The majority of people globally have often thought that students fail due to a lack of commitment and dedication to their academic work. However, studies by Sleegers (2017) has shown that other factors may result in a poor student; among them is lower Socioeconomic Status (SES). According to Van and Sleegers (2017), socioeconomic status is defined as the social standing of an individual or a class measured in terms of occupation, income, and education level. This study evaluates recommendations to address lower student performance due to low socioeconomic status and parent training and intervention programs that should be adopted to address the challenge.
How Low Socioeconomic Status Affects Student Achievement
Poverty is the leading cause of stress among children that affects student’s educational performance. Children born in economically challenged families are disadvantaged as they lack the vital resources to support their education. In addition, studies have shown that prospective higher learning students from lower socioeconomic status backgrounds are disadvantaged as they lack exposure to informational resources about their colleges, thus inquiring more about student loan debt (Castillo-Vergara et al., 2018).
Usually, parents from higher socioeconomic status, unlike those from lower socioeconomic status, can provide enough study resources that promote at-home studying that makes them be ahead of their counterparts in their curriculum (Volante et al., 2019). Due to being left behind in curriculum coverage, students from lower socioeconomic status tend to have difficulties acquiring knowledge. In addition, parents from high social classes tend to provide their children with full financial support, making them have an incredible educational journey.
Students from low socioeconomic status tend to lose interest in academic matters thus stop attending school sessions. For instance, a study among African American students revealed that their lower academic performance is never related to academic performance but high poverty rates among parents (Thomson, 2018). Additionally, teachers attending to students from low socioeconomic status tend to have a lesser experience, thus prompting high dropout cases.
Similarly, such schools are usually understaffed with fewer academic resources such as libraries, leading to an ever-growing gap between students from different socioeconomic statuses (Castillo-Vergara et al., 2018). Often, students from poor households have lesser exposure to learning materials such as libraries and tutors, thereby having a negative literacy environment that may result in dropout cases.
Children brought up in economically disadvantaged families tend to pause challenges, especially to public administrators and educators. Usually, students from low socioeconomic families cannot focus on academics due to many challenges throughout their lifetime. According to Van and Sleegers (2017), low socioeconomic status significantly impacts parental involvement, overall school success, academic test scores, and school readiness. The majority of the educators often claim that students from low socioeconomic status possess characters beyond repair as they are damaged by their challenging early experiences, thus becoming impossible to educate them. With such a misinformed view, many educators have failed to provide the necessary resources and knowledge to the students, thus making them have poor academic achievement.
Recommendations to Make Lower Income Home Environment More Educationally Stimulating
To make the lower home environment more stimulating for young children, there is a need for the provision of resources to low socioeconomic status students to support their academic needs. Often, students from poor backgrounds tend to have cognitive difficulties, especially within their academic settings, and drop out of school even before completion. However, with the provision of resources such as financial aid and learning materials, the children can create an educationally stimulating environment (Castillo-Vergara et al., 2018).
In addition, with the adjustment in school funding to avail all students with equal school funding, public education can become a more equal opportunity than it should be. Often, lower levels of academic achievement among children are associated with long term poverty and crime. Therefore, there is a need to break the cycle of class reproduction to ensure that poor life chances and poor education do not perpetuate poverty levels.
Additionally, there is a need to offer employment opportunities for family members to support students in their academic performance. Poverty typically has an impact on students’ mental health, which in turn impacts their ability to focus (Van and Sleegers, 2017). Research has indicated that students from low-income families are more likely to experience emotional and behavioral issues that interfere with their ability to focus. Furthermore, difficulties like depression that children from low-income families have and high levels of stress will not arise if family members are given work possibilities (Volante et al., 2019). The youngsters will perform better academically as a result of this. Poverty lowers pupils’ emotional wellbeing even while it increases the likelihood that youngsters will have mental health issues.
Parent Training Approaches
In the quest to realize effective management of student’s achievement associated with low socioeconomic status, there is always a need to involve parents as they are the immediate persons close to the students. All parents should be trained to take up leadership positions in the public school system to ensure equity as this will make them valued, thus imparting the same attribute to their children (Castillo-Vergara et al., 2018). In addition, students with lower socioeconomic status tend to have inappropriate behaviours, which can be addressed with parent training programs on ways that they may adopt to enable their children to remain focused in a school setting.
There is also a need to offer parents training on ensuring collaborative homework with their children as this will enable the children to remain focused in a school setting. Additionally, research has shown that with collaborative student-parent interaction, student achievement is set to increase significantly regardless of the family’s socioeconomic status (Castillo-Vergara et al., 2018). Furthermore, most parents, instructors, and students have stated that parental involvement in their children’s academic affairs is essential to improving the children’s focus and academic achievement. In a similar vein, parents should receive training on useful strategies for evaluating their kids’ homework in order to raise their academic achievement.
Additionally, there is a need to offer parents training opportunities to enable them to support students in their academic performance. Usually, poverty affects students’ mental wellbeing, thus altering their concentration (Volante et al., 2019). Studies have shown that students from poor backgrounds tend to suffer the behavioural and emotional problem that affects their concentration. In addition, with the provision of employment opportunities to family members, challenges such as depression experienced by children from low-economic backgrounds and high-stress levels will not occur. This will result in improved academic performance of the children. Even though poverty results in risks of children suffering mental challenges, it equally reduces the mental wellbeing of the students.
Effective Early Intervention Programs
Early intervention programs for addressing poverty among families, thus realizing high student performance, entail government monetary support that will help improve students’ circumstances. There is also a need for a comprehensive review of the available benefits for low-income families (Thomson, 2018).
However, with the adoption of the Federal Food Programs and Head Start Programs, low socioeconomic families will acquire both material and financial aid to help low socioeconomic preschools and school-aged children acquire high achievement in their studies (Castillo-Vergara et al., 2018). For instance, with the adoption of the Head Start Program, parents and students will be provided with grant money that will help support them in various areas. The program will also provide students with not only educational assistance support but also health services, thereby allowing them to have efficient time to focus on their studies.
In order to help kids stay focused in a classroom, parents should also receive training on how to ensure that their kids complete their homework cooperatively. Additionally, studies have demonstrated that regardless of the socioeconomic level of the family, student success is expected to rise dramatically with cooperative student-parent interaction. Furthermore, the vast majority of educators, learners, and parents have stated that parental involvement in their children’s academic affairs is essential for improving their focus and academic achievement. Similarly, parents should be trained on practical approaches to assessing homework with their children to improve their academic performance.
References
Castillo-Vergara, M., Galleguillos, N. B., Cuello, L. J., Alvarez-Marin, A., & Acuña-Opazo, C. (2018). Does socioeconomic status influence student creativity?. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 29, 142-152. Web.
Thomson, S. (2018). Achievement at school and socioeconomic background—an educational perspective. Web.
Van Ewijk, R., & Sleegers, P. (2017). The effect of peer socioeconomic status on student achievement: A meta-analysis. Educational Research Review, 5(2), 134-150. Web.
Volante, L., Schnepf, S. V., Jerrim, J., & Klinger, D. A. (Eds.). (2019). Socioeconomic inequality and student outcomes: Cross-national trends, policies, and practices. Springer.