We Can Overcome Poverty's Impact on School Success

In passing the No Child Left Behind Act in 2001, Congress stated that one of the law's main purposes was closing the achievement gap between disadvantaged children and their better-off peers by ensuring that all students in the United States would be proficient in meeting challenging academic standards by 2014. But, over the past 10 years, we have made only incremental progress toward reaching that goal. There has been some small gain in 4th grade reading and math scores, but no gain whatsoever in 8th grade scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, and significant achievement gaps remain between students from different racial and ethnic groups. America does not have a general education crisis; we have a poverty crisis. Results of an international student assessment indicate that U.S. schools with fewer than 25 percent of their students living in poverty rank first in the world among advanced industrial countries. But when you add in the scores of students from schools with high poverty rates, the United States sinks to the middle of the pack. At nearly 22 percent and rising, the child-poverty rate in the United States is the highest among wealthy nations in the world. (Poverty rates in Denmark and in Finland, which is justifiably celebrated as a top global performer on the Program for International Student Assessment exams, are below 5 percent). In New York City, the child-poverty rate climbed to 30 percent in 2010. It is clear that poverty has a profound impact on learning. Achievement gaps for disadvantaged children begin before they start school and widen throughout their school careers. But research shows that change is possible.