The most basic way in which poor children become academically disadvantaged is through their exposure to language in early childhood. Research conducted by Betty Hart and Todd Risley found that college-educated parents, who are more often middle-class, speak 30 million more words to their children in the first three years of parenting than parents on welfare do. Reduced verbal ability has a negative impact on small children’s IQ and makes them less likely to be ready for reading when they reach kindergarten.
Around the country, some educational organizations have tried to reduce this disadvantage by providing children with very high-quality early childhood education. Parents experiencing poverty can help their small children by speaking and interacting with them as much as possible and using books rather than television to entertain them.
Other stresses that poor children are exposed to -- including poor nutrition, lack of adult supervision, family turmoil, neighborhood violence and a popular culture that glamorizes “being bad” -- all have a negative impact on their performance at school. Since the Civil Rights era, public policy makers have been concerned about an achievement gap between black and white students, but research has shown the gap between poor, middle- and upper-class students is far worse, accounting for 40 percent of the difference between high and low reading scores and 45 percent of the difference between high and low math scores on standardized tests meant to measure students’ learning. Only 68 percent of students at high-poverty high schools graduate. Even in the 13 small countries with the highest standardized test scores in the world -- places like South Korea, Singapore and Finland -- the majority of poor students had lower test scores than their wealthier compatriots.
In states like Illinois, New York, Pennsylvania, Texas and Missouri, the situation poor children face is made worse by the fact that school funding is tied to local property taxes, so schools in poor neighborhoods get less funding per student than schools in more affluent neighborhoods.
In the state of California, civil rights activists have launched a number of lawsuits against the government for unequally funding schools. Massachusetts, which has the highest-performing schools in the country, and several other states, including Utah, New Jersey, Minnesota and Ohio, provide significantly more funding for poor students than they do for wealthier students.
In spite of the greater challenges that poor children face, many are able to succeed in school and to break the cycle of poverty. Author Paul Tough has studied poor children who attain success and discovered that they consistently demonstrate several behaviors, including grit, resilience, optimism and curiosity, that help them overcome the many challenges they face. He also believes that developing social programs to support parents can help very small children to learn these valuable character traits at home.