A View of Our Students
To reach students, it helps to begin with understanding something about them. As of fall 2016, approximately 98,300 U.S. public schools served over 50.4 million elementary and secondary students (National Center for Education Statistics [NCES], 2017a).
The United States is a land of great diversity, and the percentage of Caucasian students is declining. In 2013, 51 percent of students were Caucasian, 25 percent were Hispanic, 16 percent were Black, 3 percent were of two or more races, and 1 percent were American Indian or Alaska Native. NCES (2017b) expects the number of white students to continue declining, totaling 46 percent of enrollment in 2025, while the number of Hispanic students will continue to increase, totaling 29 percent of enrollment in 2025.
A report shows that 25 percent of U.S. twelfth graders are proficient in mathematics and 37 percent are proficient in reading. In earlier grades, academic proficiency is also disturbingly low (NCES, 2016).
• Forty percent of fourth-grade and thirty-three percent of eighth-grade students perform at or above the proficient level in mathematics.
• Thirty-six percent of fourth-grade and thirty-four percent of eighth-grade students perform at or above the proficient level in NAEP reading.
• Seventy-nine percent of eighth graders recognize the meaning of the words when reading them in a reading assessment.
Looking at the scores, there is more evidence supporting mindfulness. When we open the cognitive pathways that have been clogged with stress and trauma, students will be better prepared for mathematics and reading.
Contributors That Complicate a Student’s World
Trauma, poverty, and numbers are compounding contributors that complicate a student’s world. By as early as age four, over one-quarter of U.S. children experience trauma that impacts their lives and their learning (Costello, Erkanli, Fairbank, & Angold, 2002). Moreover, if children live in neighborhoods with high rates of violent crime, estimates increase to 83–91 percent (Breslau, Peterson, Poisson, Schultz, & Lucia, 2004). Results from a North Carolina study indicate that more than 68 percent of children and youth experience a potentially traumatic event by age sixteen (Copeland, Keeler, Angold, & Costello, 2007). Sixty-eight percent! That is over two-thirds of our students. And there is more. In 2014, more than two-thirds of children (ages seventeen and younger) were exposed to violence within the past year either directly (as victims) or indirectly (as witnesses; Finklehor, Turner, Shattuck, & Hamby, 2015). Exposure to violence can lead to enduring physical, mental, and emotional harm. Exposure to violence at a young age is associated with attachment problems, anxiety, aggression, and depression.
Additionally, even merely witnessing violence may negatively impact children’s attentional and cognitive achievement (Child Trends, 2016). According to sociologist and researcher David Finkelhor and his colleagues Anne Shattuck, Heather Turner, and Sherry Hamby (2014), one in nine girls and one in fifty-three boys under the age of eighteen experience sexual abuse or assault at the hands of an adult. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (2016), fifty-seven thousand children were victims of sexual abuse in 2016.
The gap between potential and performance that is present in achievement tests for students living in the most and least affluent homes widened 40 percent since the 1960s (Reardon, 2011), leading to greater disparities in terms of not only demonstrated educational achievement but also post-school opportunities. Approximately 21 percent of children in the United States under age eighteen years old are from families living in poverty, and an alarming 43 percent of students are living in low-income homes (Jiang, Granja, & Koball, 2017). See figure 2.1 (page 28) for a state-by-state breakdown.
Figure 2.1 represents individuals with different histories, interests, capabilities, abilities, and needs. There is great diversity. Some students come from large families with a traditional mother and father. Others don’t have siblings. Some students are raised by same-sex parents. Others are raised in single-parent homes, or by extended families. While some students are raised in families where one or both parents work, others come from families where parents have trouble finding or keeping jobs.
The research on socioeconomic status (SES), race, and the prevalence of child maltreatment and abuse is not definitive. While most studies (Dubow, Huesmann, Boxer, & Smith, 2016; Kim, Drake, & Johnson-Reid, 2018; Moore & Ramirez, 2016) show that poverty is definitely associated with more ACEs, other studies show that abuse and maltreatment cross SES conditions (Chiu et al., 2013; Steele et al., 2016). The relationship between race and abuse is also complex. Several studies find that abuse is higher among white people than other groups (Chiu et al., 2013; Kim et al., 2018; Mersky & Janczewski, 2018). Fewer studies report that abuse is higher among Latinos (Clark, Galano, Grogan-Kaylor, Montalvo-Liendo, & Graham-Bermann, 2016; Lee & Chen, 2017) or African Americans (Scher, Forde, McQuaid, & Stein, 2004). We conclude that although poverty is a significant contributing factor, abuse is not limited to specific SES levels, and maltreatment is perpetuated by adults across all races and cultural conditions.
Further, while we conclude that SES is a significant contributor to childhood trauma, other factors such as maternal stress, parenting skills, home environment, and school safety may offset the disadvantages associated with poverty (Aizer, Stroud, & Buka, 2016; Hackman, Gallop, Evans, & Farah, 2015; Moore & Ramirez, 2016). Students in so-called traditional families may feel the impact of abusive homes, while children raised by extended family members or by a single mother may find a high degree of support. Other students may be raised by a parent or parents who are stressed with the demands of parenting, and it may be hard for a parent or parents in any of the family constellations to provide the nurturing and caring a child needs (Walsh, 2016). Yet other students experience the instability and uncertainty of being moved from one foster family to another.
Source: © 2015 by Southern Education Foundation. Used with permission. Statistics source: National Center for Education Statistics, 2016.
Figure 2.1: U.S. families living in poverty.
Students’ interests, skills, abilities, and needs also vary widely. Some students are blessed with circumstances that allow them to explore a dream; others can only dream without having the opportunity to take dance lessons or attend a science camp. Despite the excellence in the United States, despite everything the country has achieved, many students have undeveloped or underdeveloped potential. We believe that significant contributing factors to this unused potential include lack of adequate nutrition, threats to the emotional and psychological well-being of children (including racism and low expectations), poverty, and an instructional paradigm that disregards the strengths and needs of the individual child.
Children living in poverty and lacking mediated, enriching experiences that cultivate interest and attention are more likely to display short attention spans, have difficulty monitoring the quality of their work, and struggle with problem solving. Poor Students, Rich Teaching author Eric Jensen (2009, 2016) provides substantial research on how to teach students, understanding what we know about the impact of poverty. He concludes the following about students in poverty.
• They enter school with a less developed vocabulary, resulting in barriers to learning.
• They are less likely to exercise, get proper diagnoses, receive appropriate and prompt medical attention, or be prescribed appropriate medications or interventions.
• They have a higher likelihood of ear infections resulting in hearing problems, undiagnosed vision problems, greater exposure to lead, higher exposure to asthma, and greater problems with their immune systems.
• They are less likely to have breakfast and more likely to eat