Quote of the Day, February 4th, 2013, excerpted from “This Week in Poverty: Time to Take On Concentrated Poverty and Education” by Greg Kaufmann on The Nation:
Breaking up concentrated poverty and reducing segregation at the neighborhood and school levels offers tremendous potential. As Kahlenberg points out, “on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), low-income fourth grade students given the chance to attend more-affluent schools in math are two years ahead of low-income students stuck in high-poverty schools.”
Dr. Heather Schwartz, policy researcher at the RAND Corporation, also finds that socioeconomic integration trumps extra resources in boosting achievement. In her rigorous study of Montgomery County, Maryland, schools, low-income students whose subsidized housing assignments enabled them to attend very low-poverty schools closed more of the achievement gap with their high-income peers than did low-income students in higher-poverty schools who received an additional $2,000—monies which were devoted to extended learning time, smaller classes, and specialized professional development.