Greg Ashman: In education, is poverty destiny?

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Debbie_Hepplewhite
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Greg Ashman: In education, is poverty destiny?

Post by Debbie_Hepplewhite »

This is such an important topic that I'm starting a thread on it via this General Forum, even though we provide a forum for Greg's very good blog via our 'Education Blogs and Websites of Interest' forum.

Greg raises the issue:
In education, Is poverty destiny?
https://gregashman.wordpress.com/2017/0 ... y-destiny/
Periodically, someone will appear and claim that educational outcomes are not largely due to the quality of teaching. Instead, home circumstances, particularly poverty, play a massive role.

I understand where this reaction comes from. The No Child Left Behind act in the U.S. seemed to have been based upon the premise that if you provide strong enough carrots and sticks then teachers will somehow figure out how to eliminate educational disadvantage – the ‘motivate the teachers’ hypothesis.

This approach doesn’t work and socioeconomic reasons are part of the explanation. The other factor is that teacher simply don’t know the best approaches for mitigating disadvantage. It’s not what they are taught at college.
At an academic level, we should again focus on the agency of the school. An approach to early reading that places heavy emphasis on children taking lists of sight words home to learn is inequitable. So is an approach that hinges on practising reading at home. Instead, children need to be explicitly and systematically taught to read while they are in school.
Do read the whole piece, it's not long - and do have a look at the readers' comments which are always interesting when a good blogger gets a 'following'!

You can find a link direct to Greg's blog here:

http://www.iferi.org/iferi_forum/viewforum.php?f=6
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