Public Commentary on the Misconceptions of Academic

Performance and Low SES Students

Carly Chandler
December 1, 2015

It is widely believed that success in the school house is equal to the intelligence of a child, and
therefore chronic failure at school must also be linked to low intelligence. Most citizens
continue to visualize each student along the Bell Curve of intelligence, equating a superficial,
culturally insensitive metric to not only intelligence of low performers, but financial and social
success or failure. This paradigm is all too digestible in the state of Georgia, where poverty, low
performance and race seem inextricably linked.
The problem with using measurements such as IQ and school performance to assess intelligence
in communities of poverty denies many underlying variables that undoubtedly bring bias to
scores. It is well documented that not only are tests culturally bias, but the definition of
intelligence is culturally defined. Research in cognition suggests that Western cultures tend to
view intelligence as a means for individuals to devise categories and to engage in rational debate,
while people in Eastern cultures see it as a way for members of a community to recognize
contradiction and complexity and to play their social roles successfully. Perhaps even more
pertinent to the misconception of associating academic performance and intelligence is that in
many cultures practical and academic intelligence can develop independently or even in conflict
with each other, and that the values of a culture may shape the direction in which a child
develops.
Although research in cognition advertises the discrepancies between academic performance, IQ
tests and intelligence, such metrics continue to drive how the US public education system defines
winners and losers. Perhaps at the root of this problem is the fact that academic performance in
todays classroom is disconnected from the daily reality of most children in poverty. Children
living in situations that require survival skills, such as safety and access to shelter and food, will
lack motivation toward learning irrelevant content that is presented in a culturally foreign
platform. Students are not only unengaged with the content, but operating under cultural norms
that are quite different from the norms of their home environment. The dichotomy of behavior,
expectations, and especially language, is immediately discouraging for many students of low
income situations. Worse, as they attempt to play the academic game, designed by those who
they themselves have never experienced poverty, and lose, they lose interest in the game and lose
confidence in themselves.
The compounding effects of race and poverty add an additional cultural divide in the school
house. The complaint that the American public school system continues to be driven by a very
Eurocentric curriculum and pedagogy has encouraged social advocates to ask if Blacks have an
equal opportunity to succeed in an academic world.

So the question for communities should be how can we create classrooms, schools, and
curriculum that is relevant to children in poverty? How can we eradicate the cultural barrier
between the home and school house? Research suggests that the first step to a solution is
building strong relationships that acknowledge the reality of the stress of poor nutrition, lack of
access to health care, lack of role models, and violence in these childrens lives. Fundamental to
acknowledging these issues is creating a curriculum that deals directly with these issues. Rather
than feeling like aliens in an environment that belongs to someone else, school can be a place
where low income students explore their reality through culturally relevant literature, local
environmental science projects, exploring current social justice issues in their community, and
most importantly, sharing their life experiences through their school work. Engagement in
school and academic performance of low income students will only improve when the education
system transforms into a culturally relevant and viable environment.