Poverty and School Funding

  This image shows how the achievement gap starts at birth, college students from disadvantaged families perform less well than high-income students on most measures of academic success including standardized test scores, grades, high school completion rates, and college enrollment, completion rates as well as lacking communication skills.

Research Question: How can the gap between high- and low-income group students in college affect their professional careers? What role does the government need to play in covering the tuition costs for the students from the low-income groups? Do merit-based admissions affects low-income students? What can be done in order to decrease the staggering cost of college that’s weeding out students who are disproportionately low-income? If the widening college completion gap fracturing the American Dream and its economy then why the government and policymakers aren’t doing anything to fix it? Sources: Brint, Steven. “Can We Fix the College Inequality Problem?” The American Prospect , 10 Dec. 2019, prospect.org/culture/can-we-fix-the-college-inequality-problem/.  Cabrera, ByJeff. “Poverty And The College Completion Crisis.” GenBiz , 13 Aug. 2018, genbiz.com/poverty-and-the-college-completion-crisis.  Center, NSC Research. “High School Benchmarks - 2019.” National Student Clearinghouse...

  About the Author:  Sean F. Reardon is an American sociologist who currently serves as the Endowed Professor of Poverty and Inequality in Education at the Stanford Graduate School of Education, where he also is a member of the Steering Committee of the Center for Education Policy Analysis. Citations:  Reardon, Sean F. “The Widening Income Achievement Gap.” Educational Leadership , vol. 70, no. 8, May 2013, pp. 10–16. EBSCOhost , search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eric&AN=EJ1029019&site=ehost-live. Summary of the Article: Sean F. Reardon conducted a comprehensive analysis of research to answer these questions and came up with some striking findings. In this article, he shows that income-related achievement gaps have grown significantly over the last three decades, even as black-white achievement gaps have closed. These gaps are already large when children enter kindergarten; in fact, they do not grow substantially during the school years. Gaps bet...

  About the Author:  Alanna Bjorklund-Young - Graduated with a Ph.D. in Economics in the year 2017 and has taught in 4 schools for about 1-2 year/years each. Won awards for undergraduate teaching. Currently, she is working as an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Education. Additionally, she has written several papers that investigate the impact of teaching skills on student academic and non-academic outcomes and is interested in the impact of education policy on student outcomes. Citations:  Bjorklund-Young, Alanna. "Family income and the college completion gap." (2016). Summary of the Article: This article has the latest research released in 2015 confirms that low-socioeconomic status (SES) students were less likely to complete their college education. After graduating high school, only 14 percent of low-SES students received a bachelor’s or higher degree within eight years compared to 29 percent of middle-income students. Furthermore, it talks a...