The American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and the Brookings Institution recently released a collaborative report, Opportunity, Responsibility, and Security: A Consensus Plan for Reducing Poverty and Restoring the American Dream, which examines three factors that affect childhood poverty in the United States: family, work, and education. The dynamic of the labor market has changed over the years, with the spread of technology and globalization making educational attainment and achievement more important in determining employment and earnings. This change has caused an increasing inequality between adults who have more education and those who do not. Unfortunately, the education gap between children of low-income and high-income families is growing, too.
The AEI/Brookings Working Group on Poverty and Opportunity, made up of 15 experts of diverse perspectives, political affiliation, and expertise, came together to create recommendations about how to decrease childhood poverty through resources for families, work opportunities, and education. Three of the four recommendations provided by the working group use charter schools as a positive model of autonomy and school design. For example, the working group recommends educating the whole child by promoting social-emotional learning as well as academic skills. Social-emotional learning is often seen as a “soft skill,” but it is vital to success in the labor market. The working group points to KIPP charter schools as a model that fosters social-emotional learning and support to be in place as a strategy to enhance academic learning. The working group’s next recommendation is to modernize the organization and accountability of education. This is usually thought of as academic performance. However the working group’s recommendation focuses on using education as a community hub. Harlem Children’s Zone charter schools are examples of teachers, health professionals, and social workers collaborating to address the children’s educational, social, and health needs. The working group argues for continued innovation in and research of providing holistic services to its students. A further way to reduce childhood poverty is to close the resource gap between students. The working group suggests that the best strategy for closing the resource gap between low-income and middle-income students is school socioeconomic integration in educational settings via public school choice. As the Elementary and Secondary Education Act moves towards passage and the presidential races are in full swing, the National Alliance encourages policymakers to support charter schools and the strides they are making toward reducing childhood poverty by providing every student the educational opportunities they deserve.
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