Serving+Low-Income+Students

Providing quality teachers to schools with students from low-income families is an important national goal, and an exciting opportunity for you.

Once you have earned teacher certification there will be job opportunities in many regions of the country to work with students from low-income families. There are national and private programs to support students planning to teach and teachers currently serving in low-income schools.

Through the College Cost Reduction and Access Act of 2007, Congress created the [|Teacher Education Assistance for College and Higher Education (TEACH)] Grant Program that provides grants of up to $4,000 per year to students who intend to teach in a public or private elementary or secondary school that serves students from low-income families. This program begins during the 2008-09 school year.

There are several programs that support teachers working with children from low-income families. The [|Federal Perkins Loan Teacher Cancellation] program. In this program you qualify for cancellation (discharge) of up to 100 percent of a Federal Perkins Loan if you have served full time in a public or nonprofit elementary or secondary school system serving students from low-income families, in a teacher shortage area, or part time at more than one school. (You could also qualify if you are certified in a subject area shortage area such as special education, math/science, etc.) This loan cancellation program is incremental (15 percent canceled per year for the first and second years of service, 20 for the third and fourth years, and 30 for the fifth year). You can use the [|Teacher Cancellation Low Income Directory] to see if a particular school will qualify. There is a similar program for [|Stafford and FFEL] direct student loan programs. There is also the [|Rural and Low-Income School Program] that can provide low-income districts with money for signing bonuses and other benefits for new teachers. For teachers already in the schools there is the [|Teacher Loan Forgiveness Program].

Perkins Loans can also be deferred or reduced by participation in [|Americorps] and the [|Peace Corps].

[|Teach for America] is a competitive national program for recent college graduates and working professionals to commit two years to teach in urban and rural public schools in high-poverty areas, and they provide training and professional development. While the program has attracted much attention and praise, it has also been criticized. Participants do not usually have teaching certificates and may be under-prepared for the classroom. New teachers with teacher certification do not need to use the Teach for America program in order to find a teaching position, though participation in the program may provide some additional opportunities. A thoughtful article on the organization is "[|Teach for America: Looking Past the Spin] by Barbara Miner."

The [|Rise Network] is a non-profit organization committed to keeping effective teachers in schools serving low-income communities.

Much is said about how to work with students from low-income families, and to be honest, I am distrustful of popular advice. For example, many districts talk about Ruby Payne Smith's book [|A Framework for Understanding Poverty], yet this book has received important criticism. Anita Bohn, in her article [|A Framework for Understanding Ruby Payne] in the valuable journal [|Rethinking Schools] says that "Payne's books and lectures present a superficial and insulting picture of children and families in poverty." Randy Bomer (former president of NCTE) and others write. Another critic is Paul Gorski in. Or this article by Gorski, [|The Myth of the Culture of Poverty].