Studies of children growing up in poverty describe increasingly devastating effects on many areas of development (e.g., cognitive, linguistic, socio-emotional, affective, psychomotor). Teachers need to be aware of these findings; they also need to develop empathy for their students living in poverty. One way to do this is to experience a poverty…

Every year 1.3 million U.S. high school students drop out of school with one quarter of female students failing to graduate on time. Female dropouts are more likely to be unemployed, to earn less when they are employed, to become pregnant before the age of 20, to become obese, to smoke, and to drink more heavily than their male counterparts. This…

The cumulative deficit hypothesis with respect to age decrement in IQ was investigated in large samples of white and black school children in rural Georgia between the ages of 5 and 18. The cumulative deficits hypothesis suggests that the increasing decrement in mental test scores, relative to population norms, is a function of age in groups…