Poverty,+Education,+and+Intellectual+Development

== POVERTY, EDUCATION , AND INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT ==

By: Greg Hughes, Kate Bashaw, Phil Patterson
__**Introduction:**__ - In 2003, 17% of American children 17 years and younger lived below the poverty line (an income of $18,810 for a family of four) - Single-mother households with children were 42% below the poverty line -Lower-SES parents are more apt than higher-SES parents to use authoritarian parenting styles (including physical punishment) -The number of Americans living below the official poverty line is 46.2 million people -13% of people living in the United States live in poverty. -1 in 4 children live in households that struggle to put food on the table. That equals to 16.7 million children. -1 in 6 Americans fight hunger -51.4% of Americans will live in poverty at some point before the age of 65
 * Poverty in America affects both education and intellectual development. Povery has a negative affect on a persons life. It is a vicious cycle that millions of American's struggle with everyday. This harms the development of a person because education is the key to success in life. When a person does not receive quality education (or any education at all) their life is impacted and they have limited opportunities. Povery in America and the affect that it has on education and intellectual development is an issue that is affecting our nation as we speak.**
 * POVERTY IN AMERICA:**
 * Definition- "The state or condition of having little or no money, goods, or means of support."**
 * Statistics:**
 * Statistics:**


 * There is plenty of food to feed everyone in America, we have the transportation to deliver it, there are numerous restaurants including every type of food, and supermarkets have shelves stocked to the ceiling with food and beverages. So the amount of food that we have in America is not necessarily the issue.


 * However, it does become an issue when people do not have the money in their pockets to spend on food. So, due to the troubles in the economy today, Americans are being pushed into poverty.


 * Unemployment is out of control and the number of good quality jobs continues to shrink. There is competition for even the lowest paying jobs. Fortunately, there are programs that are run by the United States to help with the Americans who are living in poverty and fighting hunger.

--> The United States Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is a federal-assistance program that provides assistance to low and no-income people and families who live in the United States. This program is administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture but benefits are distributed by individual U.S. states --> The WIC is a federal assistance program of the Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) for healthcare and nutrition of low-income pregnant women, breastfeeding women, and infants and children under the age of five. If a person participats in other benefit programs,has other family members who participate in the Food Stamp Program, Medicaid, or Temperorary Assistance for Needy Families then they automatically meet the eligibility requirements. --> This program is used to provide low-cost or free school lunch meals to students who are qualified. This program was established as a way to provide food to school age children as well as.
 * A few of the serveral programs include:
 * 1- The Food Stamp Program**
 * 2- The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for women, infants, and children (WIC)**
 * 3- The National School Lunch Program**
 * An efficient way to reduce hunger and poverty in America is through these nutrition programs


 * According to the text, many studies assessed child and adolescent outcomes regarding the quality of the neighborhood they live in. Results found that living in impoverished neighborhoods is associated with poorer academic performance, lower IQ scores, higher incidence of mental health problems, juvenile deliquency, and risky sexual behavior.



How Poverty is Affecting Education
__**California's Problem:**__ The problem that arises with the school systems becoming impoverished is the surrounding area. Predominately, all federal funding comes from residential property taxes and corporate property taxes. So for some reason people stop buying homes, school funding takes a dive. In California, school systems in areas of low economic status are in a lot of trouble. In 1978 in California, Proposition 13 rolled back on property tax to be more sympathetic to the elderly and having them not be taxes beyond their means. In 1978, commercial and corporate property owners contributed about 60 percent of property taxes, while residential only contributed about 40 percent. The state of California thought that younger residents would just make up the difference, and it wouldn’t have too much of an impact considering how much commercial taxes are involved. Now there is almost a perfect flip. There are less business and more elderly, so the funding is coming almost entirely out of residential property owners. This doesn’t develop into a problem in wealthy areas because parents and the community have the financial security and are willing to protect the school. But for surrounding neighborhoods and communities that are willing to protect their schools but can’t offer financial support, they struggle to keep up. More teachers are let go, extracurricular activities and fine arts classes are cut, all to keep the school running. In La Jolla Elementary, in San Diego has a parent organization that raises $300,000 on average per year. In 2008, they raised $450,000 for installing an artificial turf, and other things to beautify the school. Also, 99% of the 5th graders scored proficient or advanced on state reading and math tests. As you can imagine, fewer than 10% of students are considered economically disadvantaged. [] 18 miles away there is Horton Elementary, where 90% of the students come from disadvantaged households. This school has no turf, holes in the playground, dying tree that were planted recently, and only 23% scored proficient or advanced in math and reading. Due to the lack of funding man schools in california do not even have enough resources to teach everyone equally. The San Francisco Unified School District consists of 113 schools and roughly 55,000 students. Currently they are in need of 3,500 textbooks, all averaging over $100. The students test scores have begun to plummet in the 4 main courses; math, English, history, and science. this makes learning difficult subjects, even harder.  [|http://www.sfexaminer.com/local/lack-books-strains-students#ixzz1h1ciWylw] Technology can benefit strongly to a classroom. Technology can make learning more hands-on and more interactive. Technology can let students see, hear, and do things they would never have been able to do. The problem that arises with technology is that it isn’t cheap. Schools tend to drop millions of dollars on direct technology hardware costs. Even at stock pricings the cost to fill a school with computers is not cheap. Luckily, schools are able to keep track of this spending. What a lot of schools fair to realize is the indirect costs that come along with this technology. A suburban school in Virginia spent $86 million for technology in direct technology hardware, but then another estimated $233 million on indirect. These indirect costs are anywhere from maintenance, instillation, or software upgrades. Similarly, a suburban Texas district with paid about $11 million in direct costs, and by the end spent a total of $34 million. In a rural district in Missouri, the school spent $81,000 in direct costs and ended with a total of $218,000. Schools end up paying one and half to three times as much as they intend to. For a school that is already struggling financially, keeping up with technology can punish a school district. The school may receive technology as a donation or get help with the direct costs, but that is hardly the battle. Once they have the technology it will become waste because schools without proper funding just cannot keep up. - //Without more money put into the schools, children may not be able to learn in a safe environment. Also, what teacher would want to work in a school that isn’t same?// - //A correlation to this could be the fact that all of these cities have very populated low income housing areas. Thus, have schools without the proper qualifications to teach students and that can only lead to students not having any interest in graduating, or just not being able to graduate because they need to work.// http://filipspagnoli.wordpress.com/stats-on-human-rights/statistics-on-poverty/statistics-on-poverty-and-education/
 * __Technology in the Classroom__**
 * __Statistics:__**
 * 1) Three-quarters of the nation's schools (almost 60,000) report needing repairs, renovations or modernization in order to reach good condition.
 * 1) In 2008, 17 of the nation's 50 largest cities had high school graduation rates lower than 50%, with the lowest rates reported in Detroit (24.9%), Indianapolis (30.5%) and Cleveland (34.1%).



- //This relates to the previous statistic. If the child is from a poor family, chances are they families around them are poor; therefore, the school cannot have good funding. A school without good funding is very essential to encouraging kids to stay in school, brings in better teachers, better learning tools, and overall better facilities.//
 * 1) Children of poor families are up to six times more likely to drop out than wealthy children.

--

**How Poverty is Affecting Intellectual Development**
__Outline__ Poverty affects Intellectual development in a variety of way. Ways such as being too poor to go to school or get the proper education; being too poor to pay for the proper learning utensils; being to poor to feed your body enough to have the strength to power your brain.
 * __1.) Explanation of poverty in intellectual development__**

[|How poverty affects academic performance] This article states that 30-50% of our behavior comes from our DNA, as 50-70% comes from our environment. Starting from the whomb, a child’s care is compromised by how well it is nurtured. Certain things can affect the baby such as how well it is taken care of in prenatal care, its exposure to toxins, and stress of the mother. These factors are highly dangerous to the IQ and overall well-being of the baby. According to this article, a child’s well-being is highly influenced on how they are perceived from other people. Peers are mostly the cause of this but also family members, teachers and other people and children’s lives. The way you are looked at is a major influence on one’s life because it tells you where you stand amongst everyone around you. By feeling inferior to others because of a situation that is out of your control can affect you personality, confidence, and willingness to succeed. Once you feel inferior to another it is a hard thing to overcome. Poverty on intellectual development is majorly mental and consciously a virus that can affect you from the inside out. [|intellectual development through malnutrition] How does your body react when there is nothing fueling it? I have always been told that to perform at ones best, you must eat and fuel your body. What happens for those who are unable to eat because they are too poor? According to the article //Malnutrition, Poverty and Intellectual Development// nearly 195 million children are undernourished before the age of 5 globally. This is a huge epidemic that most do not have any control over. Although malnutrition doesn’t seem to damage the brain irreversibly, it does temporarily put a hold on it. At age two this is most prominent that if by age three the child resumes back to a healthy diet then they will be able to recovery at a normal pace. What about those who can get back to a healthy diet? By starving the body you not only put your brain at risk, you fail your body making it harder for the immune system to fight of sickness, can lead to weight loss and also stunted growth. In extreme cases even death is not ruled out. Malnutrition is not only a physical problem dealing with the actual body, but when it comes to learn and your body is so tired and weak how is someone going to get the energy to want to learn? Being tired and physically weak takes more of a toll on your brain than you think. Not having energy can affect your mental performance and physical. With not energy you are mentally giving up. Feeling that the body can’t or has no motivation to do anything is dangerous. By losing the brains motivation the body fails as well. By not wanting to move or do anything the body is affected physically because without moving the body will become weak and dependent on things.
 * __2.) How poverty affects intellectual development__**
 * **__Mentally__**
 * **__Physically__**

Fig. 2.2 Number of stressors for poor vs. nonpoor children ([|ACSD])

__**3.) Facts and statistics**__ //Note: Facts in this section refer to 2007, the most recent year of available data, unless otherwise noted.// • **A total of 13.3 million children, or 1 in 6 of all children in America, live in poverty**. Of these children, almost half – 5.8 million – live in extreme poverty.
 * BASIC FACTS ABOUT CHILD POVERTY 2**

• **Child poverty has increased since 2000.** Between 2000 and 2007, the number of poor children increased by 1.7 million.

• **Most poor children have working parents.** Seven out of 10 poor children are in working families where someone works full- or part-time for at least part of the year.

• **Young children are somewhat more likely to be poor than older children.** 4.4 million Children under the age of 5, or 1 in 5, are poor, compared to 1 in 6 of those between 5 and 17 years of age.

• **Children with a parent holding a high-school diploma are nearly half as likely to be poor (25 percent) as children whose parents have not completed high school (48 percent)**, while slightly over 3 percent of children with either parent holding a bachelor, professional, or graduate degree are poor. (Child Poverty in America, 2008) Poverty, education, and intellectual development are all connected. The fact that Poverty is a base to problems in education and intellectual development in America is absurd. One problem that comes from poverty is hunger. The fact that America suffers obesity so much is appalling to think the extreme opposite is happening as well. Poverty is affecting our education by lack of technology, learning utensils, and lack of government/federal funding. This problem is a circle like cycle that if you are born in poverty you are more likely to get improper or no education. If you receive a poor education than your intellectual development will more than likely be compromised and less advanced therefore making it harder to get a good job. Without a good job or way of making money the cycle starts all over. The term drowning in debt fits this situation perfectly because it is a situation where many different factors contribute to a problem. The problem of poverty is not a problem that can be fixed by doing one thing. We need to start making changes in different ways, such as federal grants to create a more equal chance of learning for those who cannot afford it. Unless there are ways that poor people can get the same resources as the rich, the problem of poverty will stay rampant in America.
 * __CONCLUSION:__**
 * __CONCLUSION:__**
 * __CONCLUSION:__**



= References: =


 * Bjorklund, D., & Blasi, C. (2012). // Child & adolescent development: An integrated approach //. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.


 * // Child Poverty in America // . (2008, August 26). Retrieved December 15, 2011, from Childrens Defense Fund: []


 * Cody, A. (2009, Sep 23). Rich schools/poor schools: The gap grows [Web log message]. Retrieved from []


 * // Dosomething.org // . (2011). Retrieved from []


 * Fickes, M. (2004). How much does technology really cost?. Retrieved from []


 * Huebler, F. (2005). //Correlation between poverty and lack of education in the u.s.//. Retrieved from []


 * Jensen, E. (2009). // Teaching with poverty in mind //. Retrieved December 15, 2011, from ASCD: http://www.ascd.org/publications/books/109074/chapters/How-Poverty- Affects-Behavior-and-Academic-Performance.aspx.

, is still lacking nearly 3,500 textbooks.
 * Pollitt, J. L. (1996, February ). // Malnutrition, Poverty and Intellectual Development //. Retrieved December 15, 2011, from Villanove.edu:[]