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Poverty Droput

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Poverty Droput

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dominic.olande
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Poverty and high school

dropouts
The impact of family and community poverty on high school dropouts.
By Russell W. Rumberger, PhD

The United States is facing a dropout crisis, with an estimated 1.1 million
members of the 2012 high school graduating class not earning diplomas
(Education Week, 2012). Dropouts face extremely bleak economic and social
prospects. Compared to high school graduates, they are less likely find a job
and earn a living wage, and more likely to be poor and to suffer from a
variety of adverse health outcomes (Rumberger, 2011). Moreover, they are
more likely to rely on public assistance, engage in crime and generate other
social costs borne by taxpayers (Belfield & Levin, 2007).

Poverty and dropouts are inextricably connected in the three primary


settings affecting healthy child and adolescent development: families,
schools and communities.

In 2009, poor (bottom 20 percent of all family incomes) students were five
times more likely to drop out of high school than high-income (top 20
percent of all family incomes) students (Chapman, Laird, Ifill, &
KewalRamani, 2011, Table 1). Child poverty is rampant in the U.S., with more
than 20 percent of school-age children living in poor families (Snyder &
Dillow, 2012, Table 27). And poverty rates for Black and Hispanic families are
three times the rates for White families.

Family Poverty
Family poverty is associated with a number of adverse conditions — high
mobility and homelessness; hunger and food insecurity; parents who are in
jail or absent; domestic violence; drug abuse and other problems — known
as “toxic stressors” because they are severe, sustained and not buffered by
supportive relationships (Shonkoff & Garner, 2012). Drawing on a diverse
fields of medical, biological and social science, Shonkoff and Garner present
an ecobiodevelopmental framework to show how toxic stress in early
childhood leads to lasting impacts on learning (linguistic, cognitive and
social-emotional skills), behavior and health. These impacts are likely
manifested in some of the precursors to dropping out, including low
achievement, chronic absenteeism and misbehavior, as well as a host of
strategies, attitudes and behaviors — sometimes referred to as
“noncogntive” skills — linked to school success (Farrington et al., 2012)

While family poverty is clearly related to dropping out, poverty associated


with schools and communities also contributes to the dropout crisis. It is also
well documented that schools in the United States are highly segregated by
income, social class and race/ethnicity. In 2009-2010, 9 percent of all
secondary students attended high-poverty schools (where 75 percent or
more of the students are eligible for free or reduced price lunch), but 21
percent of Blacks and Hispanics attended high-poverty schools, compared to
2 percent of Whites and 7 percent of Asians (Aud et al., 2012, Figure 13-
2). More than 40 years ago, famed sociologist James Coleman demonstrated
that a students’ achievement is more highly related to the characteristics of
other students in the school than any other school characteristic (Coleman et
al., 1966). Subsequent research has confirmed this finding and even found
that the racial/ethnic and social class composition of schools was more
important than a student’s own race, ethnicity and social class in explaining
educational outcomes (Borman & Dowling, 2010).

Community Poverty
Community poverty also matters. Some neighborhoods, particularly those
with high concentrations of African-Americans, are communities of
concentrated disadvantage with extremely high levels of joblessness, family
instability, poor health, substance abuse, poverty, welfare dependency and
crime (Sampson, Morenoff, & Gannon-Rowley, 2002). Disadvantaged
communities influence child and adolescent development through the lack of
resources (playgrounds and parks, after-school programs) or negative peer
influences (Leventhal & Brooks-Gunn, 2000). For instance, students living in
poor communities are more likely to have dropouts as friends, which
increases the likelihood of dropping out of school.

The adverse effects of poverty on school dropout can be mitigated through


two primary strategies. One is to improve the academic achievement,
attitudes and behaviors of poor and other students at risk for dropping out
through targeted intervention programs. The U.S Department of Education’s
What Works Clearinghouse maintains a list of proven programs; it also issued
a Dropout Prevention Practice Guide in 2009 with a set of research-based
practices (Dynarski et al., 2008). This approach is limited to the extent that
students continue to be exposed to the adverse settings of poor families,
poor schools and poor communities.

The second strategy is to improve the settings themselves. Effectively, that


would mean reducing the poverty level of families, schools and communities
and the adverse conditions within them. This would require considerable,
political will, and public support to reduce the huge disparities in family
income, access to health care, school funding and student composition, and
community resources.

A 2005 United Nations report found that the U.S. had the highest rate of child
poverty among all 24 Organization for Economic and Cooperative
Development (OECD) countries exceeded only by Mexico (UNICEF, 2005).
The report further found that variation in government policy — particularly
the extent to which the government provides social transfer programs for
low-income families — explains most of the variation in poverty rates among
countries. A recent follow-up report examined five dimensions of child well-
being — material well-being, health and safety, education, behaviors and
risks and housing and environment — in 29 developed countries, and the
U.S. ranked 26th (UNICEF, 2013). Maybe it is not a coincidence that the U.S.
also ranks 22nd in the world in high school graduation rates (OECD, 2112,
Chart A2.1). If the U.S. ever hopes to achieve President Obama’s stated goal
of becoming first in the world in college completion rates, then it is
imperative that we greatly increase rates of high school graduation and child
well-being.

Author Bio

Russell Rumberger is professor of education in the Gevirtz


Graduate School of Education at UC Santa Barbara and former vice provost
for Education Partnerships, University of California Office of the President. A
faculty member at UCSB since 1987, Professor Rumberger has published
widely in several areas of education: education and work; the schooling of
disadvantaged students, particularly school dropouts and linguistic minority
students; school effectiveness and education policy. He recently completed a
book, Dropping Out: Why Students Drop Out of High School and What Can Be
Done About It, published by Harvard University Press in the fall of 2011. He
currently directs the California Dropout Research Project, which is producing
a series of reports and policy briefs about the dropout problem in California
and a state policy agenda to improve California’s high school graduation
rate. Professor Rumberger received a PhD in education and a MA in
economics from Stanford University and a BS in electrical engineering from
Carnegie-Mellon University.

References
Aud, S., Hussar, W., Johnson, F., Kena, G., Roth, E., Manning, E., Wang, X., &
Zhang, J. (2012). The condition of education 2012. (NCES 2012-
045). Washington, D.C.: National Center for Education Statistics. Retrieved
[date]. Source: http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2012045

Belfield, C. & Levin, H. M. Eds. (2007). The price we pay: Economic and
social consequences of inadequate education. Washington, D.C.: Brookings
Institution Press.

Borman, G. & Dowling, M. (2010). Schools and inequality: A multilevel


analysis of Coleman's Equality of Opportunity data. Teachers College Record,
112, 1201-1246.

Chapman, C., Laird, J., Ifill, N., & KewalRamani, A. (2011). Trends in high
school dropout and completion rates in the United States: 1972-2009. (NCES
2012-06). Washington, D.C.: National Center for Education Statistics,
Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education. Retrieved
[date]. Source: http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2012006

Coleman, J. S., Campbell, E. Q., Hobson, C. J., McPartland, J., Mood, A. M.,
Weinfeld, F. D., & York, R. L. (1966). Equality of educational opportunity.
Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office.
Dynarski, M., Clarke, L., Cobb, B., Finn, J., Rumberger, R., & Smink, J. (2008).
Dropout Prevention: A Practice Guide. (NCEE 2008-4025). Washington, D.C.:
National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, Institute
of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education. Retrieved [date].
Source: http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/publications/practiceguides/

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