Reply to Do DC CAS gains track increasing income?

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Reply to "Do DC CAS gains track increasing income?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]One of the challenges of poverty is that often the skills you need to survive in a poor neighborhood are not what you need to move into the middle class.  This is where it can get dangerous to exhibit intelligence, proclivity towards reading a decent vocabulary.  We ask an awful lot of poor kids to overcome their situation.  I recently read Justice Sotameyor's bio and it struck me over and over how amazing it was that she and her brother succeeded, because it was not an obvious path given where her mother started.  Some it of it were deliberate decisions to go a different road, but a lot of it was a level of stubbornness that few middle class kids would be able to exhibit.

Personally I don't think we can abandon parents in this equation, they have to support some many elements of their kids success and having empowered parents can help kids tremendously.  But maybe more importantly you just can't dismiss the gap that exists in parent's ability to contribute to their children's well being- decent food, safety, ability to go outside and exercise.  Early childhood education just is not enough. [/quote]

Again, that's why parents need to be educated too.  [/quote]

It is not just education, they need living wage jobs.  They need options that include safe affordable housing, access to better schools.  I can drive across town to a better school many parents just don't have the ability to do so either for the cost of metro or gas or job flexibility.  These are issues schools cannot solve. [/quote]

Living wage jobs - that's all fine and good but when people can't even meet basic expectations like showing up to work on time, they aren't going to keep those jobs for long before the boss fires them because he can't rely on having them there when he needs them.  A lot of people need to be educated even on the basics of those kinds of life skills, and don't seem to understand how their behavior holds them back - or how it holds their children back.  When parents let their kids show up to school 2 hours late day after day (and it happens all the time), kids grow up with that kind of behavior ingrained and it becomes harder and harder to change.  When kids can coast through school and pass with minimal effort, and the mere fact of showing up is enough to get you promoted from grade to grade, your expectation in the working world will likewise be to just get by doing minimal work and being promoted for no reason other than just showing up.  Real life does not work the way our schools do, and that needs to change if there's ever going to be a better life for the poor.[/quote]

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