Poverty and students achievement Research Proposal

Poverty and students achievement - Research Proposal Example Problem to be investigated A. Purpose of the study (including assumptions) The purpose for this study is to study the poverty achievement gap, which affects children from poor backgrounds. Through a variety of researches that have been conducted in this area, it has been established that children who are brought up in poverty are likely to perform poorer in their academic work than their peers from privileged households. Besides, this study will investigate different strategies and policies that can be implemented to alleviate this problem. B. Justification of the study The educational achievement by students is highly dependent on the state’s and districts’ educational policies as well as the available resources, which facilitate classroom instructions, among many other tasks (Shields, 1991). The educational stakeholders should support the efforts for offering essential facilities and assistance in order to ensure that all students, including those from poor family bac kgrounds, achieve their educational goals. Allington (1991) maintains that federal, state, and district policies ought to be cautiously premeditated with the purpose of outlining the effectiveness and ineffectiveness of a variety of policies in finishing the poverty achievement gap. C. Research question, hypotheses, and propositions Research questions 1. ... 2. If proper mechanisms are put up and all the education stakeholders come on board, the impact of poverty on education can be addressed, to a great extent. 3. There are exists alternative strategies and opportunities for alleviating the damaging impacts of poverty on education. D. Definition of terms Poverty – this is the lack of adequate financial resources to cater for basic needs and services such as education, food, water, shelter, and lighting among other amenities. Education – this is numeracy, literacy, and basic understanding of science and an individual’s environment as attained in pre primary, primary, secondary and tertiary levels of learning. Impacts – this is the consequences of a particular state of affairs and in this case poverty. E. Brief overview of study Poverty has varying impacts on various sectors of development, one such sector is the educating sector. Relative or absolute poverty leads to low enrollment, low retention, high dropout and illiteracy rates since the poor cannot afford the high costs associated with education. Stakeholders in this sector are partly to blame because of inaccessibility, poor quality and high costs associated with education at all levels. A successful education program must be accessible, affordable and of standard quality to all citizens especially the poor. This study will investigate the manner in which this societal problem can be resolved. II. Background and review of related literature A: Theoretical framework The link between poverty and education can be explained through Developmental Systems Theories (DST) (Bronfenbrenner, 1994). These theories are associated with ecological theory and expounds on the linkages between different levels ranging from