Stressful connections to learning

CHAPEL HILL -- Amid the debates about our public schools and the need for education reform, the impact of poverty on student learning outcomes seems to be missing.

Research has established a clear link between poverty and student performance. Yet many critics of public schools deride the poverty-achievement link as an excuse for poor teaching.

What do the data show about the relationship between student poverty levels and schools' performance?

Results from an ongoing international assessment of students in industrialized nations conducted by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) are illuminating:

In schools in which 10 percent or less of the student population lives in poverty, U.S. schools rank No. 1 in the world.

In schools in which 10 percent to 25 percent of students live in poverty, the U.S. ranks No. 3. We're behind only Finland and South Korea.

In schools in which 75 percent or more of students live in poverty, the U.S. ranks next to last. Only Mexico ranks lower.

That Finland, with a poverty rate of 3.4 percent (compared with our 21.7 percent) has the highest overall ranked schools is hardly surprising. Recent research exposes the depredations poverty causes on children's intellectual development.

A study conducted by researchers at the UNC-Chapel Hill School of Education and the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute draws on data from the Family Life Project. This project, co-directed by Lynne Vernon-Feagans, the School of Education's William Friday distinguished professor, has been tracking 1,292 children in six poor rural counties in North Carolina and Pennsylvania since 2002.

Participants in the study contributed saliva samples, taken from children at ages 7, 15 and 24 months, so that researchers could measure levels of cortisol, a stress hormone that is released when people feel threatened, unsupported and helpless.

The researchers found that higher levels of cortisol, brought on by stress in the home environment, were related to lower levels of "executive function" and, to a lesser degree, IQ. Lower levels of executive function describe children's capacity to self-regulate their behavior - for instance, to forgo a cookie right now in order to get two cookies later.

In the researchers' words, "executive functions are important building blocks for the development of children's thinking ... and key contributors to the development of intelligence."

Children in poverty tend to be, unsurprisingly, subject to higher levels of stress than are children from more affluent homes. Although careful to note that they found "positive parenting" in both poor and middle-class homes, the researchers conclude that "positive parenting was reduced in lower-income homes."

This is consistent with prior research that found that caregivers in impoverished families tend to be overworked and overstressed, with less time and energy for their children than middle-class caregivers.

So, we are discovering that high levels of stress and uncertainty in the early years of children's lives, and caregivers who are similarly stressed. negatively affect children's ability to learn and perform school tasks.

Well-designed school experiences and well-trained teachers can help some children develop cognitively to compensate for being raised in a high-poverty home. For too many children, however, these experiences and teachers are unavailable or inadequate and, as a result, they never catch up to their more affluent peers.

The great majority of educators are committed to helping every child succeed. For most of us, this is why we became educators in the first place. We believe children's destinies are not and should not be determined by chance, or by the families into which they happen to be born.

Many of our fellow citizens and policymakers profess to share this belief. Yet our social policies fail to reflect this belief. Otherwise, we would see programs and supports designed to alleviate the stresses to which impoverished families and their children are subject.

An obvious impediment to such supportive policies is a political system in which policymakers are pressured to address immediate, short-term problems. Ensuring that children from impoverished families grow up in less-stressful environments is predicated on a long-term view of societal needs and how to address them.

The long-term health of our society dictates the need for a statewide and national conversation - grounded in solid research and our democratic ideals - about how we support our most vulnerable children.