Schooling Disadvantaged Children

Authors Natriello, McDill, and Pallas thoroughly explore the situation of America's disadvantaged children and youth. They define the educationally disadvantaged as those who have insufficient experiences in either the family, the community, or the school (13). Some students lack love and basic physical support, and some have suffered lack of intellectual stimulation in the family, community, or school. These writers approach the problems of disadvantaged students through analysis. Their book, Schooling Disadvantaged Children, is essentially a thorough statistical analysis of the current conditions of disadvantaged students in U.S. schools with some predictions of future trends and policy implications.

The general tenor of the book is negative. There is a great emphasis on data and the specific programs that have not been successful in meeting the needs of our nations less fortunate children. Maternal and child health programs show the most promise for stemming the tide of developmentally disabled persons, but many of these programs do not meet the needs of teenaged mothers soon enough (49). Other programs that have limited success with children at the preschool age are Head Start, the Bereiter-Engelmann Academic Preschool Program and the High/Scope Perry Preschool Program. Head Start has not been successful in raising IQ's or long-term academic gains, but it has improved health conditions for the nation's disadvantaged

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asis for better planning. Proposed solutions to alleviating problems with disadvantaged students include broadening the educational base, strengthening the relationships among home, school, and community, and structuring different lateral and hierarchical relationships among everybody associated with the educational process (170). These writers rely heavily on numbers as evidence for the existence of difficulties in educating the disadvantaged. For example, most of the background indicators reveal that about 20 to 25 percent of the nation's children can be classified as disadvantaged according to one indicator. NAEP reading tests show that a larger proportion, closer to 40 percent, of the students can be classified as disadvantaged (32). In assessing the author's definition of the problem, solution, and evidence, I have some difficulty in going along with their approach. First, their definition is not really a definition. Instead of actually defining who the disadvantaged are and why they are labelled disadvantaged, they make such statements as "the very decision to define this population could be interpreted as an attempt to place the blame for the educational problems disadvantaged children present on those who suffered t
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Approximate Word count = 1545
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)

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