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Ohio State University study: Fast food linked to lower test scores in 8th graders

Patti Neighmond reported in the NPR story, It Takes More Than A Produce Aisle To Refresh A Food Desert:

“The next part of the intervention is to create demand,” he says, “so the community wants to come to the store and buy healthy fruits and vegetables and go home and prepare those foods in a healthy way, without lots of fat, salt or sugar.”
Ortega directs a UCLA project that converts corner stores into hubs of healthy fare in low-income neighborhoods of East Los Angeles. He and colleagues work with community leaders and local high school students to help create that demand for nutritious food. Posters and signs promoting fresh fruits and vegetables hang in corner stores, such as the Euclid Market in Boyle Heights, and at bus stops. There are nutrition education classes in local schools, and cooking classes in the stores themselves….
The jury’s still out on whether these conversions of corner stores are actually changing people’s diets and health. The evidence is still being collected. http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2014/02/10/273046077/takes-more-than-a-produce-aisle-to-refresh-a-food-desert

In other words, much of the obesity problem is due to personal life style choices and the question is whether government can or should regulate those choices. The issue is helping folk to want to make healthier food choices even on a food stamp budget. See, Cheap Eats: Cookbook Shows How To Eat Well On A Food Stamp Budget http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2014/08/01/337141837/cheap-eats-cookbook-shows-how-to-eat-well-on-a-food-stamp-budget A University of Buffalo study reports that what a baby eats depends on the social class of the mother. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/11/04/the-stark-difference-between-what-poor-babies-and-rich-babies-eat/

Science Daily reported in Fast-food consumption linked to lower test score gains in 8th graders:

The amount of fast food children eat may be linked to how well they do in school, a new nationwide study suggests.

Researchers found that the more frequently children reported eating fast food in fifth grade, the lower their growth in reading, math, and science test scores by the time they reached eighth grade.

Students who ate the most fast food had test score gains that were up to about 20 percent lower than those who didn’t eat any fast food, said Kelly Purtell, lead author of the study and assistant professor of human sciences at The Ohio State University.

“There’s a lot of evidence that fast-food consumption is linked to childhood obesity, but the problems don’t end there,” Purtell said. “Relying too much on fast food could hurt how well children do in the classroom.”

The results remained even after the researchers took into account a wide variety of other factors that may have explained why those with high fast-food consumption might have lower test scores, including how much they exercised, how much television they watched, what other food they ate, their family’s socioeconomic status and characteristics of their neighborhood and school…..

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/12/141222111605.htm

Citation:

Fast-food consumption linked to lower test score gains in 8th graders

Date:           December 22, 2014

Source:       Ohio State University

Summary:

The amount of fast food children eat may be linked to how well they do in school, a new America-wide study suggests. This study can’t say why fast-food consumption is linked to lower grades, but other studies have shown that fast food lacks certain nutrients, especially iron, that help cognitive development. In addition, diets high in fat and sugar — similar to fast-food meals — have been shown to hurt immediate memory and learning processes.

Fast Food Consumption and Academic Growth in Late Childhood

Kelly M. Purtell, PhD1

Elizabeth T. Gershoff, PhD2

1.     ¹The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA 2.     ²The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA

Kelly M. Purtell, Department of Human Sciences, The Ohio State University, 1787 Neil Avenue, Columbus OH 43215, USA. Email:purtell.15@osu.edu

Abstract

Objective. The objective of this study is to examine the associations between fast food consumption and the academic growth of 8544 fifth-grade children in reading, math, and science. Method. This study uses direct assessments of academic achievement and child-reported fast food consumption from a nationally representative sample of kindergartners followed through eighth grade. Results. More than two thirds of the sample reported some fast food consumption; 20% reported consuming at least 4 fast food meals in the prior week. Fast food consumption during fifth grade predicted lower levels of academic achievement in all 3 subjects in eighth grade, even when fifth grade academic scores and numerous potential confounding variables, including socioeconomic indicators, physical activity, and TV watching, were controlled for in the models. Conclusion. These results provide initial evidence that high levels of fast food consumption are predictive of slower growth in academic skills in a nationally representative sample of children.

Here is the press release from Ohio State University:

Fast-Food Consumption Linked to Lower Test Score Gains in 8th Graders

The more children ate in 5th grade, the slower their academic growth by 8th grade

By: Jeff Grabmeier

Published on December 22, 2014

COLUMBUS, Ohio – The amount of fast food children eat may be linked to how well they do in school, a new nationwide study suggests.

Researchers found that the more frequently children reported eating fast food in fifth grade, the lower their growth in reading, math, and science test scores by the time they reached eighth grade.

Students who ate the most fast food had test score gains that were up to about 20 percent lower than those who didn’t eat any fast food, said Kelly Purtell, lead author of the study and assistant professor of human sciences at The Ohio State University.

“There’s a lot of evidence that fast-food consumption is linked to childhood obesity, but the problems don’t end there,” Purtell said. “Relying too much on fast food could hurt how well children do in the classroom.”

The results remained even after the researchers took into account a wide variety of other factors that may have explained why those with high fast-food consumption might have lower test scores, including how much they exercised, how much television they watched, what other food they ate, their family’s socioeconomic status and characteristics of their neighborhood and school.

Purtell conducted the study with Elizabeth Gershoff, associate professor of human ecology at the University of Texas at Austin. The results are published online in the journal Clinical Pediatrics.

Data from the study came from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study–Kindergarten Cohort, a nationally representative study of students who were in kindergarten in the 1998-1999 school year. It was collected by the National Center for Educational Statistics.

This study included about 11,740 students. They were tested in reading/literacy, mathematics and science in both fifth and eighth grades. They also completed a food consumption questionnaire in fifth grade.

“Fast-food consumption was quite high in these students,” Purtell said.

Less than a third (29 percent) of the children did not have any fast food during the week before they completed the questionnaire. But 10 percent reported having fast food every day while another 10 percent ate it four to six times a week. Slightly more than half of the children ate fast food one to three times in the previous week.

[KP1] Children who ate fast food four to six times per week or every day showed significantly lower gains in all three achievement areas compared to children who did not eat any fast food the week before the survey.

However, children who ate fast food just one to three times a week had lower academic growth compared to non-eaters in only one subject, math.

“We’re not saying that parents should never feed their children fast food, but these results suggest fast-food consumption should be limited as much as possible,” said Purtell.

Purtell emphasized that this study cannot prove that fast-food consumption caused the lower academic growth observed in this study. However, by controlling for other possible explanations for this link, such as family background and what other food they ate, and by looking at change in achievement scores, the authors are confident fast food is explaining some of the difference in achievement gains over time.

In addition, because the study examined only changes in test scores between fifth and eighth grade it controls for all the early childhood factors that may affect test grades.

This study can’t say why fast-food consumption is linked to lower grades, she said. But other studies have shown that fast food lacks certain nutrients, especially iron, that help cognitive development. In addition, diets high in fat and sugar – similar to fast-food meals – have been shown to hurt immediate memory and learning processes.

The research was supported by grants from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. http://news.osu.edu/news/2014/12/22/fast-food-consumption-linked-to-lower-test-score-gains-in-8th-graders/

Children will have the most success in school if they are ready to learn. Ready to learn includes proper nutrition for a healthy body and the optimum situation for children is a healthy family. Many of society’s problems would be lessened if the goal was:

A healthy child in a healthy family who attends a healthy school in a healthy neighborhood ©

School dinner programs: Trying to reduce the number of hungry children https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2012/01/28/school-dinner-programs-trying-to-reduce-the-number-of-hungry-children/

School lunches: The political hot potato https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2011/11/03/school-lunches-the-political-hot-potato/

The government that money buys: School lunch cave in by Congress https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2011/11/16/the-government-that-money-buys-school-lunch-cave-in-by-congress/

Do kids get enough time to eat lunch? https://drwilda.com/2012/08/28/do-kids-get-enough-time-to-eat-lunch/

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Tags: academic achievement, Cheap Eats Cookbook Shows How To Eat Well On A Food Stamp Budget, Children's Health, Fast Food, Fast-food consumption linked to lower test score gains in 8th graders, food consumption, Healthy Food, It Takes More Than A Produce Aisle To Refresh A Food Desert, Nutrition, Ohio State University, Poverty, Test Scores, University of Texas Austin

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University of Texas Center for Brain Health study: Cognitive training can improve poor students performance

30 Dec

Many children begin their first day of school behind their more advantaged peers. Early childhood learning is an important tool is bridging the education deficit. https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2012/01/03/early-learning-standards-and-the-k-12-contiuum/
Rebecca Klein of Huffington posted in the article, This Is What Could Close The Achievement Gap Among Young Kids, Study Says:

Just a few years of high-quality early childhood education could close the academic achievement gap between low-income and affluent students, a new study suggests.
The study, conducted by two university professors, analyzed previous data from a now-defunct program that offered free preschool to students from different social backgrounds.
Using this data, the researchers found that after providing low-income children with quality preschool early in life, the kids had the same IQs as their wealthier peers by age… http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/07/preschool-achievement-gap_n_4556916.html

A King’s College study is intriguing because it points to the value of early cognitive stimulation. See, Children’s drawings indicate later intelligence, study shows http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/08/140818204114.htm

Science Daily reported in the article, Cognitive training can improve brain performance of students in poverty:

The cognitive effects of poverty can be mitigated during middle school with a targeted intervention, according to researchers at the Center for Brain Health at The University of Texas at Dallas.

In a paper published in the open-access journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, researchers for the first time examine the efficacy of cognitive training in a large and diverse group of 7th and 8th grade public middle school students as compared to typically developing students who received no specific training.

“Previous research has shown that growing up in poverty can shape the wiring and even physical dimensions of a young child’s brain, with negative effects on language, learning and attention,” said Dr. Jacquelyn Gamino, director of the Center for Brain Health’s Adolescent Reasoning Initiative and assistant research professor in the School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences at The University of Texas at Dallas. “What this work shows is that there is hope for students in poverty to catch up with their peers not living in poverty.”

The research team studied 913 middle school students from varying socioeconomic backgrounds, accounting for any diagnosed medical or learning differences. Five hundred and fifty six students received the cognitive intervention and 357 served as a comparison group. The protocol included pre- and post-training assessments, in which all adolescents were asked to read several texts and then craft a high-level summary, drawing upon inferences to transform ideas into novel, generalized statements, and recall important facts. For the 556 students who received the Center for BrainHealth-developed cognitive training called SMART (Strategic Memory Advanced Reasoning Training), they completed 10 45-minute sessions over a one-month period. The SMART program was provided by research clinicians and consists of hierarchical cognitive processes that are explained and practiced through group interactive exercises and pen and paper activities using student instructional manuals.

“Much focus has been put on early childhood learning and brain development — and for good reason,” said Dr. Gamino. “However, extensive frontal lobe development and pruning occurs during adolescence making middle school a prime opportunity to impact cognitive brain health.”

“Existing studies show that a large percentage of students in middle school are not developing inferential thinking entering high school,” explained Dr. Gamino. “The cognitive gains demonstrated after short-term, intensive training in this research suggest that middle school is an appropriate and beneficial time to teach students strategies to enhance understanding and the ability to infer global meanings from information beyond the explicit facts.”

Cognitive tests indicate that students living in poverty showed as much as a 25% increase in gist reasoning, or the ability to derive abstracted meaning from information presented, after training, comparable to the gains made by their peers living above the poverty line. Additionally, the SMART-trained group, regardless of socioeconomic status, showed significant generalized gains and as much as an 18% improvement in increased memory for facts, even though this skill was not specifically targeted in training….

Findings revealed gender differences among the students studied as well. Seventh and eighth grade girls showed significant improvement after receiving the SMART program, as did 8th grade boys, regardless of socioeconomic level. After training, 7th grade boys showed improvement in fact retention but not gist reasoning. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/12/141210080748.htm

Citation:

Cognitive training can improve brain performance of students in poverty

Date: December 10, 2014

Source: Center for Brain Health

Summary:

The cognitive effects of poverty can be mitigated during middle school with a targeted intervention, according to researchers who, for the first time, examined the efficacy of cognitive training in a large and diverse group of 7th and 8th grade public middle school students as compared to typically developing students who received no specific training.

Here is the press release from the University Texas Center for Brain Health:

Study shows cognitive training can improve brain performance of students in poverty

By: The Center for Brain Health

Tuesday, December 9, 2014

The cognitive effects of poverty can be mitigated during middle school with a targeted intervention, according to researchers at the Center for BrainHealth at The University of Texas at Dallas.

In a paper published today in the open-access journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, researchers for the first time examine the efficacy of cognitive training in a large and diverse group of 7^th and 8^th grade public middle school students as compared to typically developing students who received no specific training.

“Previous research has shown that growing up in poverty can shape the wiring and even physical dimensions of a young child’s brain, with negative effects on language, learning and attention,” said Dr. Jacquelyn Gamino, director of the Center for BrainHealth’s Adolescent Reasoning Initiative and assistant research professor in the School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences at The University of Texas at Dallas. “What this work shows is that there is hope for students in poverty to catch up with their peers not living in poverty.”

The research team studied 913 middle school students from varying socioeconomic backgrounds, accounting for any diagnosed medical or learning differences. Five hundred and fifty six students received the cognitive intervention and 357 served as a comparison group. The protocol included pre- and post-training assessments, in which all adolescents were asked to read several texts and then craft a high-level summary, drawing upon inferences to transform ideas into novel, generalized statements, and recall important facts. For the 556 students who received the Center for BrainHealth-developed cognitive training called SMART (Strategic Memory Advanced Reasoning Training), they completed 10 45-minute sessions over a one-month period. The SMART program was provided by research clinicians and consists of hierarchical cognitive processes that are explained and practiced through group interactive exercises and pen and paper activities using student instructional manuals.

“Much focus has been put on early childhood learning and brain development – and for good reason,” said Dr. Gamino. “However, extensive frontal lobe development and pruning occurs during adolescence making middle school a prime opportunity to impact cognitive brain health.”

“Existing studies show that a large percentage of students in middle school are not developing inferential thinking entering high school,” explained Dr. Gamino. “The cognitive gains demonstrated after short-term, intensive training in this research suggest that middle school is an appropriate and beneficial time to teach students strategies to enhance understanding and the ability to infer global meanings from information beyond the explicit facts.”

Cognitive tests indicate that students living in poverty showed as much as a 25% increase in gist reasoning, or the ability to derive abstracted meaning from information presented, after training, comparable to the gains made by their peers living above the poverty line. Additionally, the SMART-trained group, regardless of socioeconomic status, showed significant generalized gains and as much as an 18% improvement in increased memory for facts, even though this skill was not specifically targeted in training.

“The ability to use inference to abstract meaning from incoming information as trained in the SMART program is a skill crucial to future life success and applies to both academic and informal learning activities such as reading a school assignment, listening and taking notes from a lecture, watching a movie or television program, or having a conversation with a friend,” Dr. Gamino continued.

Findings revealed gender differences among the students studied as well. Seventh and eighth grade girls showed significant improvement after receiving the SMART program, as did 8^th grade boys, regardless of socioeconomic level. After training, 7^th grade boys showed improvement in fact retention but not gist reasoning.

The Center for Brain Health’s Adolescent Reasoning Initiative has provided training to more than 300 teachers and 30,000 teens across the country. The research team is planning to expand their study to determine if cognitive training closes the academic achievement gap by conducting longitudinal research and comparing standardized test scores.

The research was funded by the State of Texas, The AT&T Foundation, The Meadows Foundation and The Pickens Foundation.

http://www.brainhealth.utdallas.edu/blog_page/study-shows-cognitive-training-can-improve-brain-performance-of-students-in?utm_source=BrainHealth+Breakthrough+12.09.2014+Brain+Training+and+Socioeconomic+Status&utm_campaign=BHBT+12.09.14&utm_medium=email

Money spent on early childhood programs is akin to yeast for bread. The whole society will rise.

What is the Educare preschool model? https://drwilda.com/2012/11/09/what-is-the-educare-preschool-model/

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Tags: Children's drawings indicate later intelligence, Cognitive, Cognitive Training, Cognitive training can improve brain performance of students in poverty, poor children, Poverty, Researchers Think They Have Found A Way To Help Close The Achievement Gap, Study Shows, This Is What Could Close The Achievement Gap Among Young Kids Study Says, University of Texas Center for Brain Health, University of Texas Dallas

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Categories Dr Wilda

Brookings study: Father’s education level influences the life chances of their children

7 Dec

Moi has been saying for decades that the optimum situation for raising children is a two-parent family for a variety of reasons. This two-parent family is an economic unit with the prospect of two incomes and a division of labor for the chores necessary to maintain the family structure. Parents also need a degree of maturity to raise children; after all, you and your child should not be raising each other.

Eric Schulzke of Deseret News reported in the article, Like father like child: why your future may be closely tied to your father’s income and education:

A child’s odds of breaking out of poverty or gaining a college education are heavily shaped by the father’s income and education level, says Richard Reeves of the Brookings Institution.

In a couple of graphs that unpack piles of data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics at the University of Michigan, Reeves breaks education and income levels down into quintiles and shows the close connection between a father’s level and how far his children go.

Whether you see that as a glass half empty or glass half full depend on your starting point, Reeves acknowledges. “If you assume that in an ideal world, where you would end up would bear no relation to where you started.” That is, he argues, if we had real equality of opportunity, 20 percent of every group would end up in the other four groups in the next generation.

Instead, 41 percent of kids whose father had top-level educational achievement stay there, and 36 percent of those who start in the bottom income bracket will remain there.

There is some mobility, of course. Of those who start in the bottom fifth of income levels, 35 percent end up in the middle class or above, which is roughly equal to the 36 percent who stay put…. http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865616732/Like-father-like-child-why-your-future-may-be-closely-tied-to-your-fathers-income-and-education.html?pg=all

See, Children with married parents are better off — but marriage isn’t the reason why http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/09/08/children-with-married-parents-are-better-off-but-marriage-isnt-the-reason-why/

Here is the relevant portion from The Inheritance of Education by Richard V. Reeves and Joanna Venator:

Educated Dad = Educated Kid

The two matrices look pretty similar – no surprise, given that income and education are tightly correlated. But in one respect there appears to be less mobility in terms of education: the replication of top-quintile status. Almost half (46%) the children of top-quintile parents ended up in the top education quintile themselves, and three in four (76%) stayed in one of the top two quintiles. The equivalent measures of ‘stickiness’ at the top for income are 41% and 65%.

This finding echoes research showing large, and possibly growing, gaps in educational attainment by social and economic background. The trend towards assortative mating – like marrying like – will likely strengthen the intergenerational transmission of high educational status. Of course education is one of main factors behind intergenerational income persistence, but it also troubling in its own right. The ethical demand for equality of opportunity in terms of education is even greater than for income. If a high level of education is effectively inherited, the ideal of meritocracy will move even further from our reach…. http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/social-mobility-memos/posts/2014/10/27-intergenerational-education-mobility-reeves

This is a problem which never should have been swept under the carpet and if the chattering classes, politicians, and elite can’t see the magnitude of this problem, they are not just brain dead, they are flat-liners. There must be a new women’s movement, this time it doesn’t involve the “me first” philosophy of the social “progressives” or the elite who in order to validate their own particular life choices espouse philosophies that are dangerous or even poisonous to those who have fewer economic resources. This movement must urge women of color to be responsible for their reproductive choices. They cannot have children without having the resources both financial and having a committed partner. For all the talk of genocide involving the response and aftermath of “Katrina,” the real genocide is self-inflicted.

So, a behavior that statistically is more damaging than consuming sugary drinks is never condemned. The child born to a single poor mother is usually condemned to follow her into a life of poverty. Yet, the same rigor of dissuasion is not applied to young impressionable women who are becoming single mothers in large numbers as is applied to regular Coke or Pepsi addicts. Personal choice is involved, some of the snarky could categorize the personal choice as moronic in both cases. Government intervention is seen as the antidote in the case of sugary drinks, but not single motherhood. Why? Because we like to pick the morons we want government to control. The fact of the matter is that government control is just as bad in the case of sugary drinks as it would be in regulating a individual’s reproductive choice. The folks like Mayor Bloomberg who want government to control some behavior really don’t want to confront the difficult, for them, political choice of promoting individual personal values and responsibility. It is much easier to legislate a illusory solution. So, the ruling elite will continue to focus on obesity, which is a major health issue, while a disaster bigger than “Katrina” and “Sandy “ sweeps across the country with disastrous results.

Hard times are disrupting families

https://drwilda.com/2011/12/11/hard-times-are-disrupting-families/

3rd world America: The link between poverty and education

https://drwilda.com/2011/11/20/3rd-world-america-the-link-between-poverty-and-education/

3rd world America: Money changes everything

https://drwilda.com/2012/02/11/3rd-world-america-money-changes-everything/

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Tags: Brookings Institute, Children, Children and Families, college education, Deseret News, Educated Dad = Educated Kid, education, Education Attainment, education level, Father, Father's Education Attainment, Fatherless Families, Like father like child: why your future may be closely tied to your father's income and education, Poverty, Richard Reeves, Richard V. Reeves, Single Mothers, The Inheritance of Education

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Categories Dr Wilda

Child poverty affects education outcome

2 Nov

Moi blogs about education issues so the reader could be perplexed sometimes because moi often writes about other things like nutrition, families, and personal responsibility issues. Why? The reader might ask? Children will have the most success in school if they are ready to learn. Ready to learn includes proper nutrition for a healthy body and the optimum situation for children is a healthy family. Many of society’s problems would be lessened if the goal was a healthy child in a healthy family. There is a lot of economic stress in the country now because of unemployment and underemployment. Children feel the stress of their parents and they worry about how stable their family and living situation is.

The best way to eliminate poverty is job creation, job growth, and job retention. The Asian Development Bank has the best concise synopsis of the link between education and poverty in Assessing Development Impact: Breaking the Cycle of Poverty Through Education http://www.adb.org/documents/assessing-development-impact-breaking-cycle-poverty-through-education There will not be a good quality of life for most citizens without a strong education system. One of the major contributors to poverty in third world nations is limited access to education opportunities. Without continued sustained investment in education, we are the next third world country. See, http://education.stateuniversity.com/pages/2330/Poverty-Education.html

Eleanor Goldberg reported in the Huffington Post article, Child Poverty Has Spiked In The Richest Countries Since The Great Recession: Report:

Even the richest countries weren’t too big to fail their children after the Great Recession, a new study has revealed.

According to a recent UNICEF report, 2.6 million more children fell into poverty in the world’s most affluent countries since 2008, bringing the total number of impoverished kids up to 76.5 million.

And kids in the U.S. were among the hardest hit.

With 32.2 percent of children living below the poverty line, America ranked 36 out of the 41 well-to-do countries surveyed…. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/30/child-poverty-rich-countries_n_6070114.html?utm_hp_ref=education&ir=Education

Here is the press release from UNICEF:

Press release

2.6 million more children plunged into poverty in rich countries during Great Recession

Stronger social protection policies a decisive factor in poverty prevention

ROME/GENEVA/NEW YORK, 28 October 2014 – A new UNICEF report shows that 2.6 million children have sunk below the poverty line in the world’s most affluent countries since 2008, bringing the total number of children in the developed world living in poverty to an estimated 76.5 million.

Innocenti Report Card 12, Children of the Recession: The impact of the economic crisis on child well-being in rich countries, ranks 41 countries in the OECD and the European Union according to whether levels of child poverty have increased or decreased since 2008. It also tracks the proportion of 15-24 year-olds who are not in education, employment or training (NEET). The report includes Gallup World Poll data on people’s perceptions of their economic status and hopes for the future since the recession began.

While early stimulus programmes in some countries were effective in protecting children, by 2010 a majority of countries pivoted sharply from budget stimulus to budget cuts, with negative impact on children, particularly in the Mediterranean region.

“Many affluent countries have suffered a ‘great leap backwards’ in terms of household income, and the impact on children will have long-lasting repercussions for them and their communities,” said Jeffrey O’Malley, UNICEF’s Head of Global Policy and Strategy.

“UNICEF research shows that the strength of social protection policies was a decisive factor in poverty prevention. All countries need strong social safety nets to protect children in bad times and in good – and wealthy countries should lead by example, explicitly committing to eradicate child poverty, developing policies to offset economic downturns, and making child well-being a top priority,” O’Malley said.

Other significant findings of the UNICEF report, released today at an event co-hosted with the Italian Presidency of the Council of the European Union and Ministry of Labour and Social Policy, include:

In 23 of the 41 countries analysed, child poverty has increased since 2008. In Ireland, Croatia, Latvia, Greece and Iceland, rates rose by over 50 per cent.

In Greece in 2012 median household incomes for families with children sank to 1998 levels – the equivalent of a loss of 14 years of income progress. By this measure Ireland, Luxembourg and Spain lost a decade; Iceland lost 9 years; and Italy, Hungary and Portugal lost 8.

The recession has hit 15-24 year olds especially hard, with the number of NEETs rising dramatically in many countries. In the European Union 7.5 million young people (almost equivalent to the population of Switzerland) were classified as NEET in 2013.

In the United States, where extreme child poverty has increased more in this downturn than during the recession of 1982, social safety net measures provided important support to poor working families but were less effective for the extreme poor without jobs. Child poverty has increased in 34 out of 50 states since the start of the crisis. In 2012, 24.2 million children were living in poverty, a net increase of 1.7 million from 2008.

In 18 countries child poverty actually fell, sometimes markedly. Australia, Chile, Finland, Norway, Poland and the Slovak Republic reduced levels by around 30 per cent.

“Significantly, the report found that the social policy responses of countries with similar economic circumstances varied markedly with differing impacts on children,” O’Malley said…..http://www.unicef.org/media/media_76447.html

This government, both parties, has failed to promote the kind of economic development AND policy which creates livable wage jobs. That is why Mc Donalds is popular for more than its dollar menu. They are hiring people. This economy must start producing livable wage jobs and educating kids with skills to fill those jobs. Too bad the government kept the cash sluts and credit crunch weasels like big banks and financial houses fully employed and destroyed the rest of the country.

Hard times are disrupting families https://drwilda.com/2011/12/11/hard-times-are-disrupting-families/

3rd world America: The link between poverty and education https://drwilda.com/2011/11/20/3rd-world-america-the-link-between-poverty-and-education/

3rd world America: Money changes everything https://drwilda.com/2012/02/11/3rd-world-america-money-changes-everything/

Where information leads to Hope. © Dr. Wilda.com

Dr. Wilda says this about that ©

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Tags: 2.6 million more children plunged into poverty in rich countries during Great Recession, 3rd World America, Asian Development Bank, Assessing Development Impact Breaking the Cycle of Poverty Through Education, Child Poverty, Child Poverty Has Spiked In The Richest Countries Since The Great Recession, Poverty, Poverty and Education, UNICEF

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Categories Dr Wilda

GAO report: Better oversight is needed in program for homeless children

27 Aug

Moi wrote in 3rd world America: Money changes everything: The increased rate of poverty has profound implications if this society believes that ALL children have the right to a good basic education. Moi blogs about education issues so the reader could be perplexed sometimes because moi often writes about other things like nutrition, families, and personal responsibility issues. Why? The reader might ask? Because children will have the most success in school if they are ready to learn. Ready to learn includes proper nutrition for a healthy body and the optimum situation for children is a healthy family. Many of societies’ problems would be lessened if the goal was a healthy child in a healthy family. There is a lot of economic stress in the country now because of unemployment and underemployment. Children feel the stress of their parents and they worry about how stable their family and living situation is.

This government, both parties, has failed to promote the kind of economic development AND policy which creates livable wage jobs. That is why Mc Donalds is popular for more than its dollar menu. They are hiring people.
This economy must focus on job creation and job retention and yes, hope. Both for those racing through college and those who have paid their education and training dues. “You deserve a break today at Mc Donalds,” the only employer who seems to be hiring. https://drwilda.com/2011/11/22/3rd-world-america-the-economy-affects-the-society-of-the-future/

Lauren Camera reported in the Education Week article, Better Oversight Needed of Federal Program for Homeless Students, GAO Says:

The U.S. Department of Education needs to provide better oversight of a federal program aimed at ensuring that homeless students have access to the public education system, a new Government Accountability Office report found.
The authors of the report, obtained by Education Week, listed several challenges to the Education for Homeless Children and Youth program, which provides students with transportation to and from school as well as wraparound services such as health care, counseling, and food assistance. The biggest of those include limited staff and resources, the high cost of transportation, student stigma associated with homelessness, and responding to students made homeless by natural disasters.
And while the department has protocols for monitoring the program, the report notes, it doesn’t have a plan to ensure adequate oversight in every state. In fact, it the department assessed the program in just 28 states from fiscal year 2010 to 2013, and in only three states since then….. http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/campaign-k-12/2014/08/gao_report_ed_department_needs.html

Here are the highlights of the GAO report:

Contact:
Kay Brown
(202) 512-7215
brownke@gao.gov
Office of Public Affairs
(202) 512-4800
youngc1@gao.gov
What GAO Found
To identify and serve homeless students under the Education for Homeless Children and Youth (EHCY) program, officials in the 20 school districts where GAO conducted interviews reported conducting a range of activities to support homeless youth, but cited several challenges. With regard to GAO’s interviews, 13 of the 20 districts identified homeless students through housing surveys at enrollment, while all 20 relied on referrals from schools or service providers. However, officials in 8 of the 20 districts noted that the under-identification of homeless students was a problem. Districts GAO reviewed provided eligible students with transportation to and from school, educational services, and referrals to other service providers for support such as health care or food assistance. Among the challenges that officials in the 20 districts cited were limited staff and resources to provide services, the cost of transportation, student stigma associated with homelessness, and responding to students made homeless by natural disasters. Nationally, school districts surveyed most recently in school year 2010-11 by the Department of Education (Education) reported providing many services while facing similar challenges.
Education’s EHCY program manager and state program coordinators have collaborated with other government agencies and with private organizations by sharing information, participating in interagency councils on homelessness, and providing technical assistance to relevant staff. In addition, state EHCY program coordinators have provided training to school districts and helped connect local programs to ensure homeless students receive various services. However, federal and state officials frequently cited limited resources and differing federal definitions of homelessness as constraints to greater collaboration.
Education has protocols for monitoring state EHCY programs, but no plan to ensure adequate oversight of all states, though monitoring is a key management tool for assessing the quality of performance over time and resolving problems promptly. Prior to fiscal year 2010, it had been Education’s policy to monitor 50 states and 3 area programs at least once during a 3-year period, and it did so for fiscal years 2007 to 2009. Subsequently, the department adopted a risk-based approach in fiscal year 2010 and monitored 28 states over the next 3 years. In fiscal year 2013, Education again changed its approach to EHCY program monitoring and has monitored 3 state programs since then. Department officials cited other priorities and a lack of staff capacity as reasons for the decrease in oversight. As a result, Education lacks assurance that states are complying with program requirements. GAO found gaps in state monitoring of districts that could weaken program performance, reinforcing the importance of effective federal monitoring of states.
Declining Frequency of Federal Monitoring for EHCY Compliance since Fiscal Year 2007
Why GAO Did This Study
The McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act established a grant program to help the nation’s homeless students—more than one million in school year 2011-12—have access to public education. Under the Education for Homeless Children and Youth grant program, states and their school districts are required to identify homeless children and provide them with needed services and support. In fiscal year 2014, Education received about $65 million to administer this program. Education provided formula grants to states, which competitively awarded funds to school districts to help meet program requirements. GAO was asked to review program implementation and oversight.
GAO examined (1) how districts identify and serve homeless students and challenges they face (2) how Education and states collaborate with other service providers to address student needs and any barriers, and (3) the extent to which Education monitors program compliance. GAO reviewed relevant federal laws, guidance, and reports, and analyzed Education’s state and school district survey data from school year 2010-11. GAO also interviewed federal officials, and state and local officials in 20 school districts—representing a mix of urban, suburban, and rural districts and grant status—in four states, selected for geographic diversity and other characteristics, such as experience with natural disasters.
What GAO Recommends
GAO recommends that Education develop a plan to ensure adequate oversight of the EHCY program. Education concurred with our recommendation.
For more information, contact Kay Brown at (202) 512-7215 or brownke@gao.gov.
Status Legend:

• Review Pending
• Open
• Closed – implemented
• Closed – not implemented
Recommendation for Executive Action
Recommendation: To help ensure state compliance with the McKinney-Vento Act, Education should develop a monitoring plan to ensure adequate oversight of the EHCY program. This plan could, for example, determine a schedule of states to be monitored and incorporate procedures to assess whether states need to update their state plans.
Agency Affected: Department of Education
Status: Open
Comments: When we confirm what actions the agency has taken in response to this recommendation, we will provide updated information.
Education of Homeless Students:
Improved Program Oversight Needed
GAO-14-465: Published: Jul 31, 2014. Publicly Released: Aug 22, 2014.
• Highlights http://www.gao.gov/assets/670/665184.pdf
View Report (PDF, 65 pages)

Click to access 665185.pdf

Additional Materials:
• Podcast:
o http://www.gao.gov/multimedia/podcasts/665378

Many educators have long recognized that the impact of social class affects both education achievement and life chances after completion of education. There are two impacts from diversity, one is to broaden the life experience of the privileged and to raise the expectations of the disadvantaged. Social class matters in not only other societies, but this one as well.

A few years back, the New York Times did a series about social class in America. That series is still relevant. Janny Scott and David Leonhardt’s overview, Shadowy Lines That Still Divide http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/15/national/class/OVERVIEW-FINAL.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 describes the challenges faced by schools trying to overcome the disparity in education. The complete series can be found at Social Class http://www.nytimes.com/pages/national/class/

There is no magic bullet or “Holy Grail” in education. There is only what works to produce academic achievement in each population of children. That is why school choice is so important.

Hard times are disrupting families https://drwilda.com/2011/12/11/hard-times-are-disrupting-families/

3rd world America: The link between poverty and education https://drwilda.com/2011/11/20/3rd-world-america-the-link-between-poverty-and-education/

3rd world America: Money changes everything

3rd world America: Money changes everything

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Tags: 3rd World America, 7 Things About Homeless Kids You Probably Didn't Know, Better Oversight Needed of Federal Program for Homeless Students, business, Carey Fuller, Century Foundation, Children and Poverty, current-events, economy, education, Education of Homeless Students: Improved Program Oversight Needed, First Focus, For Kids, GAO, GAO Says, General Accounting Office, Homeless, Homeless children, homeless kids, Homeless students, How to attack the growing educational gap between rich and poor, Jobless Benefits Miss the Mark, Parents' Unemployment Affects Students at Home, politics, Poverty, Poverty and Education, The Century Foundation, The Urban Institute, Trading Down: Laid-Off Americans Taking Pay Cuts and Increasingly Kissing Their Old Lives Goodbye, Unemployment, Unemployment from a Child’s Perspective

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NBER working paper: Medicaid expansion leads to fewer high school dropouts

5 Jun

The best way to eliminate poverty is job creation, job growth, and job retention. The Asian Development Bank has the best concise synopsis of the link between Education and Poverty For a good article about education and poverty which has a good bibliography, go to Poverty and Education, Overview
http://www.adb.org/documents/assessing-development-impact-breaking-cycle-poverty-through-education There will not be a good quality of life for most citizens without a strong education system. One of the major contributors to poverty in third world nations is limited access to education opportunities. Without continued sustained investment in education in this state, we are the next third world country.

Shadee Ashtari reported in the Huffington Post article, Medicaid Expansion Leads To Fewer High School Dropouts And More College Graduates: Study:

Amid the ongoing debate over 24 states’ refusal to expand Medicaid eligibility under the Affordable Care Act, a recent report by the National Bureau of Economic Research has found that expanding health insurance coverage for low-income children resulted in fewer high school dropouts, higher college attendance rates and a better likelihood of attaining a bachelor’s degree.
Cornell and Harvard researchers examined the effects of Medicaid expansion among eligible children in the 1980s and 1990s in states that broadened their public insurance programs and concluded “better health is one of the mechanisms driving our results by showing that Medicaid eligibility when young translated into better teen health.” Better health, in turn, led to substantial long-term educational benefits.
According to the working paper, published in May, states that increased childhood Medicaid eligibility by 10 percent reduced high school dropout rates by 5.2 percent and increased college attendance and BA attainment by 1.1 percent and 3.2 percent, respectively.
After examining two decades of Medicaid eligibility expansion in various states, the authors argued that in addition to immediately improving children’s health statuses, public health expansion renders long-term benefits by working to reduce “inequality and higher economic growth that stems from the creation of a more skilled workforce.”
The researchers attributed the outcomes to two plausible explanations. First, children with health insurance benefited from healthier lifestyles -– they missed less school due to illness, were less likely to engage in risky sexual activity, had lower likelihoods of obesity and fewer mental health problems.
Indirectly, the authors explained that by spending less money on health care, low-income families eligible for Medicaid were able to shift a greater share of their resources toward helping their children succeed in school.
As of 2013, roughly 10 percent of children in the U.S. — or 7.9 million — remain uninsured. About 70 percent of them are eligible for coverage under Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program. Under the Affordable Care Act, that number is estimated to decrease by 40 percent. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/05/medicaid-children-education_n_5455335.html?utm_hp_ref=education&ir=Education

Citation:

The Effect of Child Health Insurance Access on Schooling: Evidence from Public Insurance Expansions
Sarah Cohodes, Samuel Kleiner, Michael F. Lovenheim, Daniel Grossman
NBER Working Paper No. 20178
Issued in May 2014
NBER Program(s): CH ED HC PE
Public health insurance programs comprise a large share of federal and state government expenditure, and these programs are due to be expanded as part of the 2010 Affordable Care Act. Despite a large literature on the effects of these programs on health care utilization and health outcomes, little prior work has examined the long-term effects of these programs and resultant health improvements on important outcomes, such as educational attainment. We contribute to filling this gap in the literature by examining the effects of the public insurance expansions among children in the 1980s and 1990s on their future educational attainment. Our findings indicate that expanding health insurance coverage for low-income children has large effects on high school completion, college attendance and college completion. These estimates are robust to only using federal Medicaid expansions, and they are mostly due to expansions that occur when the children are older (i.e., not newborns). We present suggestive evidence that better health is one of the mechanisms driving our results by showing that Medicaid eligibility when young translated into better teen health. Overall, our results indicate that the long-run benefits of public health insurance are substantial.

The NBER Bulletin on Aging and Health provides summaries of publications like this. You can sign up to receive the NBER Bulletin on Aging and Health by email.
You may purchase this paper on-line in .pdf format from SSRN.com ($5) for electronic delivery.
Information about Free Papers
You should expect a free download if you are a subscriber, a corporate associate of the NBER, a journalist, an employee of the U.S. federal government with a “.GOV” domain name, or a resident of nearly any developing country or transition economy.
If you usually get free papers at work/university but do not at home, you can either connect to your work VPN or proxy (if any) or elect to have a link to the paper emailed to your work email address below. The email address must be connected to a subscribing college, university, or other subscribing institution. Gmail and other free email addresses will not have access.

The increased rate of poverty has profound implications if this society believes that ALL children have the right to a good basic education. Moi blogs about education issues so the reader could be perplexed sometimes because moi often writes about other things like nutrition, families, and personal responsibility issues. Why? The reader might ask? Because children will have the most success in school if they are ready to learn. Ready to learn includes proper nutrition for a healthy body and the optimum situation for children is a healthy family. Many of societies’ problems would be lessened if the goal was a healthy child in a healthy family.

Hard times are disrupting families https://drwilda.com/2011/12/11/hard-times-are-disrupting-families/

3rd world America: The link between poverty and education https://drwilda.com/2011/11/20/3rd-world-america-the-link-between-poverty-and-education/

3rd world America: Money changes everything https://drwilda.com/2012/02/11/3rd-world-america-money-changes-everything/

Where information leads to Hope. © Dr. Wilda.com

Dr. Wilda says this about that ©

Blogs by Dr. Wilda:

COMMENTS FROM AN OLD FART© http://drwildaoldfart.wordpress.com/

Dr. Wilda Reviews © http://drwildareviews.wordpress.com/

Dr. Wilda © https://drwilda.com/

Tags: Children's Health, Dropout, health insurance, health insurance coverage, Medicaid, Medicaid eligibility, Medicaid Expansion, Medicaid Expansion Leads To Fewer High School Dropouts And More College Graduates, Poverty, The Effect of Child Health Insurance Access on Schooling: Evidence from Public Insurance Expansions

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Categories Dr Wilda

Challenges faced by homeless kids

27 May

Richard D. Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at The Century Foundation wrote the informative Washington Post article, How to attack the growing educational gap between rich and poor:

In fact, research published by The Century Foundation and other organizations going back more than a decade shows that there are an array of strategies that can be highly effective in addressing the socioeconomic gaps in education:
* Pre-K programs. As Century’s Greg Anrig has noted, there is a wide body of research suggesting that well-designed pre-K programs in places like Oklahoma have yielded significant achievement gains for students. Likewise, forthcoming Century Foundation research by Jeanne Reid of Teachers College, Columbia University, suggests that allowing children to attend socioeconomically integrated (as opposed to high poverty) pre-K settings can have an important positive effect on learning.
* Socioeconomic Housing Integration. Inclusionary zoning laws that allow low-income and working-class parents and their children to live in low-poverty neighborhoods and attend low-poverty schools can have very positive effects on student achievement, as researcher David Rusk has long noted. A natural experiment in Montgomery County, Maryland, showed that low-income students randomly assigned to public housing units and allowed to attend schools in low-poverty neighborhoods scored at 0.4 of a standard deviation higher than those randomly assigned to higher-poverty neighborhoods and schools. According to the researcher, Heather Schwartz of the RAND Corporation, the initial sizable achievement gap between low-income and middle-class students in low-poverty neighborhoods and schools was cut in half in math and by one-third in reading over time.
* Socioeconomic School Integration. School districts that reduce concentrations of poverty in schools through public school choice have been able to significantly reduce the achievement and attainment gaps. In Cambridge, Massachusetts, for example, where a longstanding socioeconomic integration plan has allowed students to choose to attend mixed-income magnet schools, the graduation rate for African American, Latino, and low-income students is close to 90 percent, far exceeding the state average for these groups.
* College Affirmative Action for Low-Income Students. Research finds attending a selective college confers substantial benefits, and that many more low-income and working-class students could attend and succeed in selective colleges than currently do. Research by Anthony Carnevale and Stephen J. Rose of Georgetown University for the Century volume, America’s Untapped Resource: Low-Income Students in Higher Education , found that selective universities could increase their representation from the bottom socioeconomic half of the population from 10 percent to 38 percent, and overall graduation rates for all students would remain the same.
In addition to these ideas, Century Foundation research by Gordon MacInnes has highlighted promising programs to promote the performance of low-income students in New Jersey. Forthcoming research will suggest ways to revitalize organized labor, a development that could raise wages of workers and thereby have a positive impact on the educational outcomes of their children. We will also be exploring ways to strengthen community colleges as a vital institutions for social mobility. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/how-to-attack-the-growing-educational-gap-between-rich-and-poor/2012/02/10/gIQArDOg4Q_blog.html

This economy must focus on job creation and job retention and yes, hope. Both for those racing through college and those who have paid their education and training dues. “You deserve a break today at Mc Donalds,” the only employer who seems to be hiring. https://drwilda.com/2011/11/22/3rd-world-america-the-economy-affects-the-society-of-the-future/

Ann Brenoff wrote in the Huffington Post article, 7 Things About Homeless Kids You Probably Didn’t Know:

Here are seven things about being a homeless kid that you probably didn’t know:
1. Making friends is harder when you’re homeless.
Carey Fuller, who lives in her car with her 11-year-old daughter Maggie Warner in the Pacific Northwest, said she “cringed” when she recently took Maggie out to play in a park. Things were going fine until “someone asked her where she lived,” Fuller explained. It’s the death knell question, the one that throws the wet blanket on the playdate and it’s usually just a matter of seconds before the other kid takes off in the direction of someone else….
Fuller became homeless after losing her job in the financial services sector in Seattle. Initially, the family downsized to a smaller apartment, but when that still proved too costly, Fuller bought an RV and moved into it with her two daughters. Maggie was a toddler at the time. The family has since downsized to a minivan. Fuller, who takes whatever part-time work she can find, is well-known as an advocate for homeless kids and writes about her life as a homeless mother living in a van.
2. Birthdays can be disappointing for a homeless kid.
Forget having a big party with lots of friends coming over. Sure you can have a party in the park if it’s a nice day. But who is going to pay for the pizza and cake and if people give you presents, where will you put them anyway?
3. Canned food drives don’t actually make much sense.
“Where are homeless people supposed to cook all those cans of food you collect?” asks Maggie Warner. Homeless people have no kitchens, she points out.
Gift cards or a credit to the grocery store where they can buy fresh fruit and pre-made meals makes more sense. But some donors are reluctant to do this because they think homeless people will use the money for beer or alcohol.
4. Homeless kids aren’t as healthy as kids with homes.
The National Center on Family Homelessness says that homeless kids have four times as many respiratory infections, twice as many ear infections and five times more gastrointestinal problems. They are three times more likely to have emotional and behavioral problems than non-homeless children.
Being homeless is stressful and practicing good hygiene is harder when you don’t have ready access to bathrooms, sinks and showers. Homeless kids are also exposed to the weather and elements. Homelessness is connected to poverty and when you are poor, you often must rely on free clinics for health care; seeing doctors is not a regular thing.
5. Homeless kids may try hard but are more likely to struggle in school.
Of homeless elementary students, only 21.5 percent are proficient in math and 24.4 percent in reading. It is even worse among high school students, where just 11.4 percent are proficient in math and 14.6 percent in reading….
Agnes Stevens, a retired teacher, began tutoring homeless kids in a park in Santa Monica, Calif., encouraging them to stay in school and participate in school activities. In 1993, she founded School on Wheels, a program that tutors homeless kids in six Southern California counties. The organization also provides backpacks, school supplies and school uniforms for homeless kids and helps their parents navigate school resources. The group runs two learning centers too.
6. Homeless kids put up with a lot of daily indignities, small things that you probably don’t realize.
They appreciate getting your used clothing donations, but once in a while they’d like to wear something without some other kid’s name written in it. They also don’t feel great sneaking in the school bathroom before class to brush their teeth, but it’s often the only place available. Maybe there’s a way to issue them a free lunch card that looks like the lunch card everyone else uses? If their family doesn’t have a post office box, it’s hard to mail home their report card. They don’t want everyone to know if the PTA paid for them to go on the class field trip. School projects that involve a trip to the crafts store for supplies pose a special burden on their families who can’t afford it. Participating in sports sounds great, but soccer cleats and baseball uniforms aren’t exactly in the budget. A lost textbook is a problem for a regular kid; a lost textbook is a catastrophe for a homeless kid.
7. Homeless kids are a pretty resilient lot.
When The Huffington Post asked Maggie what she wanted to say to our readers, this is what she said: “Never give up and never stop hoping things will get better even when you feel like you’re at the bottom.” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/25/homeless-kids_n_5359430.html?utm_hp_ref=education&ir=Education

There is no magic bullet or “Holy Grail” in education. There is only what works to produce academic achievement in each population of children. That is why school choice is so important.

Hard times are disrupting families

Hard times are disrupting families

3rd world America: The link between poverty and education

3rd world America: The link between poverty and education

3rd world America: Money changes everything

3rd world America: Money changes everything

Where information leads to Hope. © Dr. Wilda.com

Dr. Wilda says this about that ©

Blogs by Dr. Wilda:

COMMENTS FROM AN OLD FART© http://drwildaoldfart.wordpress.com/

Dr. Wilda Reviews © http://drwildareviews.wordpress.com/

Dr. Wilda © https://drwilda.com/

Tags: 3rd World America, 7 Things About Homeless Kids You Probably Didn't Know, business, Carey Fuller, Century Foundation, Children and Poverty, current-events, economy, education, First Focus, For Kids, Homeless, Homeless children, homeless kids, Homeless students, How to attack the growing educational gap between rich and poor, Jobless Benefits Miss the Mark, Parents' Unemployment Affects Students at Home, politics, Poverty, Poverty and Education, The Century Foundation, The Urban Institute, Trading Down: Laid-Off Americans Taking Pay Cuts and Increasingly Kissing Their Old Lives Goodbye, Unemployment, Unemployment from a Child’s Perspective

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Categories Dr Wilda

The poverty effect: Schools must deal with student personal hygiene issues

23 Nov

As children head back to school, parents want to make sure that their children have not only the proper school supplies like paper and pencils, but proper hygiene habits as well. There are a couple of reasons why proper hygiene is important. The first reason is proper hygiene makes your child more pleasant to be around for the teacher and other children. The current economic climate is making families and charities make some tough choices when it comes to deciding what to purchase. According to National Kids Count:

Data Provided by:
• National KIDS COUNT

Location Data Type 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012
United States Number 13,241,000 14,657,000 15,749,000 16,387,000 16,397,000

Percent 18% 20% 22% 23% 23%
INDICATOR CONTEXT
EXPAND
DEFINITIONS & SOURCES
COLLAPSE
Definitions: The share of children under age 18 who live in families with incomes below the federal poverty level.

The federal poverty definition consists of a series of thresholds based on family size and composition. In calendar year 2012, a family of two adults and two children fell in the “poverty” category if their annual income fell below $23,283. Poverty status is not determined for people in military barracks, institutional quarters, or for unrelated individuals under age 15 (such as foster children). The data are based on income received in the 12 months prior to the survey.
Data Source: Population Reference Bureau, analysis of data from the U.S. Census Bureau, Census 2000 Supplementary Survey, 2001 Supplementary Survey, 2002 through 2012 American Community Survey.
The data for this measure come from the 2000 and 2001 Supplementary Survey and the 2002 through 2012 American Community Survey (ACS). The 2000 through 2004 ACS surveyed approximately 700,000 households monthly during each calendar year. In general but particularly for these years, use caution when interpreting estimates for less populous states or indicators representing small sub-populations, where the sample size is relatively small. Beginning in January 2005, the U.S. Census Bureau expanded the ACS sample to 3 million households (full implementation), and in January 2006 the ACS included group quarters. The ACS, fully implemented, is designed to provide annually updated social, economic, and housing data for states and communities. (Such local-area data have traditionally been collected once every ten years in the long form of the decennial census.)
Footnotes:Updated September 2013.
S – Estimates suppressed when the confidence interval around the percentage is greater than or equal to 10 percentage points. N.A. – Data not available.
Data are provided for the 50 most populous cities according to the most recent Census counts. Cities for which data is collected may change over time.
A 90 percent confidence interval for each estimate can be found at Children in poverty.
http://datacenter.kidscount.org/data/tables/43-children-in-poverty?loc=1&loct=1#detailed/1/any/false/868,867,133,38,35/any/321,322

Kids in poverty create social issues in schools which must be dealt with in a compassionate way.

Charlene Sakota wrote in the article, Pre-K teacher sends note complaining about students’ ‘unpleasant smells’:

Some parents of students at the B.U.I.L.D. Academy in Buffalo, New York had complaints of their own after receiving a handwritten complaint letter from their children’s pre-kindergarten teacher. The note sent home with some students read in part, “Several children in Pre-K ages 3-4 are coming to school (sometimes daily) with soiled, stained, or dirty clothes. Some give off unpleasant smells and some appear unclean and unkept.” The teacher went on asking that parents address the matter as, “It is a health and safety concern. It also makes it difficult for me to be close to them or even want to touch them. Enough said.”
It’s a message that has many outraged saying that the teacher needs to exercise more compassion as an educator in the Buffalo community, which according to the U.S. Census Bureau from 2007-2011 had 29.9% of its population living below the poverty level. Others said that the situation warranted a phone call to the parents or a school social worker. As reported by WIVB News 4, the teacher’s note was sent without the principal’s permission and the school’s nurse is equipped with clean clothes for any student to wear should they need them.
Kimberly Wells found the note in her granddaughter’s backpack. “The first thing she asked me is, ‘Do my teacher think I stink?’ I told her, ‘No, you don’t,'” the grandmother said. Understandably, Kimberly was upset with how the situation was handled telling WKBW Eyewitness News, “She’s teaching the kids how to segregate other kids. You’re showing how to outnumber another child. That’s not right. That’s not what we’re in school for. That could have been, hell, she could have called the parent on the phone. She could have had a meeting at the school face-to-face.” Kimberly also told WIVB that she attempted to address the teacher about the issue, “I did try to talk to the teacher about this and she didn’t want to hear nothing I had to say….”
The letter was brought up in a recent school board meeting however no decisions were made to reprimand the pre-K teacher. Mary Ruth Kaspiak of the school board said, “We must do things to help our students. We can’t do things to discourage them and we don’t want to send out mixed messages.”
Kimberly doesn’t want to see her granddaughter’s teacher fired, but wants her to know that letters like the one she sent are inappropriate. Enough said.http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/oddnews/pre-k-teacher-sends-note-complaining-about-students’-‘unpleasant-smells’-201931723.html?soc_src=mediacontentstory

Perhaps, the most important reason is proper hygiene helps to develop healthy self-esteem in your child. This doesn’t mean that your child must be a Vogue fashionista at five, but that your child should be clean and presentable with no body odors. WebMD.Com has an excellent article by R. Morgan Griffin, Teen Hygiene Tips:

“Parents too often assume that 10- or 11-year-olds will somehow naturally learn what they need to know about hygiene,” says Wibbelsman. “But that’s not true. Someone has to teach them.”
Kids with poor hygiene face consequences. Some are medical: they may be more prone to developing rashes and infections. But equally important, they may quickly become known at school for being dirty. That sort of bad rep can be hard to shake and damaging to self-esteem.
Showering. “Most elementary school kids don’t shower every day, and they don’t need to,” says Tanya Remer Altmann, MD,a pediatrician and author of Mommy Calls and The Wonder Years. But she says that once puberty hits, daily showering becomes essential. Recommend that they use a mild soap and concentrate on the face, hands, feet, underarms, groin and bottom. Washing under the fingernails is key, too.
Washing hair. Discuss the pros and cons of daily hair washing. Some teens may prefer to skip days to prevent their hair from drying out. Others may want to wash their hair daily — especially if they have oily hair, which can both look greasy and aggravate acne.
Using deodorant or antiperspirant. Your kid has always had plenty of working sweat glands. But when puberty hits, the glands become more active and the chemical composition of the sweat changes, causing it to smell stronger. When you or your kid begin to notice it, using deodorant or an antiperspirant should become part of their daily teen hygiene.
Changing clothes. Before puberty, your kid might have gotten away with wearing the same shirt — or even the same underwear and same socks — day after day without anyone noticing. After puberty, that won’t fly. Get your teen to understand that along with showering, wearing clean clothes each day is an important part of teen hygiene. Point out that cotton clothes may absorb sweat better than other materials.
Preventing acne. Altmann says that at around age 10, it makes sense for your teen to start washing his or her face twice a day. “Plenty of kids don’t have any acne problems at that age, but getting in the habit early is smart,” Altmann says. Make sure your teen understands not to wash too vigorously, even if her skin is oily. Trying to scrub off the oil will just leave the skin cracked and irritated.
Shaving and hair removal. When you notice hair on your son’s upper lip or on your daughter’s legs, you can offer a brief course on razor use. Whether or not he or she wants to shave yet, at least you’ve provided the information. Girls may also be interested in hair removal products. You can go over the options. Your daughter may also need some reassurance; stray facial hairs that loom large when she’s an inch away from the mirror may not be visible to anyone else.
Maintaining good oral health. Teens can get pretty lax about their oral hygiene. But brushing and flossing are crucial, especially if they’re drinking coffee and sugary, acidic sodas and sports drinks. It’s not only about tooth decay. Bad oral hygiene leads to bad breath — and that’s something that no teen wants, Altmann tells WebMD.
Understanding the body. If you’re talking about good teen hygiene, that also means talking about puberty. Girls need to know about breast development and menstruation. Boys need to know about erections and wet dreams. Don’t tiptoe around these subjects. If they don’t get the info from you, they’ll get some distorted version of it from their peers. You may find that giving your kids a good book on the subject — or pointing them to reputable health web sites — may help the conversation. http://www.webmd.com/parenting/features/teen-hygiene

Because of the economy, many family budgets are stretched. In this author’s opinion, money should be spent on good fitting shoes and families can save on the clothing budget by buying children’s clothing at places like Value Village, Goodwill, Target and J.C. Penney. The E.Podiatry. Com site discusses the importance of correct fitting children’s shoes in the article,

Children’s Footwear
Importance of the shoe to the child:
Poorly fitting children’s shoes can cause a number of problems in adults such as hammer toes, ingrown toenails, foot corns, calluses and bunions. Given the high level of pain and discomfort that these problems can cause, it is obviously logical to attempt to prevent these problems by ensuring that the child’s shoe is fitted appropriately. Foot problems in children are usually preventable.
Fitting footwear for the child:
The most important factor in shoes for a child is that they fit. Preferably, this means that shoes are fitted by someone who has had some special training in the fitting of children’s footwear.
Advice for the fitting of a child’s footwear:
Children should have their feet measured about every 3 months (thus ensuring the need for new shoes as required).
Generally, for a shoe to be correctly fitted, there should be a thumb width between the end of the shoe and the end of
the longest toe.
When looking at the bottom (sole) of the shoe, it should be relatively straight (not curved in too much) – the foot is
straight, so the shoe should be straight.
The fastening mechanism (laces, velcro, buckles) should hold the heel firmly in the back of the shoe (the foot should
not be able to slide forward in the shoe).
The heel counter (back part of the shoe) should be strong and stable.
The shoe should be flexible across the ball of the foot, as this is where the foot bends. The shoe should not bend
where the foot does not bend (ie in the arch area).
Leather and canvas are a better material – they are more durable and can breathe. Synthetic materials do not breathe
as well, unless they are of the ‘open weave’ type. Avoid plastics.
Check that the shoes have rounded toe boxes to give the toes more room to move.
An absorbent insole is helpful, as the foot can sweat a lot – children are very active!
A number of retail stores specialize in footwear for the child – use them! Fitting footwear properly in adults is also just
as important. http://www.epodiatry.com/children-footwear.htm

Money should be spent on quality footwear, parents can economize elsewhere.

The Budget Fashionista has some excellent tips about How to Shop A Thrift Store:

1. Go to Where the Rich People Live. Head to a wealthy area, as you can often find awesome
items donated by people who, for whatever reason, can’t be seen in an item twice. Their
excess is your treasure.
2. Wear tight fitting clothing. Many thrift stores do not have fitting rooms, so unless you want everyone looking at your goodies, wear tight fitting clothing like leggings and tank tops, so you can try on items quickly and somewhat modestly.
3. Start small. Purchase accessories and basic clothing items like jeans. Once you become a seasoned thrifter, then you can go into coats, blazers, etc.
4. Do a smell test. It an item is musty and has strange odor in the shop, it will probably be very difficult to get the smell out. Note: it’s nearly impossible to get musty smells out of synthetic fabrics like rayon, and acrylic.
5. Make Friends with the Sales Associate. Ask sales staff when they put their new stuff out and/or the best day to shop. The early bird really does get the worm (or.. prada) when it comes to shopping a thrift store.
6. Clean Your Purchases. Clean the item when you get home. Donated items aren’t always cleaned before they are donated. I know this has sparked alot of controversy, but I disinfect my thrift store purchases before wearing them. http://www.thebudgetfashionista.com/archive/thrift-store/

See, also 23 Must Know Tips for Thrift Store Shopping http://curezone.com/forums/am.asp?i=1412896

Sometimes it is left to the classroom teacher to discuss hygiene issues with a student. Dr. Ken Shore’s article Poor Hygiene describes some strategies teachers can use when dealing with hygiene issues.

Talk privately with a student with poor hygiene. Help the student understand that poor hygiene can cause illnesses, and that it can cause other children to avoid her. Talk with her about the basics of good hygiene; then zero in on her particular areas of need. You may need to give the student very specific instructions for good hygiene, and to teach behaviors we take for granted in most children. If you are uncomfortable talking with the student about those issues, you might ask the school nurse to meet with her.
Monitor the student’s hygiene. Provide the student with a checklist of hygiene activities she should do on a daily basis, such as taking a shower or bath, washing her hair, brushing her teeth, combing her hair, putting on clean clothes, and so on. Have the student write those behaviors in a notebook, and tell her that those tasks are part of her homework assignment. For the first couple of weeks, meet privately with the student for a few minutes every morning to review how well she did her “homework,” and praise her for any additional evidence of good hygiene.
Have some hygiene items handy in the classroom. You may find that a student with poor hygiene does not have some basic hygiene items at home. For occasions like those, keep a variety of basic items — such as brushes, combs, tissue, soap, shampoo, deodorant, toothbrushes, and toothpaste — in your desk. Let the student know that she can take what she needs as long as she makes good use of them. Check to make sure the student knows how to use the items.
Work out a private signal to cue a student who is picking her nose. Few behaviors turn off peers more quickly than a student who picks her nose. If you have a child who is a frequent nose picker, meet with her privately and let her know that other children find this behavior unpleasant and may avoid her as a result. Tell the student that she needs to use a tissue instead and provide her with a pack of tissues to keep in her desk. Work out with the student a subtle, non-verbal signal to alert her when she begins to pick her nose. http://curezone.com/forums/am.asp?i=1412896

See:

1. Printable Material on Hygiene for Children http://kids.lovetoknow.com/wiki/Printable_Material_on_Hygiene_for_Children

2. Personal Hygiene, Taking Care of Your Body http://www.cyh.com/HealthTopics/HealthTopicDetailsKids.aspx?p=335&np=289&id=2146

3. Hygiene Basics http://kidshealth.org/teen/your_body/take_care/hygiene_basics.html

4. The Thrift Shopper.Com http://www.thethriftshopper.com/

Good hygiene is an essential part of a child being ready to learn.

Moi came across Tips for Success in Room 12 Actually, these tips are good inside and outside of Room 12.
Tips For Success in Room 12:

Come to school with all your work completed, or be ready to ask
questions about what you did not understand. Be ready to learn!
Come into the classroom with a “can do” spirit, not a “can’t do” attitude.
Knowledge is power and attitude is everything.
Be an active learner, be an active listener.
Try your best.
Don’t give up!
Be a student of excellence.
Come to school ready to be the best you can be.
Learn from your mistakes.
Be nice to everyone and treat others the way you want to be treated.
Don’t put other people (or yourself) down!
Think about this: What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?

The goal of parents, teachers, students, and society should be that all children succeed in obtaining a good basic education. In order to achieve this goal, children must come to school ready to learn.

Where information leads to Hope. © Dr. Wilda.com

Dr. Wilda says this about that ©

Blogs by Dr. Wilda:
COMMENTS FROM AN OLD FART©

http://drwildaoldfart.wordpress.com/

Dr. Wilda Reviews ©
http://drwildareviews.wordpress.com/

Dr. Wilda ©
https://drwilda.com/

Tags: Children, Children and Families, education, Hygiene Basics, Hygiene for Children, National Kids Count, Personal Hygiene, Poverty, Pre-K teacher sends note complaining about students’ ‘unpleasant smells’, proper hygiene, Schools, Taking Care of Your Body, Tanya Remer Altmann, Thrift Shopper.Com

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Categories Dr Wilda

Princeton University study: Poverty saps mental resources

1 Sep

Moi wrote in 3rd world America: The link between poverty and education:
Moi blogs about education issues so the reader could be perplexed sometimes because moi often writes about other things like nutrition, families, and personal responsibility issues. Why? The reader might ask? Children will have the most success in school if they are ready to learn. Ready to learn includes proper nutrition for a healthy body and the optimum situation for children is a healthy family. Many of society’s problems would be lessened if the goal was a healthy child in a healthy family. There is a lot of economic stress in the country now because of unemployment and underemployment. Children feel the stress of their parents and they worry about how stable their family and living situation is.
The best way to eliminate poverty is job creation, job growth, and job retention. The Asian Development Bank has the best concise synopsis of the link between Education and Poverty http://www.adb.org/documents/assessing-development-impact-breaking-cycle-poverty-through-education For a good article about education and poverty which has a good bibliography, go to Poverty and Education, Overview http://education.stateuniversity.com/pages/2330/Poverty-Education.html There will not be a good quality of life for most citizens without a strong education system. One of the major contributors to poverty in third world nations is limited access to education opportunities. Without continued sustained investment in education in this state, we are the next third world country.

3rd world America: The link between poverty and education

Amina Khan wrote in the LA Times article, Poverty can sap brainpower, research shows:

Whether you’re a New Jersey mall rat or a farmer in India, being poor can sap your smarts. In fact, the mental energy required to make do with scarce resources taxes the brain so much that it can perpetuate the cycle of poverty, new research shows.
The findings, published in Friday’s edition of the journal Science, indicate that an urgent need — making rent, getting money for food — tugs at the attention so much that it can reduce the brainpower of anyone who experiences it, regardless of innate intelligence or personality. As a result, many social welfare programs set up to help the poor could backfire by adding more complexity to their lives.
“I think it’s a game changer,” said Kathleen Vohs, a behavioral scientist at the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management, who wasn’t involved with the study.
There’s a widespread tendency to assume that poor people don’t have money because they are lazy, unmotivated or just not that sharp, said study coauthor Sendhil Mullainathan, a behavioral economist at Harvard University.
“That’s a broad narrative that’s pretty common,” Mullainathan said. “Our intuition was quite different: It’s not that poor people are any different than rich people, but that being poor in itself has an effect.”
The problem is that it’s hard to devise experiments to test this, said Eric J. Johnson, a psychologist…..
http://www.latimes.com/science/la-sci-poverty-iq-20130831,0,2261441.story

Here is the press release from Princeton:

Poor concentration: Poverty reduces brainpower needed for navigating other areas of life
Posted August 29, 2013; 02:00 p.m.
by Morgan Kelly, Office of Communications
Poverty and all its related concerns require so much mental energy that the poor have less remaining brainpower to devote to other areas of life, according to research based at Princeton University. As a result, people of limited means are more likely to make mistakes and bad decisions that may be amplified by — and perpetuate — their financial woes.
Published in the journal Science, the study presents a unique perspective regarding the causes of persistent poverty. The researchers suggest that being poor may keep a person from concentrating on the very avenues that would lead them out of poverty. A person’s cognitive function is diminished by the constant and all-consuming effort of coping with the immediate effects of having little money, such as scrounging to pay bills and cut costs. Thusly, a person is left with fewer “mental resources” to focus on complicated, indirectly related matters such as education, job training and even managing their time.
In a series of experiments, the researchers found that pressing financial concerns had an immediate impact on the ability of low-income individuals to perform on common cognitive and logic tests. On average, a person preoccupied with money problems exhibited a drop in cognitive function similar to a 13-point dip in IQ, or the loss of an entire night’s sleep.
Research based at Princeton University found that poverty and all its related concerns require so much mental energy that the poor have less remaining brainpower to devote to other areas of life. Experiments showed that the impact of financial concerns on the cognitive function of low-income individuals was similar to a 13-point dip in IQ, or the loss of an entire night’s sleep. To gauge the influence of poverty in natural contexts, the researchers tested 464 sugarcane farmers in India who rely on the annual harvest for at least 60 percent of their income. Each farmer performed better on common fluid-intelligence and cognition tests post-harvest compared to pre-harvest.
But when their concerns were benign, low-income individuals performed competently, at a similar level to people who were well off, said corresponding author Jiaying Zhao, who conducted the study as a doctoral student in the lab of co-author Eldar Shafir, Princeton’s William Stewart Tod Professor of Psychology and Public Affairs. Zhao and Shafir worked with Anandi Mani, an associate professor of economics at the University of Warwick in Britain, and Sendhil Mullainathan, a Harvard University economics professor.
“These pressures create a salient concern in the mind and draw mental resources to the problem itself. That means we are unable to focus on other things in life that need our attention,” said Zhao, who is now an assistant professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia.
“Previous views of poverty have blamed poverty on personal failings, or an environment that is not conducive to success,” she said. “We’re arguing that the lack of financial resources itself can lead to impaired cognitive function. The very condition of not having enough can actually be a cause of poverty.”
The mental tax that poverty can put on the brain is distinct from stress, Shafir explained. Stress is a person’s response to various outside pressures that — according to studies of arousal and performance — can actually enhance a person’s functioning, he said. In the Science study, Shafir and his colleagues instead describe an immediate rather than chronic preoccupation with limited resources that can be a detriment to unrelated yet still important tasks.
“Stress itself doesn’t predict that people can’t perform well — they may do better up to a point,” Shafir said. “A person in poverty might be at the high part of the performance curve when it comes to a specific task and, in fact, we show that they do well on the problem at hand. But they don’t have leftover bandwidth to devote to other tasks. The poor are often highly effective at focusing on and dealing with pressing problems. It’s the other tasks where they perform poorly.”
The fallout of neglecting other areas of life may loom larger for a person just scraping by, Shafir said. Late fees tacked on to a forgotten rent payment, a job lost because of poor time-management — these make a tight money situation worse. And as people get poorer, they tend to make difficult and often costly decisions that further perpetuate their hardship, Shafir said. He and Mullainathan were co-authors on a 2012 Science paper that reported a higher likelihood of poor people to engage in behaviors that reinforce the conditions of poverty, such as excessive borrowing.
“They can make the same mistakes, but the outcomes of errors are more dear,” Shafir said. “So, if you live in poverty, you’re more error prone and errors cost you more dearly — it’s hard to find a way out.”
The first set of experiments took place in a New Jersey mall between 2010 and 2011 with roughly 400 subjects chosen at random. Their median annual income was around $70,000 and the lowest income was around $20,000. The researchers created scenarios wherein subjects had to ponder how they would solve financial problems, for example, whether they would handle a sudden car repair by paying in full, borrowing money or putting the repairs off. Participants were assigned either an “easy” or “hard” scenario in which the cost was low or high — such as $150 or $1,500 for the car repair. While participants pondered these scenarios, they performed common fluid-intelligence and cognition tests.
Subjects were divided into a “poor” group and a “rich” group based on their income. The study showed that when the scenarios were easy — the financial problems not too severe — the poor and rich performed equally well on the cognitive tests. But when they thought about the hard scenarios, people at the lower end of the income scale performed significantly worse on both cognitive tests, while the rich participants were unfazed.
To better gauge the influence of poverty in natural contexts, between 2010 and 2011 the researchers also tested 464 sugarcane farmers in India who rely on the annual harvest for at least 60 percent of their income. Because sugarcane harvests occur once a year, these are farmers who find themselves rich after harvest and poor before it. Each farmer was given the same tests before and after the harvest, and performed better on both tests post-harvest compared to pre-harvest.
The cognitive effect of poverty the researchers found relates to the more general influence of “scarcity” on cognition, which is the larger focus of Shafir’s research group. Scarcity in this case relates to any deficit — be it in money, time, social ties or even calories — that people experience in trying to meet their needs. Scarcity consumes “mental bandwidth” that would otherwise go to other concerns in life, Zhao said.
“These findings fit in with our story of how scarcity captures attention. It consumes your mental bandwidth,” Zhao said. “Just asking a poor person to think about hypothetical financial problems reduces mental bandwidth. This is an acute, immediate impact, and has implications for scarcity of resources of any kind.”
“We documented similar effects among people who are not otherwise poor, but on whom we imposed scarce resources,” Shafir added. “It’s not about being a poor person — it’s about living in poverty.”
Many types of scarcity are temporary and often discretionary, said Shafir, who is co-author with Mullainathan of the book, “Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much,” to be published in September. For instance, a person pressed for time can reschedule appointments, cancel something or even decide to take on less.
“When you’re poor you can’t say, ‘I’ve had enough, I’m not going to be poor anymore.’ Or, ‘Forget it, I just won’t give my kids dinner, or pay rent this month.’ Poverty imposes a much stronger load that’s not optional and in very many cases is long lasting,” Shafir said. “It’s not a choice you’re making — you’re just reduced to few options. This is not something you see with many other types of scarcity.”
The researchers suggest that services for the poor should accommodate the dominance that poverty has on a person’s time and thinking. Such steps would include simpler aid forms and more guidance in receiving assistance, or training and educational programs structured to be more forgiving of unexpected absences, so that a person who has stumbled can more easily try again.
“You want to design a context that is more scarcity proof,” said Shafir, noting that better-off people have access to regular support in their daily lives, be it a computer reminder, a personal assistant, a housecleaner or a babysitter.
“There’s very little you can do with time to get more money, but a lot you can do with money to get more time,” Shafir said. “The poor, who our research suggests are bound to make more mistakes and pay more dearly for errors, inhabit contexts often not designed to help.”
The paper, “Poverty impedes cognitive function,” was published Aug. 30 by Science. The work was supported by the National Science Foundation (award number SES-0933497), the International Finance Corporation and the IFMR Trust in India
http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S37/75/69M50/index.xml?section=topstories

Citation:

Sciencewww.sciencemag.org
Science 30 August 2013:
Vol. 341 no. 6149 pp. 976-980
DOI: 10.1126/science.1238041
• Research Article
Poverty Impedes Cognitive Function
1. Anandi Mani1,
2. Sendhil Mullainathan2,*,
3. Eldar Shafir3,*,
4. Jiaying Zhao4
+ Author Affiliations
1. 1Department of Economics, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK.
2. 2Department of Economics, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.
3. 3Department of Psychology and Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08540, USA.
4. 4Department of Psychology and Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia V6T 1Z4, Canada.
1. ↵*Corresponding author. E-mail: mullain@fas.harvard.edu (S.M.); shafir@princeton.edu (E.S.)
• Abstract
• Editor’s Summary
The poor often behave in less capable ways, which can further perpetuate poverty. We hypothesize that poverty directly impedes cognitive function and present two studies that test this hypothesis. First, we experimentally induced thoughts about finances and found that this reduces cognitive performance among poor but not in well-off participants. Second, we examined the cognitive function of farmers over the planting cycle. We found that the same farmer shows diminished cognitive performance before harvest, when poor, as compared with after harvest, when rich. This cannot be explained by differences in time available, nutrition, or work effort. Nor can it be explained with stress: Although farmers do show more stress before harvest, that does not account for diminished cognitive performance. Instead, it appears that poverty itself reduces cognitive capacity. We suggest that this is because poverty-related concerns consume mental resources, leaving less for other tasks. These data provide a previously unexamined perspective and help explain a spectrum of behaviors among the poor. We discuss some implications for poverty policy.
• Received for publication 19 March 2013.
• Accepted for publication 23 July 2013.
Read the Full Text
The editors suggest the following Related Resources on Science sites
In Science Magazine
• Perspective Psychology The Poor’s Poor Mental Power
o Kathleen D. Vohs
Science 30 August 2013: 969-970.

Moi wrote in 3rd world America: Money changes everything:
Sabrina Tavernise wrote an excellent New York Times article, Education Gap Grows Between Rich and Poor, Studies Say:

It is a well-known fact that children from affluent families tend to do better in school. Yet the income divide has received far less attention from policy makers and government officials than gaps in student accomplishment by race.
Now, in analyses of long-term data published in recent months, researchers are finding that while the achievement gap between white and black students has narrowed significantly over the past few decades, the gap between rich and poor students has grown substantially during the same period.
“We have moved from a society in the 1950s and 1960s, in which race was more consequential than family income, to one today in which family income appears more determinative of educational success than race,” said Sean F. Reardon, a Stanford University sociologist. Professor Reardon is the author of a study that found that the gap in standardized test scores between affluent and low-income students had grown by about 40 percent since the 1960s, and is now double the testing gap between blacks and whites.
In another study, by researchers from the University of Michigan, the imbalance between rich and poor children in college completion — the single most important predictor of success in the work force — has grown by about 50 percent since the late 1980s.
The changes are tectonic, a result of social and economic processes unfolding over many decades. The data from most of these studies end in 2007 and 2008, before the recession’s full impact was felt. Researchers said that based on experiences during past recessions, the recent downturn was likely to have aggravated the trend.
“With income declines more severe in the lower brackets, there’s a good chance the recession may have widened the gap,” Professor Reardon said. In the study he led, researchers analyzed 12 sets of standardized test scores starting in 1960 and ending in 2007. He compared children from families in the 90th percentile of income — the equivalent of around $160,000 in 2008, when the study was conducted — and children from the 10th percentile, $17,500 in 2008. By the end of that period, the achievement gap by income had grown by 40 percent, he said, while the gap between white and black students, regardless of income, had shrunk substantially.
Both studies were first published last fall in a book of research, “Whither Opportunity?” compiled by the Russell Sage Foundation, a research center for social sciences, and the Spencer Foundation, which focuses on education. Their conclusions, while familiar to a small core of social sciences scholars, are now catching the attention of a broader audience, in part because income inequality has been a central theme this election season.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/10/education/education-gap-grows-between-rich-and-poor-studies-show.html?emc=eta1

Teachers and schools have been made TOTALLY responsible for the education outcome of the children, many of whom come to school not ready to learn and who reside in families that for a variety of reasons cannot support their education. All children are capable of learning, but a one-size-fits-all approach does not serve all children well. Different populations of children will require different strategies and some children will require remedial help, early intervention, and family support to achieve their education goals. https://drwilda.com/2012/02/11/3rd-world-america-money-changes-everything/

ALL children have a right to a good basic education.

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Tags: 3rd World America, Asian Development Bank, Casey Foundation, current-events, Education Gap Grows Between Rich and Poor, environment, politics, Poverty, Poverty and Education, Poverty can sap brainpower, Poverty Impedes Cognitive Function, research shows, science, Studies Say

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Categories Dr Wilda

Dads read to kids in LA to promote literacy

8 Jun

This comment is not politically correct. If you want politically correct, stop reading. Children, especially boys, need positive male role models. They don’t need another “uncle” or “fiancée” who when the chips are down cashes out. By the way, what is the new definition of “fiancée?” Is that someone who is rented for an indefinite term to introduce the kids from your last “fiancée” to? Back in the day, “fiancée” meant one was engaged to be married, got married and then had kids. Nowadays, it means some one who hangs around for an indeterminate period of time and who may or may not formalize a relationship with baby mama. Kids don’t need someone in their lives who has as a relationship strategy only dating women with children because they are available and probably desperate. What children, especially boys, need are men who are consistently there for them, who model good behavior and values, and who consistently care for loved ones. They don’t need men who have checked out of building relationships and those who are nothing more than sperm donors.

This Washington Post article made moi think about the importance of healthy male role models in a child’s life. This article is about a good male role model, a hero. Number of Black Male Teachers Belies Their Influence

“I love teaching, and I feel like I am needed,” said Thomas, 33, of Bowie. “We need black male teachers in our classrooms because that is the closest connection we are able to make to children. It is critical for all students to see black men in the classrooms involved in trying to make sure they learn and enjoy being in school.”

The shortage of black male teachers compounds the difficulties that many African American boys face in school. About half of black male students do not complete high school in four years, statistics show. Black males also tend to score lower on standardized tests, take fewer Advanced Placement courses and are suspended and expelled at higher rates than other groups, officials said.

Educators said black male teachers expose students to black men as authority figures, help minority students feel that they belong, motivate black students to achieve, demonstrate positive male-female relationships to black girls and provide African American youths with role models and mentors.

The reason that teachers like Will Thomas are needed, not just for African American kids, is because the number of households headed by single parents, particularly single women is growing. Not all single parent households are unsuccessful in raising children, but enough of them are in crisis that society should be concerned. The principle issues with single parenting are a division of labor and poverty. Two parents can share parenting responsibilities and often provide two incomes, which lift many families out of poverty. Families that have above poverty level incomes face fewer challenges than families living in poverty. Still, all families face the issue of providing good role models for their children. As a society, we are like the Marines, looking for a few good men.

Single Parent Households

About.Com has a quick snapshot of which was condensed from the original source Custodial Mothers and Fathers and Their Child Support: 2005 Information from the snapshot comes from the Custodial Mothers report which was released in 2007. According to Custodial Mothers and Fathers and Their Child Support: 2005, released by the U.S. Census Bureau in August, 2007, there are approximately 13.6 million single parents in the United States today, and those parents are responsible for raising 21.2 million children (approximately 26% of children under 21 in the U.S. today).

So what’s the “average” single parent really like? According to the U.S. Census Bureau…

She is a Mother:

· Approximately 84% of custodial parents are mothers, and

· 16% of custodial parents are fathers

She is Divorced or Separated:

Of the mothers who are custodial parents:

· 44% are currently divorced or separated

· 33% have never been married

· 22% are married (In most cases, these numbers represent women who have remarried.)

· 1% were widowed

Of the fathers who are custodial parents:

· 57% are divorced or separated

· 24% are currently married (In most cases, these numbers represent men who have remarried.)

· 18% have never married

· 1% were widowed

She is Employed:

· 79% of custodial single mothers are gainfully employed

o 50% work full time, year round

o 29% work part-time or part-year

· 92% of custodial single fathers are gainfully employed

o 74% work full time, year round

o 18% work part-time or part-year

References:
United States. Census Department. Custodial Mothers and Fathers and Their Child Support: 2005.

The current recession has likely increased the number of families in all categories that are classified as living in poverty even if it is a temporary condition. The Foundation for Child Development reports that the Child Well-being Index finds “after improving during the 1990s, since 2000, the economic well-being of families with children has declined.” Single parents suffer more during periods of economic decline.

Children in Poverty provides good data on the types of households most likely to be poor. Their findings for single parent households are:

Family structure continues to be strongly related to whether or not children are poor.

• In 2007, children living in households headed by single mothers were more than five times as likely as

children living in households headed by married parents to be living in poverty—42.9 percent

compared with 8.5 percent. (See Figure 1 )

• For non-Hispanic white children, the poverty rate in 2007 was 32.3 percent for children in single mother

households compared with 4.7 percent for children in married households.

• Similarly for black children, the poverty rate was 50.2 percent compared with 11 percent.

• For Hispanic children, the poverty rate was 51.4 percent compared with 19.3 percent.

• For Asian children, the poverty rate was 32 percent compared with 9.7 percent.

Families headed by single parents face economic challenges that are mitigated by two incomes.

Katrina Puga writes in the Education Nation article, Dads Read to Children in LA School to Promote Literacy about the importance of male role models:

Many of the students, ages 5 to 12, at the 99th Street Elementary School in South Los Angeles, don’t know what it’s like to have a dad. So, in an effort to curb that, Donuts With Dads was created — a program in which dads, or male role models, from the community come to read books to the youngsters. Last month, 150 men participated in the school’s fifth annual event, and because of its success, dads will now be coming to the school to read every first Friday of every month — called Family Friday.

The elementary school is one of the Los Angeles Unified schools managed by the nonprofit Partnership for Los Angeles Schools, founded five years ago by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. Since the program’s inception, which has grown through word of mouth, parent involvement rate at the school, which is 76 percent Latino, is now 85 percent — an increase of 65 percent.

“About five years ago…Mayor Villaraigosa took over the 10 worst performing schools in south central Los Angeles around the housing projects in Watts and Boyle Heights,” says 99th Street Elementary School Principal Courtney Sawyer. “The whole staff noticed the terrible parent involvement — only about 10 percent would show up for parent night.”

In an effort to increase parent involvement, she says they took a survey of the school and determined that approximately 80 percent of the students were without fathers or consistent male role models in the household.

“We started canvassing the communities to talk to police officers, firefighters — to get them to come to the school and make connections with kids and become involved in our school as mentors,” says Sawyer. “And over the past few years, we’ve seen a surge in math, but not language arts, so we married the two together — literacy and getting men in the classroom.”

She says the dads come in before work and spend the majority of an hour reading to the children, or having the children read to them.

“Some classrooms can have up to 10 men, and they’ll read with two to three kids,” says Sawyer…. http://www.educationnation.com/index.cfm?objectid=9618C886-881A-11E2-93ED000C296BA163&aka=0

The Role of a Father

A 2001 study of the impact of a father’s involvement in the life of their child reached the following conclusions:

It appears that fathers contribute to the lives of their children by assuming diverse roles appropriate to their children’s progression through the life cycle. However, much of the available research is based on small observational studies or cross-sectional data, and in fact,relatively few studies have linked father involvement with outcomes among infants and toddlers.

There is a need for new longitudinal research that follows infants through the school years and includes fathers’ multiple domains of influence.

As Lamb (1997a) points out, fathers should be studied in the larger familial context. A father’s relationship with his partner, and other children, as well as how he views himself and his multiple familial and societal roles all affect his parenting style and parent-child interactions.beneficial effects of father involvement on children stem from supportive and nurturant father-child relationships. Continued large-scale research on resident father involvement shouldinclude items spanning multiple domains of paternal influence in addition to items that capture family and social contexts.

Measuring Father Involvement did not have definite conclusions about the importance of a father’s involvement because of the lack of longitudinal or long range study of the father/child relationship, but it hinted at the importance of the relationship.

Some of the key findings from this review of incentives and barriers to father involvementinclude the following:

· Believing that a father’s role is important to child development and perceiving oneself as

competent in the fathering role both serve as incentives to father involvement.

· Wanting the child and desiring to become a father may also be associated with father involvement.

· A man’s recollections of his own father-child experiences from childhood could serve either as barriers or incentives to involvement.

· Egalitarian beliefs may lead to more father-child interactions in general, and more beneficial father-child interactions for girls in particular.

· The father’s psychological well-being serves as a moderator of father involvement. High levels of stress and depression create barriers for father involvement, whereas high self-esteem increases the likelihood of father involvement.

· Early fatherhood appears to be a barrier to father involvement. On-time fatherhood (i.e., becoming a father in one’s 20’s) increases the amount of father involvement above that of teen parents, but delaying fatherhood until one’s 30’s or even the 40’s may also yield benefits for children in increased father-child contact and more affectionate and cognitively-stimulating interactions.

· A harmonious father-mother relationship enhances the likelihood of frequent and positive father child interactions within two-parent families. Conversely, marital conflict serves both as a barrier to father involvement and as a predictor of poor child outcomes. In situations where the father does not reside with the child, father involvement is more likely if the mother perceives the father to be capable of successfully fulfilling the provider role.

· Being employed, and experiencing job satisfaction and low role stress are all associated with higher levels of father involvement. Conversely, unemployment or job instability, as well as high role stress, serve to minimize the likelihood that fathers will be and/or stay involved in their children’s lives.

· Additional support from friends, extended family, and institutions may help bolster father involvement in young children’s lives. In addition, certain characteristics of the child may either increase or decrease the extent of father involvement.

The key finding from this study is that the involvement of a father in the life of his children is a process and a complex one, at that.

Male Role Models in Schools

A working paper, Teachers and the Gender Gap, from NBER reported the following.

Dee finds that gender interactions between teachers and students have significant effects on these important educational outcomes. Assignment to a teacher of the opposite sex lowers student achievement by about 0.04 standard deviations. Other results imply that just “one year with a male English teacher would eliminate nearly a third of the gender gap in reading performance among 13 year olds…and would do so by improving the performance of boys and simultaneously harming that of girls. Similarly, a year with a female teacher would close the gender gap in science achievement among 13 year olds by half and eliminate entirely the smaller achievement gap in mathematics.”

Female science teachers appeared to reduce the probability that a girl would be seen as inattentive in science, though this had no discernable effect on girls’ science achievement. However, female history teachers significantly raised girls’ history achievement. And, boys were more likely to report that they did not look forward to a particular academic subject when it was taught by a female.

Overall, the data suggest that, “a large fraction of boys’ dramatic underperformance in reading reflects the classroom dynamics associated with the fact that their reading teachers are overwhelmingly female.” According to the U.S. Department of Education’s 1999-2000 Schools and Staffing Survey, 91 percent of the nation’s sixth grade reading teachers, and 83 percent of eighth grade reading teachers are female. This depresses boys’ achievement. The fact that most middle school teachers of math, science, and history are also female may raise girls’ achievement. In short, the current gender imbalance in middle school staffing may be reducing the gender gap in science by helping girls but exacerbating the gender gap in reading by handicapping boys.

The purpose of this comment is not that boys and girls cannot learn from teachers of either sex. The point is too many children are being raised in single parent homes and they need good role models of both sexes to develop. That brings me back to Will Thomas and The Washington Post story. Mr. Thomas is not only a good teacher, but a positive role model for both his boy and girl students. We need more teachers like Mr. Thomas.

Moi has never met an illegitimate child, she has met plenty of illegitimate parents. People that are so ill-prepared for the parent role that had they been made responsible for an animal, PETA would picket their house. We are at a point in society where we have to say don’t have children you can’t care for. There is no quick, nor easy fix for the children who start behind in life because they are the product of two other people’s choice, whether an informed choice or not. All parents should seek positive role models for their children. For single mothers who are parenting boys, they must seek positive male role models to be a part of their son’s life. Boys and girls of all ages should think before they procreate and men should give some thought about what it means to be a father before they become baby daddy.

Blogs by Dr. Wilda:

Tags: Child Well-being Index, Children and Povery, Dads Read to Children in LA School to Promote Literacy, education, Education and Poverty, Family Structure, Number of Black Male Teachers Belies Their Influence, politics, Poverty, research, Single Parent, Single Parent Household, society, Teachers and the Gender Gap, The role of a father

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