6
Poverty in the public education classroom
about half in 2013, meaning more than 1 million
students now live in households that struggle to meet
their children’s basic nutritional, healthcare and
housing needs,” State Superintendent of Education
Christopher A. Koch said. “Research shows that
children who live in areas of concentrated poverty
often suffer higher stress levels and can demonstrate
more severe behavioral
and emotional problems
than their peers. These
struggles can be huge
road blocks on a child’s
path to college and
career readiness and
lead
to
lower
achievement scores and
higher dropout rates.”
Dr. Peter Flynn is a
veteran of more than 50
years in public education
and is a champion of
providing
a
quality
educational opportunity
for
all
students,
especially those facing
the greatest challenges,
including
minority
students and children
from
impoverished
backgrounds. He was
named
the
“Illinois
Superintendent of the
Year” by the Illinois
Association of School
Administrators (IASA) in
2012. He retired after 12
years as superintendent
in Freeport, where the
poverty rate has grown
to 72 percent, and just
finished a three-month
stint
as
interim
superintendent of the Galesburg district while the
superintendent there recovered from a stroke.
Flynn worked with underprivileged students as a
teacher in New Bedford, Massachusetts, in the 1960s
and for the past 13 years has co-chaired a poverty
working group in Stephenson County. Flynn
described the situation pretty succinctly:
“Take two children, one from a middle class
background and one from a background of poverty.
The middle-class child comes to school with a
language experience that is 10 times greater than the
poor child,” Flynn said. “Then if you lay out a line of
student achievement you can see the gap.”
Using the Illinois Interactive Report Card, third-
grade students from low-income families had
achievement gaps of around 30 percent or more in
reading, writing, math and
science in 2003 – and
those gaps had grown
by the time they were
tested as 11
th
-graders
last year.
Flynn is not ready to
surrender to poverty
despite all of the
barriers,
and
he
cautioned
against
generalization.
“Each
child
is
different
and
as
administrators
and
teachers we have to be
aware of our own
biases. We should have
high expectations for all
children,” he said. “All
children have a gift.
Some have a harder
time showing their gifts,
and some may not even
know what their gifts
are. It’s our jobs to
uncover those gifts.”
Flynn said there is
no silver bullet solution,
but the issue requires a
comprehensive
approach to each child.
Jeanne
Davis
is
superintendent
in
Lewistown, where the percentage of students who
qualify as low-income is about 39 percent according
to the latest Interactive Report Card. Before coming
to Lewistown, Davis for five years was
superintendent of the Creve Coeur district, which had
a poverty rate of 72 percent.
Davis has seen both ends of the opportunity
spectrum, having taught in an upscale private school
where a parent wrote a $1,000 check so students
(Continued from page 5)
(Continued on page 7)
“The achievement
gap between children
from different income
levels exists before
children enter school…
Families are
children’s most
important educators. Our society must
invest in parental education, prenatal
care and preschool. Of course, schools
must improve; everyone should have a
stable, experienced staff, adequate
resources and a balanced curriculum
including the arts, foreign languages,
history and science.
If every child arrived in school well-
nourished, healthy and ready to learn,
from a family with a stable home and a
steady income, many of our educational
problems would be solved. And that
would be a miracle.”
--Author, speaker and research professor
Diane Ravitch
