Task Force

Task Statement
The Connecticut Department of Education has tasked our group with analyzing the underlying issue of poverty and its effects in our educational system. We are to develop a plausible set of solutions to address the most critical issues, determine the one most universally effective approach, and develop a prudent implementation strategy.
Executive Summary
Poverty as a social problem can be defined as “a state in which income is insufficient to provide the basic necessities of food, shelter, clothing, and medical care” (Lauer). According to the Connecticut State Department of Education (CSDE), poverty is defined “for each school using the percentage of students eligible for free/reduced-price meals based on the student data collected in its Public Student Information System (PSIS).” Annual analysis of this data determines, among other things, the percentage of each school’s students living in poverty. This information is then used to separate school districts into quartiles of high and low poverty, which are used for further analyses and determination of funding, staffing, and other needs (CSDE).
The simple measure of poverty is when a family’s income is not meeting its needs. The underlying causes of poverty are much more convoluted, relating to the distribution of government power, a continuously widening income gap, differences in cultural attitudes and ideologies, and inequalities in wealth and education. Other social conditions tend to perpetuate poverty, such as cultural differences in family life and attitudes toward education and inequality within education and job markets, based on gender or socioeconomic status. The consequences of poverty are evident among our society. Supporting evidence includes an increase in domestic violence, homelessness, and substance abuse; and other social problems, poor nutrition and care for children, and inequality in education, which all directly result from the effects of poverty on both the individual family and the community.
Among the many possible solutions that could diminish the amount of poverty, our research led us to focus on job training and employment services for the impoverished, early childhood education requirements and availability, and equal opportunity for free or more affordable higher education. Our most plausible solution, considering political, social, and financial factors, is to require all public school systems to provide and require attendance of equally appropriated pre-kindergarten/early childhood education programs, emphasizing early identification of impoverished and other at-risk students for necessary intervention. This will be implemented in a positive manner and include a combination of social, economic, and academic interventions. These might include investigation and restructuring of tax and financing strategies affecting education, recruitment of social services experts to provide care and support in schools, and encouraging greater involvement of pediatricians in stressing the importance of early education and the issues that indirectly factor into a child’s education, such as health and wellness. This three-pronged approach will serve to address all of the factors affecting education that cause and perpetuate poverty, ultimately diminishing poor students’ chances for academic success.
Research Strategy and Findings
Poverty, as defined above, isn’t always necessarily characterized as not having enough food to survive; instead it is relative to the standards in which someone lives. For example, although some Americans have enough food to survive and are better off than starving people in third world countries, they may live in poverty based on America’s standards. In the United States, poverty level is measured by the “minimum income level that Americans should have to live on, based on the Department of Agriculture’s calculation of the cost of the basic diet called ‘the economy food plan’ (Lauer & Lauer, pg. 163). The poverty level in the United States for a family of four is a household income of less than $22,811 (Lauer & Lauer, 2013).
A variety of scholarly articles were chosen to determine the most important solution to poverty and to further research its causes and conditions. A selection of resources were used to determine the recommended strategy and solution to the poverty epidemic. In addition, since poverty is a social problem, researching the ideas of all political parties allows the research to be objective.
There are many contributing factors that result in someone living in poverty. To name a few, political decision making, patterns of family life, and education or lack thereof all contribute to poverty. Political decision making affects poverty because of the distribution in power. For example, the wealthy are among the officials in government who play a role in decision making, whereas the poor typically do not hold these types of positions. Therefore, political decisions tend to favor the wealthy rather than benefit the poor. Certain government actions such as “lowered business and corporate taxes, deregulation of the financial markets and executive pay, and the weakening of groups such as labor unions that work for the middle class and the poor” (Lauer & Lauer, 2013).
Expectations for children from poor families are much lower than those for children of higher socioeconomic status. Parental involvement is education and school activities are also lower. In poor communities, educational facilities lack the necessary resources to help children achieve their highest potential compared to children those found in more affluent communities. Additionally, children who are poor that are in school with non-poor students may face discrimination, and the teachers may not have the appropriate knowledge or experience to assist these students, since teachers typically are brought up in middle-class families (Lauer & Lauer, 2013).
Another contributor to poverty are patterns of family life. Statistically, there is a higher prevalence of poverty among larger families than smaller ones. Larger families, and the atmosphere in which poverty exists, are generally not conducive to further intellectual achievement, or the ability to spend one-on-one time parenting children. Conditions that are associated with poverty are the disparagement and discrimination of the poor and the ideology of wealth and poverty. The “non-poor tend to disparage the poor”, and in many cases the “poor have been considered disreputable in some sense" (Lauer & Lauer, 2013). A result of this discrimination is the lack of opportunities to get decent paying jobs and/or promotions, which contribute to the continuation of poverty. In addition, the ideology of “the American Dream” is the belief that anyone can go from rags to riches because of the vast opportunities that America offers. One consequence of poverty is actually the inability to escape from poverty. Another is the detriment caused to the health and wellness of people living in poverty. Without the proper health care, education, and nutrition, a person’s physical well-being is at risk. Government programs such as food stamps, transportation, and healthcare greatly assist people living in impoverished conditions – but they do not alleviate the problem completely. Families living in poverty also suffer many other social problems as a consequence of their initial poverty. Alcoholism, domestic violence, and child neglect often stem from the initial poverty families face.
According to the article Poverty in America: Why Can’t We End It, “many more households are headed now by a single parent, making it difficult for them to earn a living income from the jobs that are typically available”. As a result, poverty is more prevalent among families headed by single mothers. According to this article welfare benefits have also decreased. “In the mid 90’s more than 2/3 of children in poor families received welfare […] that number has dwindled to 27%” as a result of limited resources.” Many families, especially single parent households, lack the safety net that they once had. The article concludes by explaining how “money breeds power and power breeds more money.” Basically, the wealthiest 1% benefit from more tax breaks than the lower and middle class as a result of America’s backwards ideology. These statistics make it clear that designing a solution and implementation plan is of such great relevance and urgency right now.
Solutions Considered and Recommended Solution The underlying causes of poverty are not easily identifiable, as they are diverse, often elusive, and not always applicable to each situation. Therefore, the solutions to alleviate poverty even as it relates to poverty have the same complications. The task force has identified, and then subsequently dismissed many ideas as a focus for poverty elimination through educational enhancement. The following are the ideas proposed and the rationale for their dismissal:
 Increase the minimum wage: The basic argument here is that the most direct route out of poverty is an increase in income. If the minimum wage was raised to a living wage, individuals and families living in poverty would no longer meet the definition of poverty, therefore eliminating it. The primary reason for dismissing this idea is that it is not politically feasible. The ideological divide over the existence of the minimum wage, let alone raising it, detracts from the plausibility of this being enacted effectively.

 Food assistance for low income families: This would stop many children from going to school or bed hungry. This was accepted as a great solution but not encompassing enough. It is vital that every child receives enough to eat; however simply being well fed will not move an individual out of poverty.

 Parenting classes and workshops: This strategy aims to create a support system to disseminate information to parents about how to navigate their way out of poverty. Classes would be offered in skill training, such as clerical, bookkeeping, and computer technology. The problem with this solution is that it fails to acknowledge the realities of a poverty-stricken lifestyle. These families are often headed by a single parent working long odd hours, with poor access to childcare and transportation. This solution illuminates the complex nature of poverty. The impoverished person normally works too much simply to stay alive, to try to work on higher levels of needs in Maslow’s hierarchy.

 Restructuring financial aid for higher education: Without a doubt, this is an idea that needs to be explored further. This could have been our final solution. Many students that are graduating high school are unable to pay for college. It isn’t that they are unwilling or unmotivated, they simply cannot afford it. If we worked towards making college affordable for all Americans we would have a more competitive economy, and a resurgence of the middle class. The reason this was not selected as the primary solution is because our national education problem begins much earlier than the high school or college level; there are many children growing up in impoverished areas who do not finish high school. The political issues and implications involved with this type of solution were also a deciding factor.

The following are notable solutions that may have been selected, but fall outside the narrow scope of our task:

 Year-round schools: Lauer & Lauer tell us that children can backslide during summer months, if they do not receive comparable intellectual stimulation at home (Lauer & Lauer, 2012).

 School Choice Vouchers: Research shows that students attending poor-performing public schools, or who are poor performers themselves, show improvement when they are given the opportunity to participate in publicly funded private school choice programs (Chavous, 2013).

 After-school Tutoring and Remedial Programs: Such efforts would aim to accelerate the learning of disadvantaged students to greater than a year's growth in one year's time, so that over time they catch up to their peers.

 De-tracking: De-tracking students helps to ensure that each child is offered the same quality education, regardless of demographics or other factors affecting their academic success. In a tracking system, the entire school population is assigned to homogeneous classes based on academic performance. Tracking leads to many problems for students, involving social stigmatization and negative academic performance by low-track students (Tracking (education) 2013).

 Teacher and Staff Development: Programs like Teach for America and AmeriCorps aim to address educational inequity by recruiting and training teachers specifically to work in high-needs schools (Achievement Gap in the United States, 2013).

 Free early education for all children: Studies show that children who are born into families with higher incomes do better academically than children from lower income families. A primary reason for this is unequal access to quality preschool education. The keyword here is quality. There is currently a program where the poorest of children can to go to preschool; that program is called Head Start. However, because it is targeted to children who come from families in the lowest socioeconomic strata, it suffers from the same ailments as other programs with the same goal.

The first problem is the criteria that determines who is poor, which is so outdated that it often doesn’t consider the most basic definition of poverty. In other words, these programs often exclude people who are not capable of meeting all of their basic needs. Too many children are falling through the gaps between what the programs define as poor and their families’ inability to provide quality early education for them. Another problem is commitment to funding. While public school funding has generally been under attack, they are doing far better than Head Start. The reason for this is collective interest. If it became normative for all children to go to public pre-school the way it is for all children to go to kindergarten, these programs lose the stigma of their association to poverty. This serves many purposes. Our economy is changing and education is becoming increasingly vital. If we are able to ensure that all of our nation’s students are receiving quality education, we would lift up children currently in poverty, and help other children from slipping into poverty in adulthood as a result of a poor education.

Another strategy aimed at preventing, or at least mitigating, the achievement gap in its earliest stages is investment in early childhood education. Economic research shows that investment at this stage of a child’s education is both more productive and cost effective than interventions later in a child’s life (Achievement Gap in the United States, 2013). Other innovative strategies promoting access to quality care and education include state initiatives to promote formal education and improved compensation for child care providers, linkages with health care professionals, public-private funding partnerships, and extending K-12 down to universal preschool programs (American Academy of Pediatrics, 2005).

Our proposed targeted solution is public preschool education for all children. Using the Head Start program as a template, we would make attendance optional for three years, and then required for children aged 4. This implementation would begin to resolve or circumvent many of the underlying causes of poverty, granting future generations a better chance to escape poverty and become self-sufficient. This is a plausible and ideologically moderate way of eliminating poverty through educational enhancement.

Implementation Strategy Our task force has determined that the best solution to alleviate and prevent poverty from an educational policy perspective is the requirement of all public school systems to provide pre-k/early childhood education programs to all children, with an emphasis on early intervention for children determined (by a later decided set of criteria) to be at-risk for failure to graduate high school college ready. This solution is politically feasible, and a recommended approach by multiple studies. Successful implementation requires adequate illustration of the program and the social-economic ails the require this intervention to the public and public officials; this is to provide a comprehensive understanding of the importance of pre-k/early childhood education programs, and the impact it will have on children currently stranded on the losing side of the achievement gap. The achievement gap refers to a significant disparity in educational success between groups of children: low- income and minority children as compared to higher-income and non-minority children. The achievement gap exists when children enter kindergarten (Early Education for All, 2013). The achievement disparities are mostly attributed to socioeconomic factors. According to 2009 data from the Census Bureau, of all children younger than 18 living in families, 15.5 million live in poverty, defined as a family of four with less than $21,947 per year. This includes 4.9 million, or about ten percent, of non-Hispanic white children, and one in three black and Hispanic children, at 4 million and 5.6 million, respectively (Annie E. Casey Foundation 2011). According to a seminal study of language development in 1995, by age three, children in poverty have smaller vocabularies and lower language skills than children from middle-income families (Education Week, 2011). The latest research shows that the achievement gap has deep roots that began long before school entry. Forty-six percent of kindergarten teachers report that over half of the children in their classrooms have problems following directions and working in a group (Early Education for All, 2013). According to the article, “Poor Schools Suffering Academically”, there’s a huge gap, not only are students in poor communities generally coming to school less prepared, they have significantly less opportunities once they get there.” Due to huge disparities in financial resources, wealthier schools are able to offer stronger academic programs. Also, students from poorer families generally come to schools less prepared to start with, as parents many not are able to afford books, computers or different kinds of enrichment programming for their children. The gap then widens as they reach school, and in poorer communities, students might not be offered as many opportunities as their wealthier counterparts (The Observer-Dispatch, 2013).
In fact, Lauer & Lauer say that there are a range of strategies for enhancing the quality of education. Lengthening the number of days in the school year could help poor children, who lose ground in the summer when they lack the intellectual demands of the classroom. Improving the school atmosphere by ensuring student safety and making schools drug and gun free could facilitate learning (Lauer & Lauer, 2013). Providing all children with the opportunity to attend preschool will enhance both their emotional and intellectual well-being, and will be particularly helpful to those from disadvantaged backgrounds. Placing all children in small classes will improve performance, because from kindergarten onward those who are in small classes do better academically than those in large classes. Restructuring through decentralization gives parents and local schools greater control over the education process (Lauer & Lauer, 2013). In order to cohesively implement this solution, we will need to employ the following strategies to ensure that our children attain free pre-k/early childhood education programs:
 Investment in pre-kindergarten programs, class size reduction, small schools, curricular reform, and alignment of pre-kindergarten through college standards and expectations, and improved teacher education programs.

 Full-day pre-kindergarten and kindergarten.

 Head Start or comprehensive early care and education programs (including health, parent involvement, and other holistic components) on school sites.
Pediatricians have an important role in helping their patients have the highest-quality early experiences possible and also in helping their communities raise the level of quality of care for all young children. Families and communities look to pediatricians for counsel and support in all areas affecting children, including providing quality experiences for children in their early years. Pediatricians can influence families, teachers, and policy makers as partners in improving access to and quality of early childhood educational experiences (American Academy of Pediatrics, 2004-2213).
Universal prekindergarten has been given recent focus in many states. Universal preschool is an international movement to make access to preschool education available to all families, similar to the availability of kindergarten. Child advocates and other members of this movement differ in terms of how they define who should be included and how it should be funded. Although this would be a tremendous beginning that pediatricians can support, we must continue to remind policy makers that prekindergarten is delivered in child care, schools, and other settings and that starting at 4 years of age will not reap the full benefits of quality early education and childcare from birth. Also, conversations about quality should always emphasize that quality programs include parental involvement and strong socio-emotional and other developmental elements in a safe, healthy environment (Universal Preschool, 2013)
Strategies for Financing/Funding
The purpose of this report is to branch innovative thought and action and move closer to strategies that can generate the widespread support and financing needed to establish a strong, high-quality early care and education system. Many of the ideas that have been raised require additional exploration. In many cases it may be premature to make specific policy recommendations. There are, however, a number of strategies that can be taken. These have been summarized below (Anne W. Mitchell, & Stoney, L. 2013).
 Using Tax Credits to Promote High Quality Early Care and Education Services: exploring financing strategies for early childhood programs by examining whether carefully crafted individual or business tax credits/deductions could help finance early care and education, which could spur additional private investment. This could create incentives for families to take advantage of the programs offered, and for educational facilities to maintain high quality service.

 Explore methods of restructuring the early childhood care and education financing system so that programs may receive direct aid and portable aid: Direct aid could be made available as “base funding” and used to help keep parent fees affordable, or as “special purpose funding” and used to support specific initiatives such as: staff development, facility improvement, special equipment and supplies, on-site social services, and so forth. Portable aid could be made available in the form of childcare vouchers, purchase-of-service contracts, tax credits or scholarship programs designed to assist families who cannot afford to pay full fees.

 Develop a host of new (or revised) tax strategies to finance early care and education services: This includes initiatives that generate the equity needed to build or renovate child care facilities, encourage business investment (capital or operating) in early care and education, help families pay for early care and education, and encourage the use of high quality early care and education programs.

 Bring together individuals from the public and private sector to explore the feasibility of creating an early childhood loan program for families. Government subsidized low-interest loans, similar to those available for higher education, could be made available and repayment could either be delayed until the family income is higher and more stable or spread out over a fifteen year period so that monthly payments are small and manageable. The loan program could also be financed privately, and administered by a private sector entity, similar to the kinds of loans that are currently available through lenders such as Academic Management Services.

 Bring together experts in development to explore the feasibility of building endowment funds to help finance early care and education. It might be possible to establish a community-wide endowment fund that is built and managed by a local community foundation. This approach would lend scale (a larger pool of alumni and friends from multiple early childhood programs) and development professionals (from the community foundation) to the endeavor.

 Work with an established institution--such as a college or independent K-12 school--to use a portion of their current endowment proceeds to help provide long-term operating support to an early childhood program.

 Bring together a group of child care providers to explore the feasibility of establishing new strategic alliances that can create economies of scale and help early childhood programs become more efficient and more financially stable.

 At the community level, conducting a survey of the needs around which strategic alliances could be built, and the providers who might be interested in becoming involved, could be helpful first steps. Exploring the strategic alliances that have been formed among other community organizations would be another useful step.

 Explore the feasibility of using early childhood program accreditation as a common funding standard for high-quality programs that receive institution-based funding. To ensure that families have access to a wide range of child care options, including informal, home-based child care, state and local regulatory requirements could continue to be used as a minimum floor for licensing.

 Explore the feasibility of assigning a “primary practitioner” to each family that receives an early care and education subsidy. This individual would be responsible for coordinating the family’s child care and early education needs and ensuring that all children in the family receive consistent, high-quality nurturing and early education opportunities.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the task force have considered many causes of the current poverty predicament. We explored how poverty both affects and can be affected by education, and evaluated many prospective solutions concerning educational policy. After careful consideration and exploration of many proposed solutions, the team has come to the consensus that in order to reduce poverty, early childhood education is vital and is essential for the development of our children and the successful future of our society. All children should have the same opportunities to receive a high quality education regardless of family circumstance, and requiring all schools to provide (and all children to attend) a pre-kindergarten or early childhood program will ensure that all students have the same chance to be successful in life.