On March 8th, our group spoke to one of the members at Campaign for Educational Equity named Jessica Wolff. The Campaign for Educational Equity is an organization that helps impoverished children to get the same/equal services as more privileged children. Jessica says that “this country does public education pretty well, but where our country serves poorly is the schools that serves kids in poverty.” “If you look at schools that serve kids that are not poor, those kids do as well as any other country.” If children don’t have a good education when they are young, they won’t be able to get ahead (go to college or find a job). These kids need to have experiences that will help their brain develops so that they can maintain their grade level, but for impoverished children it can be harder for various reasons. They could be around many children or have a single parent who doesn’t really pay attention to them a lot, so they lack early childhood experiences “particularly in the number of words that are heard is a very key thing.” Jessica also told us that the schools that serve more impoverished children are below good enough.
