How Does Poverty Affect Children's Education

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Education can be affected by poverty Education in America is an opportunity that every child receives. For many of these children education is their only way out of poverty. Twenty two percent of our nations children live in poverty. The United States is ranked second in child poverty out of the 35 richest countries in the world. Education was supposed to be the route to achieving the American Dream, but it turns out to be more of a dream then a reality for the poorer kids in our nation. A question that arises is if all the children of our nation receive equal educational opportunities. The answer to that question is no. The economical wealth gap in our country limits the equality of our children’s education. Poverty is one of the main reasons that a child’s developmental and educational outcome can be …show more content…

Today the college graduation gap between low-income student and high-income students still continue to grow. Even though there are more and more students from all different ethnic groups graduating from college, there has been a 50% difference in graduation rates between the rich and the poor. In the article by Steve Hargreaves, How income inequality hurts America, he states “Americans born around 1980 -- the number of rich people going to college jumped by 20 percentage points. For poor people, it rose only 3 percentage points.” (Steve Hargreaves) This shows us how the gap in graduation rates today is widening from the graduation rate of our past decades. Today only one third of lower-income college freshman actually finish college. Meanwhile two thirds of the high income college freshman graduate. Researchers that look into why low-income college freshman don’t finish, they found out that the reason they don’t is because they go to lower ranked colleges. Which contain a higher student to teacher ratio and where it is harder to receive one on one help or

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