The community can gather around a manageable goal, practicing the messy, democratic work of compromise and consensus. If they have that strong instruction, children seem to progress in reading at about the same rate during the school year, whether they come from backgrounds of poverty or advantage. The achievement lag of poorer children begins because they start school with fewer reading skills, according to the Baltimore Beginning School Study, which followed 800 Baltimore elementary school students in grades 1 through 6. Then it widens every summer, unless they have access to enriching experiences as luckier children do. The Intergenerational Literacy Project in Chelsea, Massachusetts, which Challenge funds support, goes all out to support children's literacy in this city of immigrants by working directly with their families.
Adults get coaching in reading, as well as access to books and activities they share with kids.
If their home language is not English, they work toward not only English fluency but continuing literacy in their native tongue. For example, when schools track or place students into less demanding courses or even into athletics, they limit students' options and contribute to their boredom and failure. By massing kids in large and anonymous school structures, they invite an atmosphere of mutual distrust and fear. Three recent studies conducted in California, West Virginia, and Alaska show that the achievement of students from both urban and rural poor communities goes up substantially in small schools, while larger ones actually exacerbate the negative effects of poverty on kids' learning. Another structural obstacle faces schools trying to meet the challenge of language diversity without lowering academic expectations.