Majority of U.S. Public School Students are in Poverty Analysis

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In this news article titled Majority of U.S. Public School Students are in Poverty ( HYPERLINK "/local/education/majority-of-us-public-school-students-are-in-poverty/2015/01/15/df7171d0-9ce9-11e4-a7ee-526210d665b4_story.html" /local/education/majority-of-us-public-school-students-are-in-poverty/2015/01/15/df7171d0-9ce9-11e4-a7ee-526210d665b4_story.html), Lyndsey Layton argues that 51 percent of students in pre-kindergarten through 12th grade in 2013 were from poor families. The author attributes this rise to an increase in the poverty levels, even though, the economy has improved significantly. The article notes that the reason for this occurrence is because most of the attention is directed towards their directing their social life that has been disoriented by poverty something that makes the academic aspect take a back seat. In addition to this, children from poor families do not have books at home something that makes it hard for them to continue their learning outside the school environment. Children from poor families also lack the parental support that is necessary for academic excellence. According to Layton, this phenomenon creates a scenario where the children fail to acquire academic excellence at the end of their education. The result of this is that the children end up continuing the poverty cycle and hence the reason poverty levels have been growing despite the phenomenal growth of the economy (Layton, 2015).
Classical Theory
Classical economics developed mainly in the 18th and the 19th centuries, incorporated theories on both value and distribution. The value that a product had was perceived to depend entirely on the costs consumed in developing the product. The elucidation of costs in classical economics acted concurrently as an explanation of distribution. The classical theory takes the assumption that the outcomes of the exchanges occurring in the marketplace are effective, and for that reason faithfully mirror personal productivity. Accordingly, poverty is mainly treated as the result of poor personal choices. Under the classical theory, a significant part of the policy prescriptions center on efforts to raise the productivity of impoverished individuals as a way for them to join the labor force with an immediate effect (Scott, & Edin, 2000).
Looking at the poverty issued that is presented by Layton in her article, the behavioral/decision based theory comes out as the best suited to explain why despite the phenomenal growth of the economy the poverty levels keep on increasing. According to the proponents of this theory, the outcome is attributed to the decisions that an individual takes. The view given in this theory is that people are to be held accountable for their experiences of poverty, which are connected to strictly individual deficiencies. The proponents of this theory list the personal traits that cause people to fail as the failure to work hard, the lack of virtuous ethic, as well as the lack of competitive market skills. In liberal states such as the United States (US), this is blamed on the low level of social benefits, as well as the smaller set of social rights (Morazes, & Pintak, 2007).
This is con...