Education can be utilized by students to gain social and economic mobility, and therefore it deserves to be discussed on this platform. Education has enough of a significance to help pull students out of the poverty cycle, and so it is our job to discuss how we can improve the quality of this necessity. Studies show that high school performance is correlated with state median income, and academic performance is directly affected by the students’ school and house conditions. If we can improve the quality of schools, then we can improve the socioeconomic conditions of students within these institutions, thus breaking the cycle of poverty. You might be asking, how do we improve the quality of schools around the nation? Here is how: bottom-up movements facilitated through discussions and programs focused on demand for reform, outreaches towards parental engagement, creative, project-based learning approaches, and leveraging the media to help spread the message. School, and community leaders can work with troubled youth, and most importantly, we can educate students about organizations that only work to help improve their school conditions, such as the Office of Civil Rights under the Department of Education. It can be inferred that the education system tends to favor the ones with more resources, however, even teachers can work towards fighting poverty by addressing its prevalence amongst students, and helping to give encouragement to these students, so that they can improve their conditions, and ultimately break the cycle of poverty that they are subject to in the status quo. It is possible, now more than ever to help students change the course of their futures for the better.
– Siya Sharma (10th Grade Student, Santa Clara, CA)
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