities for learning are important for all teachers. Whatever expertise they
acquire in their pre-service program, teachers continue to need ongoing professional learning in order to meet additional responsibilities and the evolving needs of their students and schools. Continuous learning is especially vital for teachers who work in the dynamic and demanding environments of high-poverty, urban schools.

Teacher teams are increasingly common in urban schools. In this study, we analyze teachers’ responses to teams in six high-poverty schools. Teachers used two criteria to assess teams’ goodness of fit in meeting the demands of their work: whether their teams helped them teach better and whether the team contributed to a better school.

Teach For America (TFA) is a nonprofit organization that seeks to improve educational opportunities for disadvantaged students by recruiting and training teachers to work in low income schools. The program uses a rigorous screening process to select college graduates and professionals with strong academic backgrounds and
leadership experience and asks them to commit to teach for two years in high-needs schools. 

Using longitudinal data on teachers, we estimate hazard models that identify the impact of this differential pay by comparing turnover patterns before and after the program’s implementation, across eligible and ineligible categories of teachers, and across eligible and barely-ineligible schools.

This study examined a teacher incentive policy in Washington State that awards a financial bonus to National Board Certified Teachers who teach in high-poverty schools. It found that the bonus policy increased the proportion of National Board Certified Teachers in bonus-eligible schools, through increases in both the number of existing NBCTs hired and the probability that teachers at these schools apply for certification. However, it do not find evidence that the bonus resulted in detectible effects on student test achievement.

A full canon of empirical literature shows that students who are African American, Latinx, or American Indian/Alaskan Native, and students who are male, diagnosed with disabilities, or from low socioeconomic backgrounds are more likely to experience exclusionary discipline practices in U.S. schools. Though there is a growing commitment to mitigating discipline disparities through alternative programming, it is clear that disproportionality in the application of harmful discipline practices persists.

America's capacity to survive as a democracy relies not only on the provision of free public education, although that is a crucial foundation; it rests on the kind of education that arms people with an intelligence capable of free and independent thought. In addition, it rests on an education that helps people to build common ground across diverse experiences and ideas.

This book discusses findings and recommendations of the Committee on Minority Representation in Special Education of the National Research Council. 

Recruiting high quality employees is one of the key functions of public human resource managers and a critical component of effective public service delivery. This is particularly true in education but little is known about public sector or teacher hiring patterns in areas that are predominantly rural, poor, and isolated from other locales.

The teacher shortage in the nation's public schools—particularly in our high-poverty schools—
is a crisis for the teaching profession and a serious problem for the entire education system.
It harms students and teachers and contributes to the opportunity and achievement gaps
between students in high-poverty schools and their more affluent peers.

In this study, researchers studied the ways in which daily exchanges between a parent and child shape language and vocabulary development. After four years these differences in parent-child interactions produced significant discrepancies in not only children’s knowledge, but also their skills and experiences with children from high-income families being exposed to 30 million more words than children from families on welfare.

This study examined the relationships between poverty and a school's academic performance (both student achievement and growth).

This report provides descriptive information on traditional public, charter, and private school principals over the period of 1987-88 through 2011-12. It includes comparative data on number of principals, gender, race/ethnicity, age, advance degrees, principal experience, teaching experience, salaries, hours worked, focus of work, experience and tenure at current schools, etc.

The document contains the final report of a project to determine the factors that account for disproportionate representation of minority students in special education programs, especially programs for mentally retarded students; and to identify placement criteria for practices that do not affect minority students disproportionately

The COVID-19 pandemic is harming health, social and material well-being of children worldwide, with the poorest children, including homeless children and children in detention, hit hardest. School closures, social distancing and confinement increase the risk of poor nutrition among children, their exposure to domestic violence, increase their anxiety and stress, and reduce access to vital family and care services.

This report investigates the possibility that the characteristics and conditions of schools are behind the teacher shortage crisis. The data indicate that school staffing problems are not primarily due to teacher shortages, in the sense of an insufficient supply of qualified teachers. Rather, the data indicate that school staffing problems are primarily due to a “revolving door” – where large numbers of qualified teachers depart from their jobs long before retirement. The data show that much of the turnover is accounted for by teacher job dissatisfaction and teachers pursuing other jobs. Significant numbers of those who depart from their jobs in these schools report that they are hampered by inadequate support from the school administration, too many intrusions on classroom teaching time, student discipline problems and limited faculty input into school decision-making.

In this study, the authors examined whether students of different racial-ethnic groups vary in attachment and engagement and whether properties of schools (eg, racial-ethnic composition) influence these outcomes over
and above individual characteristics. 

This study examined the development of literacy in one elementary school with a large minority, low socioeconomic status population. The reading and writing development of 54 children was followed as they progressed from first through fourth grade

This analysis examines the influence of poverty on student reading performance across grade levels.

his overview looks at the best available evidence on chronic student absenteeism in the context of the scale, the impact, impact multipliers, and interventions. 

This essay describes the principles of Direct Instruction design and delivery used to establish clear, unambiguous communication and maximize student responding. Direct Instruction research findings are summarized: achievement of low-income students in Follow Through, longitudinal results, and the effectiveness of Direct Instruction for students with handicaps.

This study examined teachers need for organizational responses that addressed the environmental uncertainty of working with students from disadvantaged neighborhoods. It described four types of organizational responses — coordinated instructional supports, systems to promote order and discipline, socio-emotional supports for students, and efforts to engage parents — and illustrate how these responses affected teachers’ ability to manage the uncertainty introduced by their environment.

The Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) sponsoring rigorous independent evaluations of its funded projects to build scientifically-valid evidence about "what works." On October 29, the nonprofit, nonpartisan Coalition for Evidence-Based Policy, in collaboration with MCC, hosted a forum with leaders of the development policy and research community on MCC's evidence-based approach.

This report provides a detailed analysis of long-term dropout and completion trends and student characteristics of high school dropouts and completers. The first measure examined was the “event dropout rate” which is the percent of students who drop out in grades 10-12 without a high school diploma or alternative credential. The event dropout rate for SY 2015-16 was 4.8%, which translated into 532,000 students.

This report provides new information on the impact of teacher quality on student achievement and offers specific steps states should take to remedy the persistent practice of denying the best teachers to the children who need them the most.

This study found that one aspect of segregation in particular—the disparity in average school poverty rates between white and black students’ schools—is consistently the single most powerful correlate of achievement gaps. This implies that high-poverty schools are, on average, much less effective than lower-poverty schools, and suggests that strategies that reduce the differential exposure of black, Hispanic, and white students to poor classmates may lead to meaningful reductions in academic achievement gaps.

This meta-analysis looked at socioeconomic status and race statistics to determine whether there were relationships among socioeconomic status, race, and fathers absence from the home. The results of the meta-analysis appear to indicate that father-absence effects are independent of socioeconomic status or race.

This study investigated the potential benefits of a blended learning approach on the reading skills of low socioeconomic status students in Grades 1 and 2.

This paper reviews evidence from six recent studies, which collectively suggest that teachers who leave high-poverty schools are not fleeing their students, but rather the poor working conditions that make it difficult for them to teach and their students to learn. They include school leadership, collegial relationships, and elements of school culture.

This meta-analysis reviewed the literature on socioeconomic status (SES) and academic achievement in journal articles published between 1990 and 2000. The results showed a medium to strong SES–achievement relation.

For over fifteen years, it has been conventional wisdom that disadvantaged students fall behind their advantaged peers during summer breaks. Correlational research appears to support this conclusion, Wing Institute Data Mining. 

A recent report from the Southern Education Foundation documents that, for the first time in recent history, the majority of children attending public schools come from low income families. The data also shows a steady growth in this trend over the last twenty-five years: 1989 (32%), 2000 (38%), 2006 (42%), 2011 (48%) and 2013 (51%). This is particularly challenging from an education perspective. To date, the K-12 education system has not found ways to adequately serve this population as evidenced by a consistent gap in student performance between high and low income students. As more and more students come from low-income families, the success or failure of the system will hinge on its ability to respond effectively.

For the first time in recent history, a majority of the schoolchildren attending the nation’s public schools come from low income families. The latest data collected from the states by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), evidence that 51 percent of the students across the nation’s public schools were low income in 2013.

This research looked at test score gaps for a range of populations: between boys and girls; between black, white, and Hispanic children; between the children and the mother’s education; between children in poor and nonpoor families; and the gaps between high-poverty and low-poverty schools. They wanted to know whether gaps grow faster during summer or the school year. They were unable to answer this question as the results were inconclusive. Although, von Hippel and Hamrock did find the total gap in performance from kindergarten to eighth grade, is substantially smaller than the gap that exists at the time children enter school. The conclusion is that gaps happen mostly in the first five years of life. study suggests students who are behind peers at the time they enter kindergarten should receive early remedial instruction as the most efficacious way to improve overall performance.

This meta-analysis of almost 200 studies that considered the relation between SES and academic achievement were examined. Results indicated that as SES is typically defined (income, education, and/or occupation of household heads) and typically used (individuals as the unit of analysis), SES is only weakly correlated (r = .22) with academic achievement.