SOCIAL JUSTICE “Educators play a vital role in teaching about social injustice and discrimination in all its forms with regard to differences in race, ethnicity, culture, gender, gender expression, age, appearance, ability, national origin, language, spiritual belief, sexual orientation, socioeconomic circumstance, and environment.” —NCTE policy statement, 2010
KEY FINDINGS
> > “More than 16 million children in the United States—22% of all children—live in families with incomes below the federal poverty level—$23,550 a year for a family of four. Research shows that, on average, families need an income of about twice that level to cover basic expenses. Using this standard, 45% of children live in low-income families” (Jiang et al., 2016). > > Across the country, more than seven million students are missing enough days of school to be academically at risk. Chronic absence—missing 10 percent or more of school days due to absence for any reason, whether for excused, unexcused or absences and suspensions—can translate into third-graders unable to master reading, sixth-graders failing subjects, and ninth-graders dropping out of high school (Chang and Leong, 2018). > > As Stephen Krashen’s research (2011) has demonstrated time and again, access to books is as strong a factor in school success as poverty is a detriment. In other words, if children have access to books in their schools (Miller and Sharp, 2018; Krashen, Lee, and McQuillan, 2010) and in their homes (Schubert and Becker, 2010; Evans, Kelley, Sikora, and Treieman, 2010), they can read their way out of the ravages of poverty (Sweeney, 2014). > > If all students in low-income countries left school with basic reading skills, 171 million people could be lifted out of poverty, which would be equivalent to a 12 percent cut in world poverty (Sweeney, 2014).
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CHAPTER 3: EQUITY
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