Reaching and Teaching Students in Poverty: Strategies for Erasing the Opportunity Gap

by Paul C. Gorski

This influential book describes the knowledge and skills educators need to recognize and combat the bias and inequity that undermine educational engagement for students experiencing poverty. This edition features revisions based on new research and lessons from the author’s professional development work, including the dangers of “grit” and deficit perspectives.

“A must-read for educators in schools of all kinds. This accessible, highly relevant book empowers teachers with tools they can use today. Read it, talk about it with your friends and colleagues, and use it as a guide for your next project in educational activism! Our students’ school experiences will surely be better for it.”—Rethinking Schools

“Provides a good overview of the topic, delivers clear, well-researched information, and helps all educators expand their knowledge of poverty and social class.”—Choice

“Gorski provides practical strategies for teachers, administrators, and school staff that will help immediately improve schools, particularly for the most marginalized students.”—Cheryl Robinson, cultural competency coordinator, Alexandria City Public Schools, Virginia

Genres: Education, Nonfiction, Teaching, School, Social Justice, Professional Development, Textbooks

255 pages, Kindle Edition

First published August 4, 2013

Reviews

[Claudia · Rating 5 out of 5]

"...low income people face innumerable inequities in and out of schools. These inequities regarding access to everything from adequately funded schools to playgrounds to prenatal care have nothing to do with poor people's cultures and everything to do with what Jonathan Kozol called the 'savage inequalities' of schools and society. We, as a society, give low-income youths less access to educational opportunity, healthcare, nutrition, and other goods, and then blame the outcomes of these inequities on their 'culture of poverty.'"

Not an easy read...not a feel-good read. This challenges the reader to look closely and deeply at some assumptions and stereotypes we may bring to our work with kids from low-income families.

Gorski takes us step-by-step from a shattering of the myth of the 'culture of poverty.' He is careful in his title to not talk about kids OF poverty, but kids IN poverty. Not an accident of word choice...a deliberate choice of a careful practioner.

We as educators must confront our own biases, well-meaning as they may be. We need to develop an new kind of literacy...equity literacy. We must push back against those soft-bigotry statements: Poor parents don't care about education; they're lazy,drug-addicted abusers who can't communicate and obviously care little about their children.

It's important to turn this around. Achievement gaps can be explained by examining OPPORTUNITY gaps...those resources most of us take for granted that poor families don't have..healthcare, prenatal care, dental care...living and working conditions that are safe...recreation opportunities, with money and time and transportation NON-issues...community and social services access...affordable childcare...enrichment opportunities...a society that validates our efforts. Poor families, because they may be working two or three low-paying jobs, with little free time and no disposable cash, do NOT have these opportunities to support their families.

We think of their inabilities as deficits, but we must stop...they are barriers to opportunity. Poor families have just as much resiliency as others when we help dismantle the barriers.

So, how do these gaps affect families' ability to thrive? Preschool, schools with adequate funding and resources such as libraries, shadow education (those ACT prep classes and tutoring and camp activities WE offer our own kids), support services, high expectations, WELL-PAID, CERTIFIED, EXPERIENCED TEACHERS (not 5-week wonders from TFA), higher-order, challenging curricula, the opportunity to include parents fully in their children's education. What are the barriers? TIME and TRANSPORTATIOM, a LIVING WAGE, to name a few.

Gorski lists the ineffective practices in schools: cutting arts and music programs, direct, scripted, instruction, tracking of students, and charter schools.

He tells us what works: Arts programs, high expectations, higher-order, student-centered pedagogies, movement and PE, relevancy in the schools, teaching everyone about biases, analyzing materials for bias, and my favorite: LITERACY ENJOYMENT!! Woohoo!

"The most powerful strategy is to create cultures that promote reading enjoyment...literacy instruction should not focus solely on reading or writing mechanics. More to the point, tho, it means that we ought to find ways to foster in students excitement about reading and writing even when they respond reluctantly at first… 1. Institute literature circles 2. Provide reading material options that align with stated interest of students 3. Use a variety of media…that engage students actively and interactively 4. Incorporate drama into literacy instructions."

I love the chapter entitled 'THE MOTHER OF ALL STRATEGIES" and I concur...building relationships IS the mother of all. Relationships with our students and relationships with their parents. It's not enough to set up conference times and then smugly say, 'well, we offered time for these parents to come to school. They must not be interested.' That's the same as the teacher who says, 'Well, I taught it, the students didn't get it.' I hate both of these messages...they point back to that deficit mindset. We need to ask ourselves how hard we tried...did we take into consideration work schedules, transportation, childcare? Did we really do everything we could to invite parents who may have negative feelings about schools? Did we truly show our value for them and their children? Were we creative in our problem solving, or did we simply shrug and blame the parents?

I've had a couple of conversations with professionals about 'those parents' who don't care...and I'm learning to offer alternative ways of thinking about the facts in a gentle push back. Which leads to the last chapter: SPHERES OF INFLUENCE...what IS my sphere? What can I do?

He suggests we do our job with sensitivity and respect...that is our sphere, but he says, "...when we do anything, anything at all, to push back against the defunding of schools or the underfunding of education mandates and to resist the imposition of corporate-style accountability and high-stakes testing, we are also advocating, whether we know it or not, for low-income students. Of course, we also are self-advocating, which is an added bonus."

He offers advocacy goals: preschool, community agency access, smaller classes, ongoing PD for teachers, access to healthcare, PE, arts and music. Surely every one of us could choose ONE of these issues to become advocates for.

Important book...I read it twice, once highlighting, the second, collecting all those quotes for reference later. Would make great reading for our legislators who continue to chip away at the few support systems poor families have.

[Jennifer Mangler · Rating 4 out of 5]

The thing I liked most about this book is that it constantly forced me to reflect on my own beliefs and actions and it didn't let me off the hook because I have good intentions. My PLN is reading about and discussing poverty this quarter, and I wanted to get a different take on it. Teachers looking for a lot of strategies or "things to do" might not be happy with this book, but I think that's exactly why they need to read it. Often we adopt a strategy without really examining its impact. We look for a quick fix or a thing we can do that will have an impact. But this is one area that doesn't have a quick fix. Teachers are so busy doing things that we rarely stop for serious self-reflection. This book encourages and demands that we do.

[Josephine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. This book changed the way I teach. Written by a man who grew up in the heart of Appalachia, this book covers how students experiencing poverty navigate the education system. He discusses deconstructing biases, the challenges students face in and out of school, and how to meditate or even fix those challenges. He also emphasis the importance of intersectionalism and constantly challenging internal biases.

[Trina · Rating 5 out of 5]

I appreciated how this book made me continually reflect about what equity really means in education. It helped me think deeply about some of my own stereotypes with poverty and culture and what I can do about it.

This line, found on page 143, is what I want to remember about this book: "Our instruction and how we interact with students and families are within our immediate spheres of influence."

[Monica · Rating 3 out of 5]

Informative and well-written.

[Joe · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Education is the great equalizer. That’s what I heard growing up, the son of a mother from poor Appalachian stock and a father from middle class Detroit. If you work hard, do well in school, and follow the rules, you can be anything you want to be. It’s a fantastic idea. How remarkable it would be if only it were true.”

In Reaching and Teaching Students in Poverty: Strategies for Erasing the Opportunity Gap, Paul C. Gorski, the founder of EdChange and an associate professor of integrative studies at George Mason University, encourages his readers to have the uncomfortable conversation about socioeconomic class and to fight against the systemic inequities that students in poverty face in their schools and societies today, which work greatly to their disadvantage in the classroom and beyond, and he points us to some troubling facts regarding poverty in the United States. For example, poor students are disproportionately assigned to the most inadequately funded schools, and they are more likely than their wealthier peers to be bullied. Also:

1) According to the Children’s Defense Fund (2010), a child is born into poverty in the United States every 32 seconds.
2) According to the Center for American Progress (2007), one-third of U.S. citizens will live at least one year of their lives in poverty.
3) Most poor people in the United States live outside of inner cities.
4) Suburban areas are seeing the greatest increases in poverty rates.
5) One in ten White children in the United States is poor according to the CDF (2008), and one in four Latino children in the United States is poor.
6) According to a study sponsored by the Pew Research Center, the median wealth of White households in the United States is twenty times larger than that of African American households.
7) According to the National Coalition for the Homeless (2009), four in ten homeless men in the United States are military veterans.
8) According to the wealth analysis group WealthInsight, during President Barack Obama’s first term in office, the number of millionaires in the United States increased by 1,100,000.
9) In low-poverty U.S. schools, one out of every nine courses is taught by a teacher who is not certified to teach it. In high-poverty schools the proportion is one in four.

In addition to shedding light on the alarming statistics regarding poverty in the United States, by using empirically supported evidence, Gorski works to refute the notion of the United States as a meritocracy and to dispel the false, negative stereotypes about poor people—for example, that people in poverty are poor because they are lazy or that they are more prone to abusing alcohol and drugs—perpetuated by fallible ideologies like rugged individualism and unrealistic stories like those written by Horatio Alger, and he repudiates the notion of the “culture of poverty” and the association of poverty with deficiency; instead, he presents himself as a proponent of Equity Literacy, which suggests that poverty comes to be as a result of inequitable practices, institutions, and circumstances rather than a person’s supposed deficiencies. The reality is, as many studies indicate, that poor people do value education, that poor people are not inherently lazy, that poor people are not necessarily substance abusers, that poor people are not necessarily linguistically deficient and poor communicators, and that poor people are not ineffective and inattentive parents; rather, poor people are subject to a variety of inexorably inequitable forces that place them in disadvantageous positions in our society.

Gorski’s principles of Equity Literacy are as follows:

“1. The right to equitable educational opportunity is universal.
2. Poverty and class are intersectional in nature.
3. Poor people are diverse.
4. What we believe, including our biases and prejudices, about people in poverty informs how we teach and relate to people in poverty.
5. We cannot understand the relationship between poverty and education without understanding biases and inequities experienced by people in poverty.
6. Test scores are inadequate measures of equity.
7. Class disparities in education are the result of inequities, not the result of cultures.
8. Equitable educators adopt a resiliency rather than a deficit view of low-income students and families.
9. Strategies for bolstering school engagement and learning must be based on evidence for what works.
10. The inalienable right to equitable educational opportunity includes the right to high expectations, higher-order pedagogies, and engaging curricula.”

It is a shame that many poorly funded schools in the United States, pressurized by high-stakes, state-mandated standardized tests and the risk of having their funding cut upon receiving substandard scores on these tests, are disposing of art, music, and physical education programs in favor of spending more time on reading, writing, and math instruction when the studies cited in this book indicate that art, music, and physical education programs positively affect the academic performance and educational progress of students in poverty, whose families often lack the money needed to enroll them in productive extracurricular activities outside of school. In fact, inequity begins, for many people afflicted by generational poverty, in utero, as women in poverty often have restricted access to prenatal care, and during their lifetime, students in poverty and other impoverished people have limited—and sometimes nonexistent—access to healthcare, healthy living and working environments, recreation options, community and social services, quality childcare, cognitive enrichment resources, and a validating society. The so-called “achievement gap” can more aptly be called an opportunity gap; the emphasis should not be as heavily placed on a student’s performance as it should be on the opportunities they are provided (or the lack thereof) that could be conducive to their success. Students in poverty need access to preschool, well-funded and adequately resourced schools, shadow education, school support services, affirming school environments, opportunities for family involvement, instructional technologies, high academic expectations, and well-paid, certified, and experienced teachers as well as student-centered, higher-order curricula and pedagogies.

Gorski points his readers to a number of instructional strategies that could potentially benefit teachers of students in poverty: incorporate music, art, and theater across the curriculum, have and communicate high expectations for all students, adopt higher-order, learner-centered, rigorous pedagogies, incorporate movement and exercise into teaching and learning, make curricula relevant to the lives of low-income students, teach about poverty and class bias, analyze learning materials for class (and other) bias, and promote literacy enjoyment; but, he also realistically concedes that no scholar could ever know a group of students as well as their teacher knows them, and ultimately, it is up to a teacher to employ the aforementioned strategies in any way that they can in order to best accommodate their students. It is not up to a teacher to single-handedly solve the problem of poverty, but it is up to them to adopt a resiliency view of poor and working class families, engage in persistent family outreach efforts, build trusting relationships with her or his students, and ensure that opportunities for family involvement are accessible to poor and working class families, and they should also be aware of the forces that may prevent these processes from occurring. Additionally, Gorski argues that teachers should also do their best to expand their sphere of influence and employ advocacy initiatives beyond the classroom like advocating for universal preschool and Kindergarten, cultivating relationships with community agencies and organizations, advocating for smaller class sizes, attending (and providing) ongoing, nuanced professional development opportunities on reaching and teaching low-income youth and their families, extending health services and screenings at schools, protecting physical education and recess and encouraging fitness, protecting arts, music, and drama programs, and protecting school and local libraries in high-poverty neighborhoods.

Gorski notes that “letting go of our deficit view and focusing, instead, on student strengths and resilience is good for teaching, but it’s also good for teacher morale, a win-win.” Just because a student in poverty fails to perform well academically does not mean that they are less intelligent or less committed to their success than other students; rather, the success of students in poverty is related to the resources to which they have access and how much these resources contribute to their success as students. Teachers need to understand the lives of students in poverty as well as the institutions behind their circumstances if they are to be successful instructors, and Gorski makes a very convincing case as to why this is so in this data-driven book—and if you need more specific information as to why this is so, then you should read this book and look into the works cited in his 50-odd page list of references; perhaps Gorski and many other scholars could persuade you.

“Respect and the extent to which we demonstrate it in our teaching is tied up in those things, those sometimes little bitty things, we do or don’t do, say or don’t say, or even think or don’t think. And it’s about our willingness to take a stand when one of our students is being shortchanged—not standing in front of or standing in place of, but standing next to, standing with low-income students and families. If students know they’re being cheated out of the kind of education wealthier or Whiter or more English-proficient students are getting, and if they know we know they’re being cheated, and if we’re not responding, not just with good intentions, but with equity, then how can we say we’re respecting our students? Of course, we all know that students who are being cheated do know full well they’re being cheated. They might not say so out loud because there’s always a price to pay for speaking up. There’s the shushing and labeling and ostracizing.

The good news is, we can stand up. We can start by standing up to our own biases about families in poverty, even if it means taking the oddly unpopular view that poor people are not poor because of their deficiencies, that something bigger than that is amiss. Then we can do everything humanly possible in our spheres of influence to align our teaching and relationship-building and family outreach efforts with our good intentions.

We can listen.”

[Claire Jablonski · Rating 4 out of 5]

A required book for grad school class - taught me a lot about poverty and how many teachers are misinformed about how to support their students facing poverty.

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gorski reminds readers that there is no "culture of poverty"--that children and families continue to fall victim to false assumptions based on their socioeconomic status. The book not only exposes us to basics of economics that all teachers should understand, but also includes research on schools and programs that are having positive impacts on students learning within, and pushing through, opportunity gaps. Great read for teachers and activists, easy to understand, and timely. Gorski's voice is direct and committed--it makes you sit up and take note; however, it is also down to earth. Powerful read.

[Jeanie Phillips · Rating 5 out of 5]

Check out a podcast conversation about this book here: https://tiie.w3.uvm.edu/blog/reaching...

Insightful, well researched, and important! This is crucial reading for all educators.

[Cliff · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this culmination of four decades' research, Gorski paints a thorough picture of the disparities faced by working-class students in America's schools. Rather than focusing on "culture of poverty" and character deficit theories, the author takes a materialist approach in explaining the "achievement gap" between high- and low-income students. Combining gentle rhetoric with hard data, Gorski dispels the popular American myth of the proletariat as a lazy, drunken, violent mob which does not value education. With these distractions out of the way, he proceeds to describe the failures of the pedagogies they've informed and moves on to offer scientifically-supported alternatives. With the first nine chapters of the book centered around a coherent definition of class and the ways it affects education, I'm willing to forgive the short burst of "call your senator" liberalism near the end. While there are certainly aspects of the class conflict Gorski overlooked (wage exploitation of teachers, police presence in schools, etc.), the strategies outlined here for working with the workers' students are indispensable. This quick read will be useful to anyone interested in combating capital's tendency to punish children for the sin of being born poor.

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lot of good points, intentionally repetitive. TLDR: Change your perspective from "Deficit view" [people experiencing poverty are lazy, careless, just need to try harder and think positively, etc] to "Structural view" [people experiencing poverty perpetually have less opportunity and resources, so that is what they need more of, not judgement]. It also has some good practical ideas for application, but not until your perspective is properly shifted. I don't agree entirely with everything in the book, but it does have good food for thought and I definitely learned a few things.
Read for MSCI / 2022.

[Ava Walsh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow this book was so important to read as a future educator and honestly just as a human with bias. It taught me so much about educational and societal barriers against students in poverty and was extremely eye opening. such little things like book fairs or encouraging students to raise money thru fundraisers are so inequitable and that is just something I had never thought ab. It definitely will stem more awareness in me which is obviously the goal. I will be keeping this book and going back to it when I have a classroom of my own and continue working in classrooms the next few semesters. It rly just made me want to be the best possible teacher for some kids some day 😁

[Parlei · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gorski's work is important, careful, and detailed. This book could have used more specific pedagogical examples, but really, his approach is nothing short of a breath of fresh air. As an academic who is economically marginalized hoping to transform the classroom students who are economically marginalized, I appreciate the way this book brings attention to the various structures that limits academic excellence. I also like the way it flies in the face of the ways Grit theory and Mindset have been misused and abused. An important read for anyone in education.

[Bailey Frederking · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book opens up your eyes to think about poverty from a perspective that works against the stereotypes and narratives that are generally in place. I find this read imperative for all teachers because whether you teach in an affluent area or a more impoverished area, poverty will always affect some of our students. We must be invested in the work of this book and how to better support our students.

[Cathy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lots of important information about what Gorski rightly calls the opportunity gaps in education between poor students and their economically more advantaged peers, challenges to teachers to check our misconceptions, and many useful strategies to make things more equitable in our classrooms, even if we can’t fix all of the issues outside them. He focuses on K-12, but I found much to use in my community college classrooms.

[Katelynn Lynch · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wonderful Read

I had to read this book for a college course and I ended up loving it. If you're looking for something to completely rewire the way you think about people, this is it. I gave it four stars because I did find it slightly repetitive and some of the solutions given weren't explained as thoroughly as I would have liked, but that is a personal perception. I would recommend this work to any and all teachers!

[Mandy Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Equity literacy - removing the deficit view of poverty

Good read- repetitive at times. Some repetition is reinforcement, tying things together, but other times it feels unnecessary, could be more concise.
But maybe that’s what it takes to combat decades of victim blaming people in poverty,

[Craig Carmoney · Rating 5 out of 5]

Paul Gorski does an excellent job laying out the Opportunity Gap vs. the Achievement Gap and where the real challenges exist. We have not set up our schools to be equitable and in many cases make our issues worse by focusing on achievement rather than creating opportunities for students and providing every student exactly what they need to be successful.

[April · Rating 3 out of 5]

I appreciated that the book wasn't written just for teachers, but for anyone who interacts with youth from poverty. As a speech language pathologist and church youth leader, it was nice to feel included in the target demographic of the book!

[Caleb Romoser · Rating 5 out of 5]

LOVED this! All educators should read this book. Gorski's framework of Equity Literacy is a very powerful framework for engaging in education and I definitely have a lot of reflecting and modifying to do!

[Shannon · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is very challenging, informative and practical. Lots of useful strategies for changing ourselves, our schools and our world.

[Kristin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yes! I wish I had been required to read this during my university years. Gorski does a great job of breaking his thoughts down into meaningful chunks and offers accessible ideas. Would recommend.

[Maggie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very informative and easy to read. I think everyone can benefit from reading this book; not just teachers and administrators.

[Brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book every teacher should read and commit to memory.

10 gold stars out of 10

[Alex Bergland · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely loved this book! Every educator, and especially educational leaders, should read this.

[kt m · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very repetitive but valuable information within it.

[Olivia · Rating 5 out of 5]

An eye-opening book! Lots of action steps and reflection points built into each of Gorski’s chapters.

[Lena · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read for school

covered the basics but felt very repetitive and could have benefited from cutting down the redundant sections

[Madi · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was forced to read this for a class but honestly it wasn't a bad read.

[Matt Sautman · Rating 5 out of 5]

For anyone who has not attended Gorski’s equity trainings, this book provides an excellent encapsulation of his core ideas about equity’s relationship with educators’ mentality.