Coping with Hard Times: Poverty often puts education on hold

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John P. Cleary
John P. Cleary

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May 25, 2009

Some children start kindergarten ‘three or four years behind’

Anonymous The Herald Bulletin Mon May 25, 2009, 07:18 PM EDT

By Dave Melton

For The Herald Bulletin

ANDERSON — Many Americans consider a good education the key to the future. But when a family has no idea where the next paycheck is coming from — or if it’s going to come at all — education can tumble down the list of priorities.

“Many of our students have issues other than school that they have to worry about,” said Donna Brown, a South Side Middle School counselor.

“They think, ‘Where am I going to get my meal from?’ and ‘Where am I going to spend the night?’ That’s because their parents have issues to deal with also.”

Family circumstances like those have an impact on Anderson Community Schools. Combine economic disadvantages with a lack of preparation for kindergarten, and you end up with a high number of children who start off behind their classmates.

“Some of the kids that come to us know their age and birthday, they can read simple books, they can sound out words, and they can print their name,” said ACS Superintendent Mikella Lowe.

“But we also have kids who come to us that don’t know their address or phone number or any letters. When you have these two kinds of kids in a group of 20 and the gap is that wide, there’s a ton of catching up to do.”

Robinson Elementary shows poverty effects

The problem is all too familiar to Robinson Elementary Principal Beth Clark. Robinson, slated for closing next school year, is located in an area where many families can’t afford basic necessities. According to the Indiana Department of Education, more than 90 percent of the school’s children qualify for free lunches, meaning they come from households considered near or below the poverty line. Districtwide, 69 percent of ACS students were on the free or reduced-price lunch program in 2007-08, versus the state average of 45 percent.

“It’s hard for people to understand that a child can start kindergarten three or four years behind their peers,” Clark said. “Peers who have had preschool experience or have had a literary-rich home since they were born really have an advantage.”

Several local initiatives have tried to jump-start the education process before a child even sets foot in the classroom. Mary Lee Ewald is the director of one of those initiatives — the Madison County CAPE Collaboration.

Ewald said CAPE, or the Community Alliance to Promote Education, began work in 2001 to address the problem that only 48 percent of third-grade students in Madison County were passing ISTEP in language arts. By this school year, that number has improved to 63 percent.

CAPE data from the past eight years show that countywide 65 percent of incoming students begin school with the proper language and pre-literacy skills to be successful readers by third grade.

CAPE began as a combined effort involving schools and families. The schools were to improve instruction and collect data, while parents were to read to their children for 20 minutes a day.

That effort has grown into a partnership involving Madison County schools, the Leadership Academy of Madison County and the United Way’s Born Learning program. Five site coordinators take the initiative into homes through “literacy-basket parties.”

CAPE goes into homes to help families read

“The coordinators give the parents information on a strategy called PEER reading,” said Shelly Hasty, one of the site coordinators. “It’s more about dialogical reading — having a conversation with your child while reading the book.”

Host families invite at least four friends to the party, which is provided free of charge by Born Learning.

Amber Geiger, an Anderson resident with a 5-year-old daughter and a 2-year-old daughter, recently hosted one of the literacy-basket parties. She, like every party host, was given a basket full of teaching tools, including books, nursery rhymes and a jar of Play-Doh.

“I knew (reading to children) was important, but I didn’t know just how important it was,” said Geiger, who has operated a day-care center in her home for about two years.

While she praised the parents that she works with now, she also said she’d had some bad experiences with parents in other cities.

“Some of them just didn’t care,” she said. “It’s frustrating.”

The work of organizations such as CAPE and individuals like Geiger is intended to help raise the quality of area schools

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