-
In the N.B.A., ZIP Code Matters – NYTimes.com
-
These results push back against the stereotype of a basketball player driven by an intense desire to escape poverty. In “The Last Shot,” Darcy Frey quotes a college coach questioning whether a suburban player was “hungry enough” to compete against black kids from the ghetto. But the data suggest that on average any motivational edge in hungriness is far outweighed by the advantages of kids from higher socioeconomic classes.
-
These results push back against the stereotype of a basketball player driven by an intense desire to escape poverty. In “The Last Shot,” Darcy Frey quotes a college coach questioning whether a suburban player was “hungry enough” to compete against black kids from the ghetto. But the data suggest that on average any motivational edge in hungriness is far outweighed by the advantages of kids from higher socioeconomic classes.
-
The second relevant advantage of a relatively prosperous upbringing is height. The economist Robert W. Fogel has demonstrated the impact of improved early life nutrition on adult height over successive generations. Poor children in contemporary America still have substandard nutrition, holding back their development.
-
-
Yet more on hidden practices during college admissions and the things that first -generation students would have no way of predicting could matter in their applications.
“In a 2012 guidebook to the FAFSA, the federal government makes clear — on page 67 of a 71-page document — that it does not use FAFSA position to determine federal aid packages, but it suggests some states use FAFSA position to calculate aid. “For purposes of federal student aid, it does not matter in what order you list the schools,” the guidebook said. “However, to be considered for state aid, several states require you to list a state school first.”
The FAFSA form itself tells students, “For state aid, you may wish to list your preferred college first.” But it gives students little indication about what else can happen using the list.” -
GW misrepresented admissions and financial aid policy for years – The GW Hatchet
“The University admitted publicly for the first time Friday that it puts hundreds of undergraduate applicants on its waitlist each year because they cannot pay GW’s tuition.”
-
Richer Americans Like Living With Poorer People Until They Have Kids – Real Time Economics – WSJ
“This hurts the economy in at least two ways. While a lot more research needs to be done, it’s probably not great for children in poor areas to not have access to better schools and more educated adults. More perniciously, though, if the better-off aren’t living in the same place as the worse-off, they won’t be as willing to pay for future social services in the worse-off areas. Indeed, their tax payments will go to supporting their own schools and parks, leaving the lower-income areas to fend for themselves. That, in turn, will reinforce the economic inequalities that already exist”
-
“But by 2011, almost half of the nation’s 50 million public-school students — 48 percent — qualified for free or reduced-price meals. In some states, such as Mississippi, that proportion rose as high as 71 percent.”
-
“High-poverty schools sent significantly fewer graduates to college in 2012 than higher-income schools, regardless of the schools’ geographic location or racial makeup, according to a new study by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center”
-
Freshman Survey Part III: Classes, Clubs, and Concussions | News | The Harvard Crimson
It can be so difficult to get past deeply held beliefs that wealthy people get where they are because of hard work while poor and working class people have simply not earned economic security.
Yet many of Harvard’s class of 2017 admit to cheating.
“Ten percent of respondents admitted to having cheated on an exam, and 17 percent said they had cheated on a paper or a take-home assignment. An even greater percentage—42 percent—admitted to cheating on a homework assignment or problem set.”
-
Study finds that small differences in application costs can have big impact | Inside Higher Ed
“Pallais writes that the findings suggest that small financial charges can be meaningful.”
I’ve been appreciating the recent studies that are attempting to better understand college decision-making from the perspectives of low-income students.
-
First generation student? Help Class Action plan support and engagement in first gen issues. Take the short survey.
-
A Nudge to Poorer Students to Aim High on Colleges – NYTimes.com
Taking the basic step of informing low-income students about their college options seems at least one small step in the right direction.
-
Freebies for the Rich – NYTimes.com
“Over the years, many state-university systems — and even states themselves — have shifted more of their financial aid away from students who need it toward those whose résumés merit it. The share of state aid that’s not based on need has nearly tripled in the last two decades, to 29 percent per full-time student in 2010-11. The stated rationale, of course, is that merit scholarships motivate high-school achievement and keep talented students in state. The consequence, however, is that more aid is helping kids who need it less. Merit metrics like SAT scores tend to closely correlate with family income; about 1 in 5 students from households with income over $250,000 receives merit aid from his or her school. For families making less than $30,000, it’s 1 in 10.”
-
Stunning data on childhood poverty rates, by state and congressional district.
-
Two schools and the vast imbalance of privilege
We leave it to teachers to convince the children in these schools that they all have an equal and fair chance of making it, if only they do well in school.
“Sometimes pictures are worth a thousand words. My bike ride to work takes me past two schools within a quarter of a mile of each other. On one stretch of Stony Island Parkway sits the new Earl Shapiro Hall, a slick, multi-million dollar campus for the early childhood program of the University of Chicago Lab Schools. Two University of Chicago police officers manage the large increase in traffic caused by the school’s opening, ensuring the safe arrival of children in their classrooms. The view from my bike seat suggests an overwhelming preponderance of white and Asian-American children.
Meanwhile, just up the street an inexperienced school crossing attendant struggles to deal with the sudden increase in traffic on a dangerous corner as her children, almost all African American, make their way to the Bret Harte Elementary School. Bret Harte is a math and science magnet school in the Chicago Public School district”
-
Class Is Seen Dividing Harvard Business School – NYTimes.com
“As soon as new students arrive, they are expected to write checks of $300 or $400 to their “sections,” the groups with whom they take first-year classes, if they want to participate in social events. In recent years, second-year students have organized a midwinter ski trip that costs over $1,000, while others, including members of “Section X,” a secret society of ultrawealthy students, spend far more on weekend party trips to places like Iceland and Moscow. Tickets to the winter ball, called Holidazzle, have cost $200 or more in recent years.”
-
Is Online Education Widening the Digital Divide? | MindShift
San Jose State faculty object to offering Harvard On-line courses to their diverse students on the grounds that it amplifies the “upstairs/ downstairs” divide of higher education.
“We have a very diverse student body and we’re very proud of that,” Hadreas said. “But they would watch Michael Sandel teach Harvard students and he would interpolate into his talks and dialogues how privileged they were. And they were for the most part, certainly to a greater extent, white than our student body. So we’ve got, on the one hand, this strange sort of upstairs/downstairs situation where the lower-class people could look at how the upper-class people were being educated. We thought that was just flat out insulting, in a way, to the students and certainly not pedagogically reinforcing.””
-
What We Spend to Raise a Child — and What We Don’t – NYTimes.com
Two parent households earning over $106,640 in the Northeast (hardly the upper limits of income in the U.S.) spend $12,000 more a year raising each child than a single parent earning under $60, 640.
“Higher income parents spend more on nearly every item with a discretionary component. That adds up to Montessori instead of in-home day care; houses in stronger school districts; and more money spent on activities, travel and other miscellany that the lower-income child either doesn’t “need” or just doesn’t get.”
-
Change Fafsa Now – The Conversation – The Chronicle of Higher Education
Not “family values”. Not intellectual disengagement. Not even a legacy of mediocre k-12 teachers, as we would be encouraged to believe. Instead, for some students, the unwieldy financial aid paperwork discourages college going.
“A rigorous randomized experiment led by top economists demonstrated that helping students complete that form increases their rates of college attendance and completion. Susan Dynarski, a professor of economics and public policy at the University of Michigan, and her colleagues have shown time and again that simplification of the application is possible and desirable.
But despite this evidence and significant efforts devoted to making policy changes, the form hasn’t gotten much shorter or easier to complete.”
-
For-profit education: Let’s stop condescending to students of for-profit colleges. – Slate Magazine
More on blaming first -generation students for not always understanding the rules of the college game when those rule are largely hidden from them.
“We laugh at the young lady with a for-profit safety school. But she’d worked through huge material, spatial, and symbolic enclosures to learn some of the more explicit rules of a largely implicit admissions game. That even with all of her ingenuity and effort she still couldn’t figure out the game says more about the game than it does her.”
-
More evidence of the “undermatching’ of high ability, low-income kids who don’t apply to colleges where they’d likely to be accepted.
This study goes further : More advantaged kids, perhaps not surprising, tend to “overmatch” and apply to schools beyond their academic preparation.
Advantage appears to favor overmatching. “Students from the wealthiest families, from neighborhoods where many adults have college degrees, and from high schools where many students go on to college are less likely to be undermatched but also more likely to be overmatched.
-
Status and Stress – NYTimes.com
The high stresses of being poor, framed as a problem not only of social justice but also of public health.
“the more helpless one feels when facing a given stressor, they argue, the more toxic that stressor’s effects.
That sense of control tends to decline as one descends the socioeconomic ladder, with potentially grave consequences. Those on the bottom are more than three times as likely to die prematurely as those at the top. They’re also more likely to suffer from depression, heart disease and diabetes. Perhaps most devastating, the stress of poverty early in life can have consequences that last into adulthood.”
-
Follow
Following
Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
Education and Class 