Review of "Money is the Root of All Learning":
Commentary by Sean Reardon
Money is a significant factor in student success. It may not be the entire reason, although through observation, experience, and studies we see it does affect growth of learning. Despite all the good intentions, campaign promises, political gamesmanship, and strident school revivals, we have yet to have a Great Awakening in American education.
Instead, we have hedged our bets on the Jesusification of the American teacher. Bad teachers are not the reason. Any politician from any party would be smart to admit this fact and capitalize on it for support. Learning does not take place in the vacuum of a classroom, it is in as good of shape as a society's current political system, civic virtues, families, businesses, entertainment, and mindset.
Poverty, transiency, spotty previous education, and the challenge of being a newcomer to a language are the big factors. The following is a excerpt from a commentary in the New York Times by Professor Sean Reardon. “Sean Reardon is professor of education and (by courtesy) sociology at Stanford University, specializing in research on the effects of educational policy on educational and social inequality. His primary research examines the relative contribution of family, school, and neighborhood environments to ethnic and socioeconomic achievement disparities.”
Instead, we have hedged our bets on the Jesusification of the American teacher. Bad teachers are not the reason. Any politician from any party would be smart to admit this fact and capitalize on it for support. Learning does not take place in the vacuum of a classroom, it is in as good of shape as a society's current political system, civic virtues, families, businesses, entertainment, and mindset.
Poverty, transiency, spotty previous education, and the challenge of being a newcomer to a language are the big factors. The following is a excerpt from a commentary in the New York Times by Professor Sean Reardon. “Sean Reardon is professor of education and (by courtesy) sociology at Stanford University, specializing in research on the effects of educational policy on educational and social inequality. His primary research examines the relative contribution of family, school, and neighborhood environments to ethnic and socioeconomic achievement disparities.”
No Rich Child Left Behind
By SEAN F. REARDON
“It may seem counterintuitive, but schools don’t seem to produce much of the disparity in test scores between high- and low-income students. We know this because children from rich and poor families score very differently on school readiness tests when they enter kindergarten, and this gap grows by less than 10 percent between kindergarten and high school. There is some evidence that achievement gaps between high- and low-income students actually narrow during the nine-month school year, but they widen again in the summer months....
If not the usual suspects, what’s going on? It boils down to this: The academic gap is widening because rich students are increasingly entering kindergarten much better prepared to succeed in school than middle-class students. This difference in preparation persists through elementary and high school...
High-income families are increasingly focusing their resources — their money, time and knowledge of what it takes to be successful in school — on their children’s cognitive development and educational success. They are doing this because educational success is much more important than it used to be, even for the rich."
Visit here for the complete article.
Visit here for the complete article.
We all may have known money impacts learning, the next step is what we can do about it. The following links provide resources and tips for actions to take to improve your own learning, the learning of your own children, or that of your grandchildren, or employees.
Credits: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/27/no-rich-child-left-behind/?,nl=opinion&emc=edit_ty_20130429
http://cepa.stanford.edu/sean-reardon
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