OP-ED columnist Joe Nicera - Research Paper Example

Pamela Cantor’s research which was based on high poverty schools. Throughout his article, Nocera adopts an informative and discursive tone in order to enlighten his readers about the gravity of the consequences the effects of poverty have on the educational system as well as to motivate them to deal with this issue. According to an article, high poverty schools take up about 40% of schools in cities but their average scores are very low compared to other schools. (Christine Armario, 2010). The article opens with the mention of Dr.

Pamela Cantor’s speech, titled “Innovative Designs for persistently Low-Performing Schools”. It then moves on to talk about how Dr. Cantor has studied the effects of poverty on education. Nocera informs his audience that “chaos reigned” in schools where there was a high poverty level. The teachers were not equipped to bring order to chaos and the “most disruptive children dominated the schools”. These schools are normally populated by levels of racial minorities. (Mike Green, 2011).

Needless to say, these schools were functioning as schools should be. Nocera explains the findings of Dr. Cantor’s research in order to build a base for the discussion about how to tackle and eliminate these effects in the longer run. He goes on to describe how the “Turnaround for Children” came about as Dr. . Poverty figures have become more serious since September 2011, when it was quoted by the NY Times that about one out of five people in New York could be categorized as poor. (Sam Roberts, 2011).

Approximately half of America’s children live in high poverty districts according to a census done in 2011. (Lisa Lambert, 2011). A map that depicting changes in poverty in the United States shows that poverty in America is becoming a rising trend; where once in 2010 only 15.1% Americans were living below the line, today, two years later, that number is much higher. (Andy Hull, Nick McClellan and Troy Schneider, 2012). Turnaround plays an important part in this issue because it is working to “bridge an important divide” by facing the issues high-poverty schools face “head-on” instead of beating around the bush with them.

Nocera then shifts to a brief discussion of how this project operates and how it creates a “positive, disciplined culture” by motivating the students about how they can excel in school and education in general. He goes on to clarify that even though this project is of extreme importance; it is still in its experimental stages and is “relatively small”. Results of Turnaround’s efforts in various schools have shown that the schools that they had worked on were on average “calmer, safer, indeed, happier places” however, they should work more on improving academic environment if they want to achieve better results from this venture.

Nocera moves towards the closing of his article by mentioning again, Dr. Cantor’s speech mentioned first in the very beginning of his article. He explains how her speech talked