Poverty In Education Essay

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Many experts suggest that the education system in the United States is falling apart and that something has to be done quickly. However, the problem is not the way the education system works, but the factors that prevent it for working properly and efficiently. The education system has several issues that affect it, but poverty is the main factor preventing students from excelling in school.
Poverty is a problem that should be taken seriously because is affecting the education of our kids. According to the article “The real 21st-century problem in public education” by Valerie Strauss, poverty is considered one of the biggest issues affecting the educational system. “Fifty years ago, we educated mostly working-class kids and up, and we did not …show more content…

This is a question that many people are asking, and the answer is simple. Those living in poor conditions tend to have a poor diet, which leads to health problems. In “How Poverty Affects Classroom Engagement”, author Eric Jensen mentions that kids who fail in receiving a healthy or a balanced diet have a harder time learning, listening, and paying attention. Lacking of food or at least nutritional food leads to a poor working memory. “Poor nutrition at breakfast affects gray matter mass in children 's brains. Skipping breakfast is highly prevalent among urban minority youth, and it negatively affects students ' academic achievement by adversely affecting cognition and raising absenteeism” says Jensen. We do not expect kids that are malnourish to have a good performance at school because they are lacking essential vitamins, proteins, carbohydrates, fats and minerals needed for learning. The body is too busy trying to keep the kid alive with the few nutrients he/she receives that learning is not a …show more content…

“If we were serious about education, then our education discussion wouldn 't be focused on demonizing teachers and coming up with radical schemes to undermine traditional public schools. It would instead be focused on mounting a new war on poverty and thus directly addressing the biggest education problem of all” says David Sirota in the article "Poverty Is America 's #1 Education Problem." Sirota mentions that one way to improve the quality of the educational system is by unionizing schools. “Many of the high-performing public schools in America 's wealthy locales are unionized. We also know that one of the best school systems in the world — Finland 's — is fully unionized” says Sirota. Poverty is the most relevant factor in determining the outcome of a person 's educational journey, and in Finland, the child poverty rate is about 5%. In the U.S., the rate is almost five times as high. Unlike us, the Finns calculate the rate of poverty after accounting for government

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