Deborah Brooks from Twitter asked an excellent question this morning. She wanted to know the dates and source for my earlier maps. When I was Googling those this morning I did not find them readily but I found something better.
The Washington Post has some updated information taken from the data gathered from the Common Core/NCES. This graphic is interactive, current and more dire than I expected. It turns out that the majority of US public school students are living without basic necessities. More than half of the students we are teaching are struggling with the handicapping conditions of poverty. Right now the calls to fire the teachers and raise the standards are like telling a cancer patient to drink tap water and eat more fresh fruit. Unless we address the cancer the patient will perish. We need to directly deal with the extreme levels of poverty our students face or our public schools will perish. These schools are essential for a free, democratic society.
The people on Wall Street, in the banks and in the halls of government are congratulating themselves on our economic recovery outpacing the rest of the world. They are building their success on the low wages they are allowed to pay the working class. Radio and television announcers tell all of us that things are better but the majority of us are not feeling it. The divide between the haves and the have nots has never been greater. It's not sustainable.
Please read the information contained at the link below and like/comment. It means so much to us when we hear from you.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/majority-of-us-public-school-students-are-in-poverty/2015/01/15/df7171d0-9ce9-11e4-a7ee-526210d665b4_story.html
SOURCE: SEF calculations of NCES Common Core of Data, 2013. Published Jan. 16, 2015.
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