Letter from the Editorial Board Alison Turner After winning last month's Republican primary in Florida, former governor of Massachusetts Mitt Romney told CNN, "I'm not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there. If it needs repair, I'll fix it. I'm not concerned about the very rich. They're doing just fine. I'm concerned about the very heart of America, the 90-95% of Americans who right now are struggling. You can focus on the very poor, that's not my focus" (Johnson, 2012). While Romney insists that his comments have been misunderstood, the idea that the poor living in the U.S. are already receiving ample help through government programs and therefore don't need additional assistance deserves to be reconsidered as the presidential election draws closer. All potential candidates, including President Barack Obama, have made promises to preserve the way of life of the middle class (Feller & Thomas, 2011); however, talk about protecting the families struggling to make ends meet for those who live under the poverty line is noticeably absent. Consider for a moment the reality of poverty in the United States. According to the 2010 U.S. Census over 46.2 million or 15.1% of the population lived in poverty-marking the highest level since 1993 (DeNavas-Walt, Proctor, & Smith, 2011). There is a wide range of those in poverty-from the working poor who make $22,113 per year for a family of four, to the extreme poor who survive on two dollars per day (NPC). Michigan University's National Poverty Center recently reported that the number of children living in extreme poverty has risen sharply since 1996, and in 2011 2.8 million children survived on only two dollars a day (NPC). Furthermore, census data shows that minority and immigrant children live with greater frequency in poverty than the general population. The National Poverty Center estimates that 38.2% of Black children and 35.0% of Hispanic children live in poverty (NPC). The rate of poverty among immigrants is also high. The Pew Hispanic Center reports that 30.8% of all foreign-born children live in poverty, and 46.1% of Mexican children living in the U.S. live in poverty (Patten, 2012). It is shocking to realize that almost half of all children from Mexico living and going to school in the U.S. live in poverty. In addition to linguistic and cultural barriers that immigrant children face, many of these children also face insecurities and stresses of living in a family whose bills often surpass their income, who suffer poor health, poor vision, illnesses, malnutrition, lack of educational services, and experience gaps in schooling that contribute to their lower achievement in school (Rothstein, 2004). This growing number of children living in poverty directly affects our schools and has important implications for educational practices. These children are the same students sitting in our English, Social Studies, Math, and Foreign Language classes; and therefore, it is important for educators to be aware of and sensitive towards issues of poverty in the classroom and its effects on achievement. The connections between low achievement in school and social class have been widely documented (Coleman et al., 1966; Jencks, 1972; Reardon, 2011), yet our representatives continue to legislate under the assumption that schools alone can solve societal inequities that include social class. For example, the No Child Left Behind Act and the Race to the Top Initiative require schools to overcome differences in achievement among all children regardless of their backgrounds. The idea that schools are responsible for ridding society of its problems by curing its children was not, however, invented by the most recent administrations. At the turn of the 20th century when the Great Wave of Immigration began, [End Page 1] bringing more than 20 million foreigners to America, education was falsely viewed as the way to overcome all inequities including race, social class, and gender. Reflecting the so called "democratization of education" and the desire to meet the needs of all children, schools at this time were given the responsibility that had originated in settlement houses to assimilate immigrant families and rid them of their...