Disadvantaged

About: Disadvantaged is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 17050 publications have been published within this topic receiving 337157 citations. The topic is also known as: disadvantaged person.

The Missing "One-Offs": The Hidden Supply of High-Achieving, Low-Income Students

Abstract: We show that the vast majority of very high-achieving students who are low-income do not apply to any selective college or university. This is despite the fact that selective institutions would often cost them less, owing to generous financial aid, than the resource-poor two-year and non-selective four-year institutions to which they actually apply. Moreover, high-achieving, low-income students who do apply to selective institutions are admitted and graduate at high rates. We demonstrate that these low-income students' application behavior differs greatly from that of their high-income counterparts who have similar achievement. The latter group generally follows the advice to apply to a few "par" colleges, a few "reach" colleges, and a couple of "safety" schools. We separate the low-income, high-achieving students into those whose application behavior is similar to that of their high-income counterparts ("achievement-typical" behavior) and those whose apply to no selective institutions ("income-typical" behavior). We show that income-typical students do not come from families or neighborhoods that are more disadvantaged than those of achievement-typical students. However, in contrast to the achievement-typical students, the income-typical students come from districts too small to support selective public high schools, are not in a critical mass of fellow high achievers, and are unlikely to encounter a teacher or schoolmate from an older cohort who attended a selective college. We demonstrate that widely-used policies–college admissions staff recruiting, college campus visits, college access programs–are likely to be ineffective with income-typical students, and we suggest policies that will be effective must depend less on geographic concentration of high achievers.

Caring school communities

Abstract: There recently has been a renewed appreciation of the importance of social context to effective schools. This article describes an ongoing program of research on schools as caring communities. The research spans about a decade and a half and involves a diverse set of elementary schools from across the United States. The findings indicate that sense of school community can be enhanced for both students and teachers, that it is associated with a wide range of positive outcomes for both, and that the potential benefits of enhancing school community may be greatest in schools with large numbers of economically disadvantaged students. At the same time, it is noted that enhancing community has the potential for producing negative as well as positive outcomes, and that the content of the community values is of critical importance. Overall, the concept of school as community appears to provide a powerful framework for looking at educational practice and guiding educational reform efforts.

It Was Like a Fever: Storytelling in Protest and Politics

Abstract: Activists and politicians have long recognized the power of a good story to move people to action. In early 1960, four black college students sat down at a whites-only lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, and refused to leave. Within a month, sit-ins spread to thirty cities in seven states. Student participants told stories of impulsive, spontaneous action - this despite all the planning that had gone into the sit-ins. "It was like a fever," they said. Francesca Polletta's "It Was Like a Fever" sets out to account for the power of storytelling in mobilizing political and social movements. Drawing on cases ranging from sixteenth-century tax revolts to contemporary debates about the future of the World Trade Center site, Polletta argues that stories are politically effective not when they have clear moral messages, but when they have complex, often ambiguous ones. The openness of stories to interpretation has allowed disadvantaged groups, in particular, to gain a hearing for new needs and to forge surprising political alliances. But, popular beliefs in America about storytelling as a genre have also hurt those challenging the status quo. A rich analysis of storytelling in courtrooms, newsrooms, public forums, and the United States Congress, "It Was Like a Fever" offers provocative new insights into the dynamics of culture and contention.

The reading crisis : why poor children fall behind

Abstract: How severe is the literacy gap in our schools? Why does the nine-year-old child from a culturally disadvantaged background so often fall victim to the fourth-grade slump? Although the cognitive abilities of these "children at risk" may be consistent with the norm, their literacy development lags far behind that of other children. In "The Reading Crisis," the renowned reading specialist Jeanne Chall and her colleagues examine the causes of this disparity and suggest some remedies.Using Chall's widely applied model of reading development, the authors examine the strengths and weaknesses in the reading, writing, and language development of children from low-income families in an attempt to identify the onset of their difficulties. They show how, in the transition from learning the medium to understanding the message, the demands on children's reading skills become significantly more complex. The crucial point is fourth grade, when students confront texts containing unfamiliar words and ideas that are beyond the range of their own experience. According to Chall's findings, the lack of specific literacy skills--not cognitive factors--explains the deceleration in the reading and writing development of low-income children. The authors outline an active role for the schools in remedying weaknesses in literacy development, and give suggestions for the home and the community. Their recommendations address both practical issues in instruction and the teacher-student dynamic that fosters literacy development.