Class Conscious: How SocioEconomic Status Impacts Education

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Class Conscious How Socio-Economic Status
Impacts Education

• Judith Pellettieri, Ed.D.

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Golden Rule For Schools

• ALL practices have to
• work for ALL students
• ALL of the time.

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Know Your Clients

• What is the make up of your classroom?
• What is the make up of your school?
• What is the make up of your community?

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Know Their Class

• Lower
• Middle
• Upper
• Alternative

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The Great Class Debate

• Schools should acknowledge class and
  differentiate accordingly.
• Schools should be blind to class and not
  stereotype any one group.
• Schools need to work for social and economic
  reform.

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Common Belief

• It is beneficial to students to attend schools
  where their individual differences are respected
  and not viewed as deficiencies.

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No Child Left Behind

• Focused us on differences
• Increased assessments
• Held us accountable
• Created need for differentiation

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How Are Students Different?

• Socio-economic Family structure
• Race Nutrition
• Ethnicity Support system
• Physical abilities Family history
• Gender Urban / Rural
• Learning abilities Religion
• Family traditions Family dynamics

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Schools have to work for everyone!

• Learning disabled (IEP)
• Gifted and talented (IAP)
• Special needs (504)
• Language needs (ESOL)
• Poor and rich, walkers and busers, hot lunch or
  cold lunch, white milk or chocolate, tall and
  short, .

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School Family Partnerships

• Public schools operate from middle class norms
  and values.
• Individuals bring with them the hidden rules of
  the family in which they were raised.

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Instruction to the Lower Class
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Causes of Poverty

• Lack of Human Capital
• Crisis (car accident, health, fired)

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Social Mobility

• One paycheck away from poverty
• Tend to reproduce your class

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Facts

• The younger the child, the more likely they live
  in a low income family.
• Maternal education is biggest indicator of
  childs school success.
• Maternal depression has a major impact on
  preschool learning.

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• Children of poverty may not know the hidden rules
  of the middle class.
• Poverty is the extent to which an individual is
  without resources
• Language issues can cause students from
  generational poverty not to fully develop the
  cognitive structures needed to learn at the
  levels required by state tests.

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• Direct teaching must occur to build these
  cognitive structures.
• Relationships are the key motivators for learning
  for students of generational poverty.

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Child Care Upper/Middle
Lower

• Center based care.
• Children from centers are more ready for school.

• Care given by relatives.
• Children play less, nap less, are not as ready
  for school.

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Registers of Language

• Formal - speaker or writer gets straight to the
  point.

• Casual - speaker or writer goes around the issue
  before finally coming to the point.

Teachers using formal register can be viewed by
parents of poverty as being rude and non-caring
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Tips for working with parents from poverty.

• Use the museum format for events.
• Have food.
• Invite the children.
• Have classes that benefit parents.
• Call them Mr. or Mrs. as a sign of respect.
• Use humor, never sarcasm.
• Deliver bad news through a story.

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Tips for working with parents from poverty

• Offer a cup of coffee.
• Use the adult voice.
• Be understanding, but firm.
• Be personally strong - dont show fear.
• Emphasize that there are two sets of rules one
  for school and work and one for outside of school
  and work.
• Dont accept behaviors from adults that you dont
  accept from students.

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Everybodys Problem

• Majority of Americans will experience poverty at
  some point in their lifetimes

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Instruction to the Upper Class
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Tips for working with parents from wealth

• State the issue
• Be a confident listener / Take notes
• Stress the rules that will help their child
• Be firm about boundaries
• Be mindful of time

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Tips for working with parents from wealth

• Dont use humor
• Use experts by name
• Dont accept behaviors from adults that you dont
  accept from students..

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Other Resources

• Each individual has resources that greatly
  influence achievement money is only one.
• Friends in high places
• Children of wealth may not know the hidden rules
  of the middle class.
• Relationships are the key motivators for learning
  for students of from the upper class.

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Needed For School Success

• - Social skills
• - Emotional skills
• Early literacy skills
• Pre language between parent and child

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Education Economic Class

• Educators must recognize that class differences
  impact
• Language,
• Values
• Beliefs
• Support Systems

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Relationships Economic Class

• All children need protagonists,
• cheer leaders and
• role models.

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Best Practices

• Form Relationships
• Parent / Teacher Conferences
• Student Centered Practices
• Maximin Principle

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Maximin Principle

• Inequalities are permitted only when everyone
  benefits.
• The welfare of the least advantaged is the
  touchstone of social justice.
• Some cannot be well off at the expense of
  others.

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Adjust Your Lens

• After school activities
• PTO meetings, etc.
• Winter Activities
• Book Fairs
• Bike Rodeos
• Breakfast and lunch
• Snacks
• Communication with home
• School phobias

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School Practices

• Retention - gift of time or discrimination
• Homework - boost or burden
• Fundraising - individual or whole group

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Ask Yourself

• Do you classroom or school practices work for all
  of your students?
• Are you making the welfare of the least
  advantaged, not the average, your touchstone?

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Schools As Solution

• Are your practices inclusive?
• What do you need to change?

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Diversity

• Young people whose languages and cultures differ
  from the dominant group must often struggle to
  sustain a clear image of themselves because
  differences are commonly treated as deficiencies
  by schools and teachers.
• S. Nieto, Affirming Diversity

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Credits

• Payne, Ruby, A Framework For Understanding
  Poverty,
• aha! Process, Inc., Highlands, TX, 1996.
• The Effects of Poverty on Learning, Head Start -
  Public School Transition Conference, Plymouth,
  NH, 2004.
• Rank, Mark Robert, One Nation, Underprivileged -
  Why American Poverty Affects Us All, Oxford
  University Press, NY, NY, 2005
• Hooks, Bell Where We Stand, Rutledge, NY, NY,
  2000.
• Strike, Kenneth A., Haller, Emil J., Soltis,
  Jonas F., The Ethics of School, Teachers
  College Press, NY and London, 1998.