Jacob Hibel Associate Professor of Sociology and Co-Director, Center for Poverty & Inequality Research
Jacob Hibel received his degree in Sociology and Demography from
Pennsylvania State University in 2009. His research focuses on
the causes and consequences of childhood educational
inequalities, including those related to poverty, disability,
race/ethnicity, immigrant generation status, and spatial
segregation.
August 26, 2024
Letters and Science Magazine
By Alex Russell
Dominic Arreola started taking classes in Chinese in community
college. He quickly gained a passion for the language and the
culture, and by the time he transferred CSU Long Beach he was
steeped in the history and tensions between China and the United
States. He worried more and more about the potential for
war.
A historic learning loss was reported this week, showing the
impacts of virtual learning during the pandemic. Nearly 500,000
fourth and eighth graders took tests nationwide and while no
single state saw an increase in test scores, Black and Latino
students were hit the hardest.
California’s 2022 Smarter Balanced assessment from tests taken in
the Spring of 2022 showed a decline in English Language Arts
and Math score testing.
Results for Northern California school districts showed dips from
2.91% to 8.18%.
Recessions in California tend to widen the gap between rich and
poor. The sharp pandemic downturn of 2020 followed this pattern
with low-income workers suffering the most. But unprecedented
government relief kept millions from falling into poverty, and
demand for labor boosted wages when businesses reopened.
California’s Continuum of Care Reform Act (CCR) shifts
foster care in the state toward placing children with families
and more support for foster parents. We conducted a survey-based
study to learn about who is most likely to be willing to serve as
a resource family, the level of knowledge about foster care and
potential motivations for fostering. We found that the strongest
motivations among potential parents are to support foster youth
and their biological parents rather than any emotional or
financial benefits for themselves. Strong deterrents were
financial strain and worries about being able to adequately care
for them.
Center for Poverty Research executive committee member Jacob
Hibel has won a grant to study how schools adapt to a sharp
increase in immigrant families, which will help develop
interventions to help low-income kids who may have trouble
catching up to their peers.
