Donna Walker Tileston Ed.D. serves education as a leader in teaching, teacher education, administration, research, writing, software development, and consulting. She has presented over 500 trainings, workshops, and keynotes in the United States and overseas. She has authored 15 books, including What Every Teacher Should Know (Corwin Press), which won the American Educational Publishers Association 2004 Distinguished Achievement Award for Excellence. Her newest book (co-authored with Sandra Darling) is Why Culture Counts: Teaching Children of Poverty (Solution Tree). Her Web site is www.wetsk.com

In this country, we have spent countless millions in an effort to close achievement gaps for children from poverty. We have disaggregated data, examined item analysis studies on state tests, and set aside many hours of instructional time in an effort to raise the scores of children from poverty and minority groups. Yet, we still have glaring achievement gaps.

In discussing 2007 test score results (STAR) for his state, California State Superintendent for Public Instruction Jack O'Connell reported that poverty was not the only factor affecting test results. According to O'Connell, black and Latino students who did not live in poverty scored lower than white students in poverty in mathematics. (Mangaliman, 2007). In a similar vein, Deputy Superintendent of the Pittsburgh Public Schools Linda Lane, responding to a Carnegie Mellon study led by Robert Strauss, wrote, Poverty is a factor that affects achievement; however, race is a larger factor (Wereschagin, 2007, p.1). The research on closing achievement gaps is clear: in almost every instance, culture trumps poverty.

I want to say very quickly that culture is not just race there are many cultures within any given race. A child living on the Texas border who goes back and forth to Mexico often will have cultural differences from the Hispanic child who lives in Dallas and visits Mexico only once a year to see relatives. Culture is the way we view the world, and it defines how we interpret the world to give it meaning. Culture defines our focus, the background knowledge that we bring to the classroom, how we prefer to learn and how we value education.

Our schools were built around the Anglo-European model for middle and upper class students. Our school cultures use an individualistic model that encourages independence, values individual achievement, and views intelligence as competitive and aggressive. In this model, instruction is based on substance first, relationships second. Yet for much of the world, and for American children from non-European cultural backgrounds, relationships must be built before substance can be taught, interdependence is valued more than independence, and a collectivist approach is more effective for learning.

Where do we begin?

First, we must build the background knowledge of teachers and other educators on the cultural differences, such as looking at collectivist vs. individualist values. We must revisit how we assess learning. According to Marzano and Kendall (1996), 85 percent of all state tests are based on the vocabulary of the benchmarks. It should be no surprise, then, that English Language Learners struggle with state tests. It should be no surprise that children from poverty tend to come into the classroom with half the vocabulary of their middle and upper-class counterparts, struggle on all tests, and are often thrown into well-meaning, but incorrect special programs that assume there must be something wrong with the child. The only thing wrong with the child is that the child has not yet had the enrichment that builds vocabulary.

Next, we must build a differentiation model such as the one in Why Culture Counts (Tileston & Darling, 2008), that includes how to modify instructional strategies for culture and poverty. Notice, we are not creating new instructional practices. Rather, we are taking those strategies that make the most difference in student learning and modifying them for the culture and poverty of the given classroom. We do this through context, content/product, and process.

In How Schools Matter (2002), Harold Wenglinsky estimates that if we had the power to take away the effects of poverty on our students, we could increase the average achievement level of those students by 28 percentile points. While that is significant, what I find to be a guiding light is that he also said that if teachers were trained on how to work effectively with children from poverty, we could raise the achievement level of those same kids from poverty by 34 percentile points.

You and I have the power to help our students overcome the educational effects of poverty. Let's all become turn-around teachers who put that power to work.

Sources

Mangaliman, J. (2007). Poverty can't explain racial, ethnic divide. Mercury News. Accessed at mercurynews.com on August 16, 2007.

Marzano, R., & Kendall, J. (1996) Designing standards-based district, schools and classrooms. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Tileston, D.W. & Darling, S. (2008) Why culture counts: Teaching children of poverty. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree.

Wenglinsky, H. (2002, February 13). How schools matter: The link between teacher classroom practices and student academic performance. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 10 (12). Accessed at http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/viOn%2012/ on May 5, 2008.

Wereschagin, M. (2007). Pittsburgh study: Teachers key in affecting pupil's success. Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Accessed at www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/?source=network=bar on September 11, 2007.