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• INCLUSION MATTERS
BOX 3.1
Internalizing Exclusion, and Dropping out of School Low-income students have always trailed their richer peers in school performance, but these gaps have been widening in recent years. In the United States, class has overtaken race as a predictor of academic success (DeParle 2012). Economic inequality drives these growing gaps. The rich have gotten richer, and wealthy parents are outspending their lowerincome counterparts on their children’s education. They pay for enrichment activities such as sports, music lessons, and summer camps. They hire coaches to support their children academically. Poorer children not only compete against peers whose parents have more money to spend. They also suffer from perceptions—from family, friends, society, and not least themselves—that can become major obstacles in their uphill struggle. Angelica Gonzalez, a young woman from a struggling, low-income family in Galveston, Texas, seemed to have beaten the odds: despite attending a high school in Galveston, Texas, deemed “academically unacceptable,” she still managed to do extraordinarily well, ranking at the 84th percentile nationwide for the math and reading portions of the Standardized Aptitude Test (SAT). Her dream was to get into college and to do better than her mother and grandmother, who worked at Walmart, always struggling to make ends meet. But when Angelica makes it into Emory University—a top-ranked institution in Atlanta, Georgia—her family mocks her, saying “Now you go to some big fancy school!” Her boyfriend does not see the point of her getting a degree either. He wants her to work in her dad’s local furniture store instead. College does not start well for Angelica. She fails to access the extensive financial support Emory would have granted her. Emory costs nearly $50,000 a year, but it is one of the few top schools that promises to meet the financial needs of any student good enough to be admitted. But Angelica fails to fill in the financial aid forms correctly, partly because she does not know how to get hold of her father, from whom she needs financial details. As a result, Emory keeps underestimating her needs. Angelica senses that something has gone wrong, but she doesn’t complain. Her reaction is not uncommon: poor students and their parents are much less likely to challenge institutions than their middle-income peers. They are not used to institutions responding to them. Angelica gets a private loan instead. To protect her mother from worries, she has (box continues next page)