Introduction
There is no basic answer to alleviating poverty, just as there lacks a basic answer for its entrenched state in America. In the modern industrialized corporate society, education has emerged as key to state ideological and political management. Ideological and political management involves ideation which at present is fostered in the country’s education system. It is worrisome that poverty continues to disenfranchise America children by denying them education opportunities (Rank, 2004). According to Jensen, (2009) children coming from homes that experience unrelenting poverty are more prone to have their cognitive development affected when compared to children who come from better off homes. This has an impact on their education especially their performance in school. The topic has been of great significance to me for quite a while, and it has been my desire to relate social economic status to the low achievement scores from the children from such families.
Research questions
Quantitative research questions
- Do student from affluent families have higher achievement scores than children from poor families? (Relational research question)
- What is the disparity in performance by the children from poor social economic settings when compared to children from well-off social economic settings? (Descriptive research question)
- What is the effect of social economic level of the students on their performance? (Causal research question)
Qualitative research question
- What do students from low social economic settings perceive as constraints to their performance?
Research variables/Attributes
Variables are aspects of a theory that can change or vary as part of the relations within the theory. More precisely, variables are aspects within the study that can change or affect the results of the study. The following are the variables of the research questions quoted above:-
- Social economic status: - the social economic status of the families that students come from is a variable of study. It is the independent variable of the study in the research question. This is because it is the causal variable and its effect is measured on another variable. The data type that will be collected for this variable is the continuous data and more precisely using the interval level of measurement. This is because the data on social economic status is classified in terms of income brackets (Saracho, 2013).
- Sex, religion: These are co-variables in the study and the data collected for them is categorical and of the nominal level of measurement.
- Age: - This is another covariate in the study. The data collected is continuous and of the ordinal nature. Age is important in the study because even though it is not related to the dependent or independent variable, it has an effect on the student performance.
While the above variables are important for the quantitative research question, the qualitative research question delves into other matters that cannot be expressed numerically. To this effect, the following are the variables for the qualitative research question: -
- Perceptions of the students: - since this is a qualitative research question, it seeks to explore the perceptions of the students as to what the constraints the low social economic settings they live in present to their academic endeavors. The data will be collected in terms of text and transcribed. Inferences will be made regarding the information that is collected.
Conclusion
As espoused earlier, education is important to the progress of the nation (Thomas, 2012). Of equal or even more importance, is dealing with the impediments to quality education. In order to sufficiently deal with the impediments, we ought to fully understand the dynamics of the impediments and the effect they have on the delivery of quality education (Arrighi & Maume, 2007). These research questions personify my resolve to delve into the intricacies of social economic status and acquisition of education.
References
Arrighi, B. A., & Maume, D. J. (2007). Child poverty in America today. Westport, Conn: Praeger.
Jensen, E. (2009). Teaching with poverty in mind: What being poor does to kids' brains and what schools can do about it. Alexandria, Va: ASCD.
Rank, M. R. (2004). One nation, underprivileged: Why American poverty affects us all. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Saracho, O. N. (2013). Handbook of research on the education of young children (3rd ed.). New York: Routledge.
Thomas, P. L. (2012). Ignoring poverty in the U.S: The corporate takeover of public education. Charlotte, N.C: Information Age Pub., Inc.
