Poverty Crisis or Education Crisis?

Poverty – America’s Mediocre Test Scores

Poverty – By Michael J. Petrilli and Brandon L. Wright ;WINTER 2016 / VOL. 16, NO. 1

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Poverty -If you follow, best practices, research, that is proven to advance individual learning, for at risk, traditional and gifted students, the common  sound bite excuses given for why education isn’t working for students (poverty, money, parents) are dis-proven.

The big picture, consistent with your article above, is that traditional education’s, one size fits all, teaching methodology, lecture, e.g.,  at best, only works for 30%of the student audience, and at best, only provides that 30%, superficial, short term, understanding that is soon forgotten.

The one size fits all teaching approach is too fast for the at risk students so they fall off and is too slow for the gifted students, so they zone out.

Wealth and personal persistence that comes from wealth allows those traditional and gifted students to somehow succeed, not because the teaching fits how they learn, but by pure grit and determination.

Traditional education, one size fits all teaching, works fine for the subject matter expert, one and done, but is terribly ineffective and inefficient for the individual learners, as you have identified above.

Okay, what is proven to work for everyone, but is underutilized?

Adaptive, ongoing, truly personalized, facilitated and reinforced learning,; differentiated learning, with spaced reinforcement, delivered via educationally innovative technology, and reinforced not only by the technology outside of class, but reinforced by the learning professional, inside the class withing a flipped or blended learning environment.

This is a complete paradigm change from teaching to learning.

First,  individual learning happens for each individual  far more effectively and efficiently.

Second, learning becomes deep, the information is learned to fluency, appropriate and relevant application is shown to advance sustained individual performance improvement.

Third, each individual learns at their own pace, facilitated by a professional.

Under this approach ALL learners, at rick, traditional and gifted learn deeply, learn more effectively and learn more efficiently.

The proper learning pedagogy, (research proven methodology, consistent with how everyone learns) is the big issue.

Poverty, parents, money can be contributing factors to learning, but are sub issues, that can be addressed AFTER  the proper learning pedagogy is implemented.

I have seen with the proper pedagogy very poor children excel in difficult subjects (they are brought up to grade level and excel from there).

The primary issue to fix is replacing teaching with 21st century learning.

Suggesting that fixing poverty, parental involvement, and lack of money, first are diversion tactics to the real issue.

Traditional educators are willing to blame everything else for educations woes.

They need to understand, embrace and implement 21st century learning methodologies, and expand their subject matter expertise to include research proven, best practices pedagogy, as well as gaining expertise in education reform.

Paradigm Paralysis

More Money

Education Change Teaching to Learning

Research Available, BUT Not Properly Utilized

Research

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The Article:

 

At a time when the national conversation is focused on lagging upward mobility, it is no surprise that many educators point to poverty as the explanation for mediocre test scores among U.S. students compared to those of students in other countries. If American teachers in struggling U.S. schools taught in Finland, says Finnish educator Pasi Sahlberg, they would flourish, in part, because of “support from homes unchallenged by poverty.” Michael Rebell and Jessica Wolff at Columbia University’s Teachers College argue that middling test scores reflect a “poverty crisis” in the United States, not an “education crisis.” Adding union muscle to the argument, American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten calls poverty “the elephant in the room” that accounts for poor student performance.

But does the room actually contain the elephant?

To prove that poverty is the major factor driving America’s meager academic achievement, at least two of the following three claims need to be established:

1. Poverty is related to lower levels of student learning.
2. America’s poor students perform worse than other countries’ poor students.
3. The poverty rate in the United States is substantially higher than the rates in countries with which it is compared.

Let’s examine each in turn.

Is Poverty Related to Lackluster Learning?

Poverty – Read the entire Article, Here

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