Poverty Diminishes Vocabulary

[Modern School]

A common theme in my writing is how much poverty impacts our students and their academic success. On average, middle class and higher income kids simply do better in school and on standardized exams than lower income kids. The reasons for this are complex and have not been fully explored. However, we do know that wealth affects health and cognitive development, social development and language acquisition, creating an achievement gap that exists before kids have even entered school. Two seminal pieces of research bear this out: Unequal at the Starting Gate, by David Burkam and Valerie Lee, and Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American Children, by Betty Hart and Todd Risely. The latter work was discussed today on NPR, including an interview with coauthor Betty Hart. You can hear the interview or read the transcript at Closing the Achievement Gap with Baby Talk.

Arne Duncan, Bill Gates and many other Ed Deformers claim to be color and class blind, arguing that all kids can succeed in school, if we only provide quality teachers and schools. Many teachers enter the profession with these same assumptions. Likewise, when Betty Hart first started working with low income preschoolers, she believed she could help them transcend their limitations. Together with Todd Risley, she tried to improve the vocabularies of 4-year-olds in a low income preschool. However, after years of effort, they realized that they weren’t making much progress because they were catching the kids too late.


Shockingly, by the time kids are four, the effects of familial wealth have already made their mark on a child’s vocabulary. But Hart and Risely wanted to know why and they wanted to know how early these effects started to occur. So they followed 40 families from different income levels over the course of their children’s first three years, recording what the children said.

To read the full article, please go to http://modeducation.blogspot.com/2011/01/poverty-diminishes-vocabulary.html

[handmade34]

1. this study and information is fantastic

first heard of this last year (listening to some radio program) and so relevant... so glad I read, literally, thousands of stories to my kids as they were growing up...

[alphafemale]

2. The poverty of the parents would generally come from a poor education level.

A person can educate themselves outside of college, but it is tough.

And then there is also the crabs in a barrel effect. Appearing smart is actually at the risk of status in certain social groups. A kid can run the risk of being pulled down by their peers even if the parents are encouraging.

[azurnoir]

3. yes a truly fantastic study indeed

reassures that poor and 'ignorant' begets 'poor and ignorant' and these children are just not as 'educable or able to learn' as non-poor children so why bother......

of course then there is the usual apologetic BS what we 'should' do but rest assured we will not

Many teachers in inner-city schools have worked on this very principle for decades especially since Reagan

[FBaggins]

4. Does it? Or does poor vocabulary increase poverty?

Parents have a tough time imparting that which they don't themselves possess.

[handmade34]

5. of course it is a vicious cycle

that is why early education is so important...

"By the time children from middle-income families with well-educated parents are in third grade, they know about 12,000 words. Third grade children from low-income families with undereducated parents who don’t talk to them very much have vocabularies of around 4,000 words, one-third as many words as their middle-income peers"

http://nccp.org/publications/pub_695.html


again, WORDS MATTER!