High-poverty Schools Research Articles

Thinking in Music from the Very Beginning

This article describes a collaborative clinical field experience initiative conceived to provide meaningful fieldwork for preservice music educators, musically engage underserved students in a high-poverty school, and include instruction on composition and improvisation. The author chronicles the planning, implementation, and subsequent revisions to “Band Project,” an after-school instructional program. Successful outcomes of Band Project include collaboration between school and university, increased music education student confidence and preparedness for teaching diverse students, the ability of participating band students to begin to identify as musicians through creating their own compositions and gaining confidence in performance, and the formation of positive relationships between the band students and their young teachers.

Building teacher and school capacity to teach to ambitious standards in high-poverty schools

The present study examines the experience of two high-poverty schools that participated in a district professional development (PD) initiative designed to support teachers in meeting the goals of the Common Core State Standards. A small group of teachers from each school attended PD, learned collaborative planning and inquiry practices, and were expected to lead this work at their school. Key findings suggest that job-embedded support from experts and direction from the principal, rather than the leadership of teachers, were essential for translating learning from PD into changes in instruction and collaboration. Implications for developing capacity in high-poverty schools are discussed.

Primeros años de docencia en contextos de pobreza: preguntas que la evidencia desde EE.UU. sugiere para la conversación en Chile

In light of the lack of research in Chile about beginning teachers in high-poverty schools, this literature review examines 44 papers published in the United States about this topic over the past decade. Because the two countries are different in many ways, the conclusions from one cannot be extrapolated to the other; however, both share a neoliberal context, making this review valuable. Overall, studies suggested that the early years of teaching in high-poverty schools have become increasingly complex, due to economic, political, and cultural factors. The main research focus has been on teacher retention, and results indicate that monetary bonuses above an average teacher salary are not as relevant as other factors for attracting teachers to high-poverty schools. Research in the United States indicates the need to pay attention to working conditions, collaboration among colleagues, the pressure to achieve on standardized tests, and the lack of cultural relevance of what is taught in high-poverty schools. The review concludes by proposing six questions based on evidence from the United States to spark conversation in Chile.

Analytic Productions in Post-Intentional Phenomenological Research

In this article, we explore through a series of productions our analytic relationships with an interview with Iris—a fourth-grade student who participated in a post-intentional phenomenological study focusing on how social class–sensitive photo storying took shape in a high-poverty elementary school. Following Deleuze and Guattari’s configuration of assemblage as a constant process of making and unmaking, we have plugged into our assemblage (Jackson and Mazzei) some poetry and a dramatization, as well as some of the expected productions of academic writing such as theory, citations, and methodology. In this way, we reconceive the phenomenon as an assemblage that produces, rather than means.

Early Years of Teaching in Contexts of Poverty: Questions Based on Evidence from the U.S. to Spark Conversation in Chile

In light of the lack of research in Chile about beginning teachers in high-poverty schools, this literature review examines 44 papers published in the United States about this topic over the past decade. Because the two countries are different in many ways, the conclusions from one cannot be extrapolated to the other; however, both share a neoliberal context, making this review valuable. Overall, studies suggested that the early years of teaching in high-poverty schools have become increasingly complex, due to economic, political, and cultural factors. The main research focus has been on teacher retention, and results indicate that monetary bonuses above an average teacher salary are not as relevant as other factors for attracting teachers to high-poverty schools. Research in the United States indicates the need to pay attention to working conditions, collaboration among colleagues, the pressure to achieve on standardized tests, and the lack of cultural relevance of what is taught in high-poverty schools. The review concludes by proposing six questions based on evidence from the United States to spark conversation in Chile.

Creating and Sustaining Secondary Schools’ Success: Sandfields, Cwmtawe, and the Neath-Port Talbot Local Authority's High Reliability Schools Reform

This article presents data from a 15-year, mixed-methods school improvement effort. The High Reliability Schools (HRS) reform made use of previous research on school effects and on High Reliability Organizations (HROs). HROs are organizations in various parts of our cultures that are required to operate successfully “the first time, every time.” This is a requirement increasingly placed on our schools. The HRS reform was conducted in all 11 secondary schools in one Welsh (U.K.) Local Authority (LA). Data are provided on the Neath-Port Talbot (NPT) district along with case studies of two of NPT schools. Pre-reform data indicated that students in the LA were performing well below Welsh averages. Over a four-year intervention, NPT's students made gains that were nearly double the national average. Achievement data from five and 11 years post-intervention indicate that the relatively high-poverty schools in the LA have continued to rise to well above the national averages. Qualitative observations and interviews with the schools’ and LA's leadership and student groups, combined with analyses of recent school inspectors’ reports, indicate that schools are continuing to use HRS principles and are continuing their refinement of them in context. Implications for future school reforms and research are presented.

Delayed Effects of a Low-Cost and Large-Scale Summer Reading Intervention on Elementary School Children's Reading Comprehension

ABSTRACTTo improve the reading comprehension outcomes of children in high-poverty schools, policymakers need to identify reading interventions that show promise of effectiveness at scale. This study evaluated the effectiveness of a low-cost and large-scale summer reading intervention that provided comprehension lessons at the end of the school year and stimulated home-based summer reading routines with narrative and informational books. We conducted a randomized controlled trial involving 59 elementary schools, 463 classrooms, and 6,383 second and third graders and examined outcomes on the North Carolina End-of-Grade (EOG) reading comprehension test administered nine months after the intervention, in the children's third- or fourth-grade year. We found that on this delayed outcome, the treatment had a statistically significant impact on children's reading comprehension, improving performance by .04 SD (standard deviation) overall and .05 SD in high-poverty schools. We also found, in estimates from an instrumental variables analysis, that children's participation in home-based summer book reading routines improved reading comprehension. The cost-effectiveness ratio for the intervention compared favorably to existing compensatory education programs that target high-poverty schools.

Teacher Satisfaction in High Poverty Schools: Searching for Policy Relevant Interventions in Estonia, Georgia, and Latvia

Provided the shared post-soviet context and the rapidly declining school age population, this comparative study of teachers in Estonia, Georgia, and Latvia can shed light on alternative approaches to increased teacher satisfaction for countries in similar contexts that are unable to make across the board increases in teacher salary. The focus on high poverty schools is essential in these countries as the changing demographics and present school funding mechanisms disproportionately affect rural schools which are often high poverty. This study addresses two pressing research questions, exploring each independently for Estonia, Georgia, and Latvia: 1) How does teacher satisfaction and other teacher characteristics differ by school poverty level? 2) What policy relevant factors are related to increased satisfaction for teachers in high poverty schools? Data from the 2013 Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) were used in this study. Given the dichotomous measures of the outcome variable (teacher satisfaction), hierarchical generalized linear modeling (HGLM) was the primary method of analysis. Although the policy implementation and internalization process is challenging, this study indicates that simplistic, externally driven policy solutions, such as introducing induction programs or changing the contract status of teachers, are not as effective in increasing teacher satisfaction as investments that contribute to a positive school climate where teachers feel valued and included as professionals.

Protocol for a Systematic Review: “No Excuses” Charter Schools for Increasing Math and Literacy Achievement in Primary and Secondary Education: A Systematic Review and Meta‐Analysis

Protocol for a Systematic Review: “No Excuses” Charter Schools for Increasing Math and Literacy Achievement in Primary and Secondary Education: A Systematic Review and Meta‐Analysis

Protocol for a Systematic Review: Teach For America (TFA) for Improving Math, Language Arts, and Science Achievement of Primary and Secondary Students in the United States: A Systematic Review

Protocol for a Systematic Review: Teach For America (TFA) for Improving Math, Language Arts, and Science Achievement of Primary and Secondary Students in the United States: A Systematic Review

Explaining Variance in Comprehension for Students in a High-Poverty Setting

This study examined the contributions of decoding, language, spelling, and motivation to the reading comprehension of elementary school readers in a high-poverty setting. Specifically, the research questions addressed whether and how the influences of word reading efficiency, semantic knowledge, reading self-concept, and spelling on reading comprehension varied based on 2 different measures of comprehension. The sample included 52 elementary-age participants from 1 high-poverty school. Multiple regression analyses revealed that factors were related differently to comprehension depending on the measures used. Specifically, fluency accounted for most of the variance in silent reading comprehension but a smaller proportion of the variance in oral reading comprehension. For the oral reading comprehension measure, semantic knowledge was the most influential predictor.

Teacher Performance Trajectories in High- and Lower-Poverty Schools

This study explores whether teacher performance trajectory over time differs by school-poverty settings. Focusing on elementary school mathematics teachers in North Carolina and Florida, we find no systematic relationship between school student poverty rates and teacher performance trajectories. In both high- (≥60% free/reduced-price lunch [FRPL]) and lower-poverty (<60% FRPL) schools, teacher performance improves the fastest in the first 5 years and then flattens out in years 5 to 10. Teacher performance growth resumes between year 10 and 15 in North Carolina but remains flat in Florida. In both school-poverty settings, there is a significant variation in teacher performance trajectories. Among novice and early-career teachers, the fastest-growing teachers (75th percentile) improve by 0.04 standard deviations more in student gain scores annually than slower teachers (25th percentile). In both school settings, novice teachers who started with low effectiveness also grew at a slower rate in the next 5 years than novice teachers with higher initial effectiveness. Our findings suggest that the lack of productivity “return” to experience in high-poverty schools reported in the literature is unlikely to be the result of differential teacher learning in high- and lower-poverty schools.

Developing Persuasion Knowledge by Teaching Advertising Literacy in Primary School

As part of a larger project to integrate advertising literacy into school curriculum, this research evaluates the effectiveness of an initial three-hour advertising literacy classroom intervention among eight- and nine-year-olds. The field experiment (a pretest/posttest, control/experimental group design) was implemented in 10 third grade classes in a three-week time period in three high-poverty schools in the United States. Low advertising literacy occurred at baseline. Evaluation results indicated significant increases in intervention students' understanding of the message creator, the selling intent, persuasive strategy, and target audience. Recommendations for curriculum development, refinement, and implementation for a wider audience are discussed.

Mind the civic empowerment gap: Economically elite students and critical civic education

Calls to close the civic empowerment gap have traditionally focused on improving and expanding civic education for students in high-poverty urban schools. While important, this recommendation implies that closing the gap is in and of itself a sufficient end and that the civic education of affluent youth is unproblematic. This paper calls for (1) an explicit aim for the gap to close in a way that moves US society towards radical democratic egalitarianism, and (2) a response to the gap that includes consideration of the civic education of affluent students. It suggests that an “activist ally” approach rooted in emancipatory social science, political compassion, affective motivations, and empathic listening may be a useful framework for a critical civic education curriculum with economically elite youth. It concludes with an example from an affluent private school to highlight the affordances and limitations of this framework.

The Resilience of Deficit Thinking

Deficit thinking, which situates school failure in the minds, bodies, communities and culture of students, dominates schooling practices in the US and Canada. From this perspective, the remedy to school failure is to “fix” students, their families, culture or language. Critics of deficit thinking point to systemic factors, especially diminished opportunities to learn, to explain high levels of school failure among poor students and students of color. Decades of fierce critique have failed to diminish the appeal of deficit thinking. This paper considers the resistance of deficit thinking to critique by examining the appeal of Ruby Payne’s Culture of Poverty, a particularly egregious instantiation of deficit thinking that pathologizes the language and culture of people living in poverty. The paper then turns to more recent work by the author to counter deficit thinking by showing what happens when students in high-poverty schools are challenged by the kind of thoughtful, engaging, high-expectation curricula common in affluent, high-achieving schools and classrooms.

Reading Attitudes of Texas High School Students

Through random sampling, we surveyed 2,568 high school students throughout Texas to determine their reading attitudes vis-à-vis individual and school background variables. Sources were the Rhody reading attitude scale and public domain campus summary data; the lenses of attitude theory and social justice informed this study. Significant differences appeared in overall reading attitude and gender, as well as these school characteristics: public and private, rural and urban, low and high poverty, low and high diversity, and small versus large student-teacher ratios. From the results, an avid reader from a public school would be in small classes in an urban school serving mostly students of color and poverty. These findings challenge educators, researchers, and policy-makers to rethink common misperceptions of the reading attitudes of youths in diverse, high-poverty urban schools.

Dictionary Projects: A Defining Moment in Literacy

The scene is the auditorium of a high-poverty school, where every third-grader has been assembled. When a visitor explains that each child will receive a dictionary of his or her very own, looks of surprise turn to joy. Most live in homes without a dictionary. Regrettably, many have never owned a book. This scene plays out again and again each spring as we visit schools in Chatham County. After years of providing this service, we can think of no way of promoting literacy that is more visible or more rewarding. It is a simple program that teachers across the state can easily replicate in their schools at virtually no cost. In this article, we explain how.

Teacher Turnover in High-Poverty Schools: What We Know and Can Do

Background/ContextOver the past three decades, teacher turnover has increased substantially in U.S. public schools, especially in those serving large portions of low-income students of color. Teachers who choose to leave high-poverty schools serving large numbers of students of color usually transfer to schools serving wealthier, Whiter student populations. Some researchers have interpreted this trend to mean that “teachers systematically favor higher-achieving, non-minority, non-low-income students.” These ideas have influenced policy analysis concerning high-poverty schools but offered little guidance for those who would address this problem.Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of StudyThis article presents an alternative explanation for turnover—one grounded in organizational theory and substantiated by an emerging line of research. In doing so, it reframes the debate over what fuels high rates of teacher turnover in high-poverty schools and provides advice for policy makers and practitioners, as well as recommendations for productive possibilities for future research.Research DesignThis article reviews six studies analyzing turnover as a function of school context rather than as a function of student demographics. Based on the patterns regarding what factors influence teacher departures across these studies, we pursue these predictors by summarizing what is known about them and how each supports teachers’ work.Findings/ResultsThe six overarching studies reviewed here collectively suggest that teachers who leave high-poverty schools are not feeing their students. Rather, they are feeing the poor working conditions that make it difficult for them to teach and for their students to learn. The working conditions that teachers prize most—and those that best predict their satisfaction and retention—are social in nature. They include school leadership, collegial relationships, and elements of school culture.Conclusions/RecommendationsThe poor working conditions common in America's neediest schools explain away most, if not all, of the relationship between student characteristics and teacher attrition. This is important because, unlike demographic characteristics of students, working conditions can be addressed. Policy makers and practitioners have many options for improving aspects of the school environment, and, although more research can inform this work, much is already known about what matters to teachers as they are deciding whether to continue teaching in their schools.

Predictors of participation in parenting workshops for improving adolescent behavioral and mental health: results from the common sense parenting trial.

Engaging and retaining participants are crucial to achieving adequate implementation of parenting interventions designed to prevent problem behaviors among children and adolescents. This study examined predictors of engagement and retention in a group-based family intervention across two versions of the program: a standard version requiring only parent attendance for six sessions and an adapted version with two additional sessions that required attendance by the son or daughter. Families included a parent and an eighth grader who attended one of five high-poverty schools in an urban Pacific Northwest school district. The adapted version of the intervention had a higher rate of engagement than the standard version, a difference that was statistically significant after adjusting for other variables assessed at enrollment in the study. Higher household income and parent education, younger student age, and poorer affective quality in the parent-child relationship predicted greater likelihood of initial attendance. In the adapted version of the intervention, parents of boys were more likely to engage with the program than those of girls. The variables considered did not strongly predict retention, although retention was higher among parents of boys. Retention did not significantly differ between conditions. Asking for child attendance at workshops may have increased engagement in the intervention, while findings for other predictors of attendance point to the need for added efforts to recruit families who have less socioeconomic resources, as well as families who perceive they have less need for services.

School-Wide Educator Evaluation for Improving School Capacity and Student Achievement in High-Poverty Schools: Year 1 of the School System Improvement Project

The United States is in an era of high-stakes evaluation of educators (i.e., teachers and principals), the results of which are used to inform human capital decision making (i.e., recruitment, hiring, retention, and dismissal), which in turn impacts school capacity and student learning. The present article describes the School System Improvement (SSI) Project, a school-wide educator evaluation initiative that includes 22 high-poverty schools. The primary goal is to present the Year 1 planning for implementation of educator evaluation, highlighting the use of system consultation for planning. The SSI Project team includes researchers in school psychology and special education, school administrators, and teachers. The project aims to implement a multimethod educator evaluation system that generates scores for informing targeted, evidence-based professional development. Project goals are to increase educator competencies that lead to improved student achievement. Finally, directions for training and recommendations for future school reform are presented.