epen staff understanding. It’s crucial for educators to keep in mind the many factors, some of them invisible, that play a role in students’ class-room actions. Many nonminority or middle-class teachers cannot under-stand why children from poor backgrounds act the way they do at school. Teachers don’t need to come from their students’ cultures to be able to teach them, but empathy and cultural knowledge are essential. Therefore, an introduction to how students are affected by poverty is highly useful.Consider summarizing information from this chapter or other sources and sharing it with staff. Hold discuss

mon issues in low-income families include depression, chemical dependence, and hectic work schedules—all factors that interfere with the healthy attachments that foster children’s self-esteem, sense of mastery of their environment, and optimistic attitudes. Instead, poor children often feel isolated and unloved, feelings that kick off a downward spiral of unhappy life events, including poor academic performance, behavioral problems, dropping out of school, and drug abuse. These events tend to rule out col-lege as an option and perpetuate the cycle of poverty. Figure 1.1 shows how 1.1 Adverse Childhood Experiences ModelSource: Adapted from “Relationship of Childhood Abuse and Household Dysfunction to Many of the Leading Causes of Death in Adults: The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study,” by V. J. Felitti, R. F. Anda, D. Nordenberg, D. F. Williamson, A. M. Spitz, V. Edwards, et al., 1998, American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 14(4), pp. 245–258.Early DeathDisease, Disability, and Social ProblemsAdoption of Health Risk BehaviorsSocial, Emotional, and Cognitive ImpairmentAdverse Childhood ExperiencesDeathConceptionJensen.indb 5Jensen.indb 510/26/09 1:39 PM10/26/09 1:39 PM EBSCOhost - printed on 10/29/2021 10:58 PM via EL CAMINO COLLEGE. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

lthough childhood is generally considered to be a time of joyful, care-free exploration, children living in poverty tend to spend less time fi nd-ing out about the world around them and more time struggling to survive within it. Poor children have fewer and less-supportive networks than their more affl uent counterparts do;

Relative poverty refers to the economic status of a family whose income is insuffi cient to meet its society’s average standard of living.• Urban poverty occurs in metropolitan areas with populations of at least 50,000 people. The urban poor deal with a complex aggregate of chronic and acute stressors (including crowding, violence, and noise) and are dependent on often-inadequate large-city services. • Rural poverty occurs in nonmetropolitan areas with populations below 50,000. In rural areas, there are more sin

eel if your son or daughter were a student in Mr. Hawkins’s class? Only two short generations ago, policymakers, school lead-ers, and teachers commonly thought of children raised in poverty with sym-pathy but without an understanding of how profoundly their chances for success were diminished by their situation. Today, we have a broad research base that clearly outlines the ramifi cations of living in poverty as well as evi-dence of schools that do succeed with economically disadvantaged students. We can safely say that we have no excuse to let any child fail. Poverty calls for key information and smarter strategie

he gap between belief and action has emerged in different school districts at different times over different issues; education policy has therefore been not only contentious but confusing. Policymakers have pursued, with con-siderable support, one goal or set of goals for a while and then stopped or shifted emphasis; some policymakers have pursued a direction in one jurisdic-tion while their counterparts elsewhere have moved strongly in another. Some schools and districts seized upon orders to desegregate as an opportunity to in-stitute desired reforms; others fought all efforts at desegregation and sought to minimize the changes it entailed. Some districts and states embrace public school choice and charter schools; others ( or the same ones under different leadership) resist or ignore them. Some districts focus on basic skills while neighboring districts emphasize the teaching of higher-order thinking. The gap between beliefs and actions not only leads to contention and con-fusion, it also generates policies that are irrational in the sense that they are inconsistent with evidence of what works or are not based on any evidence at all. At times policymakers have abandoned proven reforms or have promoted them only over stiff opposition. Desegregation enhanced the long-term life chances of many African American students and rarely hurt white students, but the movement to complete or maintain it has largely been over for 2 5 years. School finance reform broadens schooling opportunities for poor children with-out harming those who are better off, but equity in funding has depended mostly on the intervention of the courts. At other times policymakers have adopted reforms for which there is no empirical support or on the basis of conflicting assessments. There is at best mixed evidence of the benefits of separating stu-

Because most Americans now believe that the American dream should be available to all American citizens, public schools in the United States have made real progress toward enabling everyone to pursue success as they understand it. Compared with a few decades ago, dropout rates have fallen, achievement scores have risen, resources are more equally distributed, children with dis-abilities have the right to an appropriate education, and black children are not required by law to attend separate and patently inferior schools. Yet this progress has met limits. Hispanics and inner city residents still drop out much more frequently than others, the gap between black and white achievement rose during the 1990s after declining in the previous decade, the achievement gap between students from lower-and higher-class families has barely budged, and poor students in poor urban schools have dramatically lower rates of literacy and arithmetic or scientific competence. Most importantly, life chances depend increasingly

also to make them good citizens who will maintain the nation's values and · In-stitutions, help them flouri~h, and pass them on to the next generation. The American public widely endorses both of these broad goals, values public ed-ucation, and supports it with an extraordinary level of resources. Despite this consensus Americans disagree intensely about the education policies that will best help us achieve this dual goal. In recent years disputes over educational issues have involved all the branches and levels of government and have affected millions of students. The controversies-over matters like school funding, vouchers, bilingual education, high-stakes testing, desegrega-tion, and creationism-seem, at first glance, to be separate problems. In im-portant ways, however, they all reflect contention over the goals of the American dream. At the core of debates over one policy or another has often been a con-flict between what is (or seems to be) good for the individual and what is good for the whole; sometimes the conflict revolves around an assau

2 THE AMERICAN DREAM AND THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS also to make them good citizens who will maintain the nation's values and · In-stitutions, help them flouri~h, and pass them on to the next generation. The American public widely endorses both of these broad goals, values public ed-ucation, and supports it with an extraordinary level of resources. Despite this consensus Americans disagree intensely about the education policies that will best help us achieve this dual goal. In recent years disputes over educational issues have involved all the branches and levels of government and have affected millions of students. The controversies-over matters like school funding, vouchers, bilingual education, high-stakes testing, desegrega-tion, and creationism-seem, at first glance, to be separate problems. In im-portant ways, however, they all reflect contention over the goals of the American dream. At the core of debates over one policy or another has often been a con-flict between what is (or seems to be) good for the individual and what is good for the whole; sometimes the conflict revolves around an assault on the valid-ity of the dream itself by certain groups of people. Because educ

HE AMERICAN DREAM IS A POWERFUL CONCEPT. It encourages each person who lives in the United States to pursue success, and it cre-ates the framework within which everyone can do it. It holds each person responsible for achieving his or her own dreams, while generating shared values and behaviors needed to persuade Americans that they have a real chance to achieve them. It holds out a vision of both individual success and the col-lective good of all. From the perspective of the individual, the ideology is as compelling as it is simple. "I am an American, so I have the freedom and opportunity to make whatever I want of my life. I can succeed by working hard and using my tal-ents; if I fail, it will be my own fault. Success is honorable, and failure is not. In order to make sure that my children and grandchildren have the same free-dom and opportunities that I do, I have a responsibility to be a good citizen-to respect those whose vision of success is different from my own, to help make sure that everyone has an equal chance to succeed, to participate in the dem-ocratic process, and to teach my children to be proud of this country." Not all residents of the United States believe all of those things, of course, and some believe none of them. Nevertheless, this American dream is surpris-ingly close to what most Americans have believed through most of recent Amer-ican history. Public schools are where it is all supposed to start-they are the central institutions for bringing both parts of the dream into practice. Americans ex-pect schools not only to help students reach their potential as individuals but

T HE AMERICAN DREAM IS A POWERFUL CONCEPT. It encourages each person who lives in the United States to pursue success, and it cre-ates the framework within which everyone can do it. It holds each person responsible for achieving his or her own dreams, while generating shared values and behaviors needed to persuade Americans that they have a real chance to achieve them. It holds out a vision of both individual success and the col-lective good of all. From the perspective of the individual, the ideology is as compelling as it is simple. "I am an American, so I have the freedom and opportunity to make whatever I want of my life. I can succeed by working hard and using my tal-ents; if I fail, it will be my own fault. Success is honorable, and failure is not. In order to make sure that my children and grandchildren have the same free-dom and opportunities that I do, I have a responsibility to be a good citizen-to respect those whose vision of success is different from my own, to help make sure that everyone has an equal chance to succeed, to participate in the dem-ocratic process, and to teach my children to be proud of this country." Not all residents of the United States believe all of those things, of course, and some believe none of them. Nevertheless, this American