Abstract:

As a nation, are we content that 24 percent of our entering 9th graders read below grade level? Is it acceptable that one out of every three minority students attends a high school where 54 percent of the students drop out? Are we willing to continue spending $2.2 billion a year replacing teachers, half of whom choose to leave the profession before they begin their sixth year in a classroom? Can we excuse the fact that students are twice as likely to be assigned to inexperienced or uncertified teachers in schools with large enrollments of poor and minority students? As a country and as a profession, we have not systematically asked these questions, let alone answered them. Many would argue that public education in the United States is in a state of crisis, and we agree.

Yet, our crisis is one that is being successfully countered in hundreds of public schools. These schools enroll high proportions of underachieving children and adolescents who live in poverty but have reversed long-standing traditions of low achievement and high dropout rates. They are “models of the possible,” where the mind-set of “it’s impossible” has been proven wrong. They provide blueprints for improvement from which other high-poverty schools can learn. More important, these schools are places where students who live in poverty experience success, which leads to optimism, hope, and self-efficacy. In these schools, the crisis has been overcome because the educators sought to control what they could, held high expectations for student learning, and supported their students in surmounting the debilitating effects of poverty on learning.

This study contributes to a growing body of knowledge which has the potential to significantly improve the success of underachieving students who live in poverty. It builds upon and further validates previously conducted research (Parrett, Budge,2012) which resulted in the development of a conceptual framework that elucidated how high-poverty schools become high-performing schools. Twelve public schools representing 11 states and Canada were selected to participate in this 2019 effort. Representing urban, suburban, and rural locations, and serving multiple configurations of secondary, elementary, middle, K-12, 6-12 students, each of the schools was considered high poverty, enrolling between 64% and 96% of students that qualified as low-income. Each of the schools outperformed state achievement averages for all students in all tested areas, and had sustained this level of performance for at least 3 years. Extensive fieldwork in each of these schools yields a rich data set of detail profiling the commitment to equity and sense of urgency that continues to drive their successful efforts from underachievement to high-achievement of these high-poverty, high-performing schools.

Still, what of the thousands of other underachieving students living in poverty and failing in schools that have yet to transform? The plight of these children should become a priority of policymakers, parents, taxpayers, and other stakeholders. And it must capture the attention of educators. As a profession, we are poised to significantly improve all of our schools; we know enough and possess the capacity to do so. The question of whether we do is not one of knowledge and skill, but of will. This results of this study provide a comprehensive, common sense, roadmap to success for any high-poverty, low-performing school, and hopefully fuel the will to get there.

Keywords:

Poverty, school improvement, equity.