Sunday, May 24, 2009

Poverty levels influence kid's learning

Another one for the "duh" category.

But, this also reaffirms why children in poverty do not test well. NCLB is a vicious cycle; underfunded schools who serve low income kids supposedly "failing" but only because of the standardized tests.

From the StatemansJournal.com:

Educators often point to poverty as a factor in sub-par student achievement. And there is research to back them up.

A landmark 1995 study showed that how fast children's vocabularies grow is greatly influenced by how often their parents talk to them — and that children from lower-income families hear significantly fewer words than their wealthier counterparts.


The study found that, in a year, children of professionals hear 11 million words on average, while children of working-class families hear 6 million words, and children of families on public assistance hear 3 million words.

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