Not Yours to Give

[Griselda]

What overall population statistics are you looking at? In the field of education, the income level of the family is known to be a predictor of student achievement in school.

That's why the federal Title One program was created- to "watchdog" the educational success of children from poor families. While education is not equivalent to home life, it's clear that differences in the home produce different results at school. It has been running for decades now, without any of the slippery slope effects that you mentioned.

Anecdotally, I could give you any number of horror stories about the lives of the kids that I work with. I have spent a little bit of time in higher-income schools, enough to know that this isn't a condition of kids in general, but a problem specific to low-income kids. The rate of drug abuse, alcoholism, violence, neglect, etc. in these families is simply astonishing. Sometimes I wonder how the kids can function at all, and to the point where me trying to teach them that "silent e makes vowels say their names" seems downright silly and inconsequential.