There are also cultural barriers. Many Asian immigrants hail from countries withoutdemocratic processes or with authoritarian governments. They may be afraid to interact withgovernment, institutions or anyone they don’t know personally

Seems like Asian Americans are doing well, right? But the survey had a gaping lacuna: itwas conducted by phone only in English or Spanish.Of course, that immediately excludesAsians with low proficiency in English, who, ironically, are likely poor, vulnerable and most inneed.And importantly, the poll highlights how skewed data can yield dangerously misleadingresults and headlines

I didn't have the cultural capital to know where to take a date for dinner before the senior prom.

I grew up in West Virginia, where the entire state looks like a national park. And I grew up playing barefoot in rich, old-growth Appalachian forests. A feral child. Maybe growing up around such beauty, you believe you are rich. Danny's pejorative term, though, would be only the first inkling of what was to come. But I'll never forget that Danny started it in third grade. Third grade was a bad year. Third grade was the year I learned in school that I was poor.

Attendance problems often indicate negative parent attitudes toward school. Parents who did poorly in school themselves may have a negative attitude about their children’s schools

he rural poverty rate is growing and has exceeded the urban rate every year since data collec-tion began in the 1960s. The difference between the two poverty rates has averaged about 5 percent for the last 30 years, with urban rates near 10–15 percent and rural rates near 15–20 percent

Retirement is only six years away.

In the caseof reading, for example, the research citedabove on the impact of pleasure readingsuggests that outside-of-school activitiesthat engage the student in interestingtexts and that encourage additional freevoluntary reading will be highly effective

More timedevoted to homework appears to be relatedto better grades but not necessarily tohigher performance on standardized tests

At Academic High I found that AsianAmerican students were rewarded for be-ing quiet, polite, and respectful. On sev-eral occasions I learned from teachersthat they had given passing grades toAsian American students who had notearned them. In each case, the studentwho was passed was described as a quietand polite student ... similarly, in herstudy on Hmong students, Goldstein(1985) [unpublished dissertation] foundthat Hmong students were promoted tothe next grade based on their behaviorrather than on their academic perfor-mance. (

Calling attention to one's own accomplishments is fodder for ridicule. My friend often refers to this phenomenon as the "whack-a-mole" attitude. Just like the popular game at the county fair, when a child thinks he or she is superior enough to rise above the crowd, someone, including parents, might verbally whack him or her back down. Generally, Appalachians pride themselves on maintaining an egali-tarian community.

Unfortunately, too many educators interpret this lack of adult involvement as a sign that the parents just don't care about school. As is the case in every economic bracket, some parents don't care, but most do. The lack of school involvement certainly does not reflect a lack of caring.

I remember my own childhood in rural southeastern Appalachian Ohio, West Virginia, and Kentucky. Commonly shared values among my family and friends included the love of land and a sense of place-belonging. There was and still is an attachment to nature among many Appalachians, to the hills, the creeks, the fields.

For poor students in Appalachia, the most discouragi~g image may be the one promoted by the media, depicting them as backwoods, ignorant isolates.

Rural high school graduation rates exceed the national average, and rural low-income students are even more likely than their metropolitan peers to earn a diploma.

This problem is not limited to mathematics. For students taking advanced courses across the curriculum, the Advanced Placement program is an option that offers rigorous coursework leading to college credit. The availability of AP courses is an indicator of a school’s commitment and ability to offer advanced coursework. In rural areas, 73% of schools offer at least one AP course, compared to 95% and 92% in suburban and urban districts respectively (Mann, Sponsler, Welch, & Wyatt 2017). Rural students have significantly less access to STEM-focused AP courses—just 62% of rural schools offer at least one AP STEM (Science Technology Engineering Mathematics) course, compared with 93% of suburban schools (Mann, Sponsler, Welch, & Wyatt 2017). These gaps may indicate that rural students have limited access to academically rigorous programs

Rural students and the schools they attend receive little attention in either policy or academia. This is despite the fact that more than 46 million Americans live in nonmetropolitan areas—a population roughly equivalent to the entire country of Spain

Poverty in rural areas is also more persistent than in urban areas, and can be more likely to last for generations. For counties in persistent poverty, rates have remained above 20% for the past 30 years. Children growing up in these communities face challenges to their economic mobility and long-term development (Farrigan 2017). Overall, 85.3% of counties in persistent poverty are rural, which equates to about 15% of all rural counties nationally

Although we entered this study assuming that the families had knowledge, skills, and resources, we underestimated the skillful use of multiple elec-tronic devices by the children and their families. Due to our unexamined assumptions about limited access to new technologies in low-income Latino families, we were surprised to see the number of them in the homes, the time spent using them, and the children’s expertise.

Benny’s family belonged to a Pentecostal Spanish-speaking church, and this was his most important community literacy space, providing an array of experiences with oral, written, visual, and gestural texts, some constructed on his own and some mediated by others, using materials from the church and brought from home.

We also learned about other literacy spaces we were not able to observe.

We planned to investigate both the places outside of school, in their homes and communities, where the two children and their families accessed literacy resources and the formal and informal literacy interactions that they con-structed there.