Saturday, November 9, 2013
Child Poverty, education in schools, in the road!
More than 16 million children in the United States – 22% of all children – live in families with incomes below the federal poverty level – $23,550 a year for a family of four. Research shows that, on average, families need an income of about twice that level to cover basic expenses. Using this standard, 45% of children live in low-income families.
Most of these children have parents who work, but low wages and unstable employment leave their families struggling to make ends meet. Poverty can impede children’s ability to learn and contribute to social, emotional, and behavioral problems. Poverty also can contribute to poor health and mental health. Risks are greatest for children who experience poverty when they are young and/or experience deep and persistent poverty.
Research is clear that poverty is the single greatest threat to children’s well-being. But effective public policies – to make work pay for low-income parents and to provide high-quality early care and learning experiences for their children – can make a difference. Investments in the most vulnerable children are also critical.
There are investments many schools are doing, like giving
laptops to all kids in school.
Many schools are integrating technology into academics with programs like a one-to-one laptop arrangement, BYOD (bring your own device), One Laptop Per Child, and even iPads in the classroom. Typically, the school loads all of the software that students need onto the device to ensure standardization (which helps keep teachers and students on the same page and aids network administrators in troubleshooting problems).
Also you run into the poor schools or the poor in the schools.
Their lack of support they get gives the lack of support for the learning.
As some schools plunge into technology, poor schools
are left behind.
The Bronzeville Scholastic Institute ninth-graders were working on writing assignments in the school’s homework lab, whose 24 computers are shared by nearly a thousand students from the three schools that occupy DuSable High School's campus on the South Side.
"The ratio of computers to students is absurd," said English teacher Andrew Flaherty, a veteran educator who reports that many of his students cannot afford computers at home and don’t get enough time to use them at school. As a result, Bronzeville Scholastic students born into a digital era struggle with basic skills, such as saving work to a flash drive and setting margins in Microsoft Word.
Give it that many poor do not have internet access right for laptops
at home sort of changes the view of homework being the poor kids
can't get on line like they need to at home.
Give it that there are options, but not for all the poor kids.
Joshua sometimes does his homework at a McDonald's restaurant—not because he is drawn by the burgers, but because the fast-food chain is one of the few places in this southern Alabama city of 4,000 where he can get online access free once the public library closes.
Cheap smartphones and tablets have put Web-ready technology into more hands than ever. But the price of Internet connectivity hasn't come down nearly as quickly. And in many rural areas, high-speed Internet through traditional phone lines simply isn't available at any price. The result is a divide between families that have broadband constantly available on their home computers and phones, and those that have to plan their days around visits to free sources of Internet access.
That divide is becoming a bigger problem now that a fast Internet connection has evolved into an essential tool for completing many assignments at public schools. Federal regulators identified the gap in home Internet access as a key challenge for education in a report in 2010. Access to the Web has expanded since then, but roughly a third of households with income of less than $30,000 a year and teens living at home still don't have broadband access there, according to the Pew Research Center.
Overall as I say many times the wages sets the market.
Not just by low pay making low sales, Low pay also makes less education.
Lack of education along with the low pay impoverishes the labor pool.
The low pay of others keeps the pay low for everyone else.
Many work hard to make the same pay, or get a $0.10 raise.
So that stupid saying hard work gives you better pay, is BS!
McDonald’s $8.25 Man and $8.75 Million CEO Shows Pay Gap.
The pay gap separating fast-food workers from their chief executive officers is growing at each of those companies. The disparity has doubled at McDonald’s Corp. in the last 10 years, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. At the same time, the company helped pay for lobbying against minimum-wage increases and sought to quash the kind of unionization efforts that erupted recently on the streets of Chicago
and New York.
***Just because kids are in poverty does not make them stupid.
They are taking a hit because of lack of resources.
Many schools have poor resources. When you look at the view of why
many want their kids to go to Berkeley or Harvard and not a JR college,
kids make less money after a JR college than a major college. Educational resources!
As I see it, most of the fix is starting with better pay.
Income fixes all being it makes a better foundation.
Less poor to pull everyone down from cost of shoplifting food & non sales.
Higher taxes to pay for others food stamps when their workplaces should be
paying a living, not making us all pay for it.
Less crime is also with better pay. More money put into Social Security.
Better pay helps in getting a education being the poor won't have to quit
school to work and pay the bills.
I knew a guy in college that figured out how to go to school
without stopping to pay the bills. He cut all his bills saved up money
quit his job and killed his apartment etc, lived in a homeless center and went to school.
I asked myself why does he have to do it that way to get a education?
Why does he have to get so low to make someone so high!
Being that he did not make good pay at all from the start, never got raises of worth.
He became homeless and his past workplace, his boss made the money!
I would say it's best to get off the road of low pay!