TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT... Confronting the poverty gap

There are many variables that intersect with academic achievement, each creating challenges to success: parental education, single parent households, neighborhoods, extended families, race, life experiences, access to books and internet and other resources.

However, none are as profound in their impact on academic achievement as a widening “opportunity gap” within our society and its negative consequences for children’s educational and social mobility. No one paints this picture more clearly (or more apolitically) than Robert Putnam in his newly published book, Our Kids – The American Dream in Crisis (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2015), a book we should put on our “must read” list to inform ourselves and each other about the odds for and against academic achievement across Spartanburg County.