Tegan’s family moved to the urban district because it was more affordable than the suburban district. Unfortunately, moving to a poorer district meant attending an underfunded school, and she suffered as a result:
The reason we moved to (the urban district) was because we couldn't afford to live in (a suburban district outside of the county). I come from a low income family so most of my life I spent packing my things and moving from one apartment to the next. We couldn't afford a big apartment so I always had to share a room with my two brothers. So that played a big role in my education but never the less I remained an honor roll student. I was in honor roll all the way up to 8th grade when I graduated as a valedictorian in my middle school. However the reason why I managed to stay an honor roll student was because our community in (the suburban district) had a great school system. (Spring 2012, Tegan)
The urban district did not have a great school district, and it also lacked the funding and community resources that more affluent districts had. Moving to a school district that struggled financially posed numerous problems. More so, students often had to confront financial struggles
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in their homes. Navigating the plethora of problems engendered by living in poverty can be an understandable and unfortunate distraction from school. Isaac shared, “First I interviewed a student with kind of a weird background. He’s half Puerto Rican and half Indian. He lived in (Suburban District 2), so he had a nice school. However, they had financial problems, so they had to move, and they moved to Florida.” (Fall 2011, Isaac). Isaac also mentioned that he “had many home socio-economic problems that shifted his focus from school.” He lived with his mom, a single parent struggling to make financial ends meet, and, as a child, he felt a lot of pressure to figure out ways to support his mom financially.
Leo wrote reflectively:
I think group discussions are going well. Every person in the group has gathered strong stories regarding the Educational Problems in Poor Communities, stories that are helping our topic build up with more meaning. The conversations shared about each other’s interviews have shown many perspectives and points of view on the differences and similarities between communities. The most common similarity has been overcrowded schools in poor communities. It seems that as the years go by, the numbers of students keep increasing, but so is the number of dropouts. Schools just don't have enough money to support the learning abilities in the schools. One of the biggest concerns is parent involvement. Many parents can't afford to take off work and go to schools to become involved in their children's education. But the way I see it, this problem has become a very complicated situation in this country and will continue to grow for years to come if something does not start to change. (Spring 2012, Leo)
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Families living in poverty have fewer resources and must work much harder to make ends meet. They deserve opportunities to support their children in their communities and schools.
Isabel’s group learned that even within a district schools can be segregated according to social class. An interviewee described how two schools in the same district were drastically different. One school served affluent families and one school served poor families. The
interviewee had family members who lived on the border of these schools and they attended both schools. The family would discuss the differences between the “upper class” and “lower class” schools when they had family gatherings:
One of our interviewees from (a suburban district outside of the community college county), it’s a little more multicultural there but still about 80% white, still more white people than black people. In (this suburban district) depending on what part you lived, you would go to a different school, which was considered lower class. The other part of (this suburban district) would go to the other school which was considered upper class. My interviewee attended the upper class school. They were actually right on the border so they could have gone to the lower class school but they wound up going to the upper class school, but there was a difference in the classrooms. The lower class had teachers but their curriculum was totally different than the upper class. They were slow learning, the lower class was slower learning than the upper class school. The upper class school went at a fast pace, some of them were even able to skip grades because the information that was taught from grade school on up, they were able to process that information faster. At my interview, they had a cousin who lived in the same area, which was on the borderline, and they ended up going to the lower class school. So them being the same
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age, but on different educational levels was something for the parents to come together and talk about. They’re still working in the school district to this day to find a way of how to even out the curriculum in both schools, you have the same high school grades, but they’re on two different levels, so that’s the problem with curriculum when it comes to education. When it comes to sports and different things like that, it’s kind of the same, but when it comes to actual academics and educational information, the teaching and the learning is all different. (Fall 2011, Isabel)
As illustrated in Isabel’s interview, living in an affluent community rather than living in an impoverished community not only ensures that a student will receive a better education, but also means that they may be fortunate enough to escape many of the injustices and dangers plaguing the lives of American children today. Very recently, a study was published that provided an overview of the current state of American children’s health. The findings are devastating:
The number of children living in poverty is at the highest level in 20 years.
73.5 million American children (24% of the total population) receive only 8% of federal expenditures.
1 in 4 children are living in food-insecure households. 7 million children are without health insurance. A child is abused every 47 seconds.
1 in 3 children are overweight or obese. 5 children are killed daily by fire arms.
1 in 5 children are diagnosed with a mental disorder. Racial and ethnic disparities are “extensive and pervasive.”
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Government sequester cuts and underfunding of pediatric research “have damaged our global leadership in biomedical research and hobbled economic growth” (Flores & Lesley, 2014).
These findings are disheartening to say the least. We are neglecting our most vulnerable citizens. A greater number of children are suffering today, and they need schools and
communities that will provide them with healthy food, safety, and security in additional to a quality education with holistic academic, social, and emotional guidance and support.
Unfortunately, schools are not being recognized and praised for serving the needs of our little ones. Instead, schools must get these children to perform well on standardized tests in order to get the support and funding they need. Emails about the testing craze clog faculty mailboxes; teachers and school members frantically jump through hoops and complete exhaustive
evaluations to prove they are doing a good job; and test prep consumes class time. All the while, students wait for meaningful guidance, compassion, and stability amidst the extreme madness and neglect.