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High Correlation Between Poverty And Educational Outcomes Essay

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Research shows that there is a high correlation between poverty and educational outcomes. According to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), there were approximately 20 percent of school-age children who were living in poverty ridden households in 2014 (NCES,2016). The quality of education a student attains is associated with their parent’s educational attainment and household poverty status (NCES,2016). Children who live in poverty during their early childhood years have a higher chance of attaining a lower level of academic performance, creating a readiness gap in schools. The readiness gap begins in kindergarten and extends through elementary and high school, contributing to lower rates of high school completion (NCES,2016). School readiness is defined as “a measure of how prepared a child is to succeed in school, cognitively, socially and emotionally,” and it separates the disadvantaged children from their more affluent peers (Attendance Works, 2016). Children as early as 18 months from low-income families who come into school with a readiness gap, experience disadvantages in vocabulary development and begin falling behind in reading, leaving them unable to read at grade level by 3rd grade (Attendance Works, 2016).
In an article by Engle and Black, they discuss the impact of poverty on educational outcomes and it states that the association between poverty and academic performance has been documented to begin as early as the second year of life and

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