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I said:
I ranked my answers. I think motivation is the primary issue, by a long shot. Second to that is lack of talented teachers.
- lack of motivation
- urban schools don't attract talented teachers
- rural schools don't attract talented teachers
- gang culture (urban)
- socio-economic factors
I don't know how to motivate the poor.
I don't think it is motivation. In general, students perform much like their peers. If you're in a school district where 80-90% of kids are performing below grade level, those students aren't unmotivated, they are normal. Beyond that, when you look at risk factors for certain behaviors, these risk factors tend to cluster.
Poverty is a risk factor for school performance because it puts stress on families and individuals. It also tends to cause clusters of risk factors that can negatively impact youth, community organizations, families, and schools, such as community disorganization, poor bonding/attachment to the community, family disorganization, poor family management, etc.
I've worked with poor kids for the past 19 years now. What I would suggest is that it looks somewhat different than what you've proposed.
1. Children don't learn to read in the early school years.
This occurs for a variety of reasons. First, we are still fighting wars over how poor children will be taught. And we haven't yet figured out what works well with these students. Hence, entire areas of the U.S. are rife with illiteracy.
Here's an article that explains what I'm talking about:
Reading Wars: Phonics vs. Whole Language
2. Low family/community support for education.
When I say family support, what I mean is that literacy is supported, encouraged, and practiced in the home. A great example of what I'm talking about is John Ogbu's groundbreaking study on middle class black student failure, called Black American Students in an Affluent Suburb: A Study of Academic Disengagement. I'd suggest that if you really care about this subject, you read about it, and his findings:
Editor's Review of John U. Ogbu's Black American Students in an Affluent Suburb: A Study of Academic Disengagement
One of the most interesting findings by Ogbu was that black parents did very little to support their children's educations.
Ogbu found that the overarching “cultural model of pedagogy” of the Black parents was that teachers and the schools should make their children learn and achieve success. Given this ethos, Black parents’ school participation and involvement were dismal among working-class, middle-class, and professional parents. Similarly, parental involvement at home indicated a lack of close supervision of children’s homework, poor coaching on effective time management, lack of shielding from negative peer pressures, and ineffective methods for motivating children to engage in schoolwork.
I would say that this holds true, in general, in many poor areas I've worked in, from barrios of East L.A. to poor rural southern Missouri. Parental involvement is a crucial factor in whether kids will perform well in school or not.
3. Other factors that play a role:
a) Lack of access to health/dental care. It's hard to focus in school when you're in pain, don't have the glasses you need to see the front of the class, have a rotten tooth in your mouth, etc. I've seen an inordinate amount of kids who struggle with these issues.
b) Family stressors keep students from focusing on school. Mom's a crackhead. Dad's in prison. The kids are babysitting each other. You'll see clusters of dysfunction in poor-performing school areas, and they tend to involve family upheaval, family stress, family dysfunction, and the like.
c) Because of #2, some schools end up as dumping grounds for the teachers who would not be tolerated elsewhere. Lack of parental engagement in education is hugely significant. If parents are not involved, the performance of school staff often tends to be substandard.
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