Being Poor Does Not Equal Poor Student Achievement

Harvard University professor, Paul E. Peterson, and Janice Riddell from External Relations for Education Next recently released an analysis of a paper by a Broader, Bolder Approach co-chair, Professor Helen F. Ladd at Duke University.  Peterson challenges the BBA, which is frequently heralded by education reform leaders and often calls for the redistribution of income and the providing of more support services for economically disadvantaged children outside the school day.  While he acknowledges a connection between income and student performance, he asserts that this connection is not caused by the low income but due to other factors.  He points to another study by the Brookings Institution (2011) that found that the impact “between family income and education success for children varied between negligible and small.”

In response to those who cite the growing reading achievement gaps from children from the lowest and highest incomes, he notes “that the achievement gap between income groups was growing at exactly the same time the federal government was rapidly expanding services to the poor – Medicaid, food stamps, Head Start, housing subsidies, and many other programs.”  Peterson believes that changes in the family structure over the years is the reason for the continuing decline in achievement.

Peterson points out that the things that have improved student achievement of the lowest income families have had the most impact.  School reforms, such as “merit pay, school vouchers, and student and school accountability, have been shown to have had equivalent or larger impacts” than things like “expanded social services, preschool, and summer programs…”  He reports that “Initiatives to improve teacher quality have the potential of raising student performance by 10 to 20 percent of a standard deviation.”

 

Widest Achievement Gap Due to Low Income

Until recently, education was viewed as the societal leveler; education has the ability to change the trajectory of a family’s legacy from generational poverty to a much brighter future that means moving to the middle, and possibly, the upper class of society.  School leaders and officials have struggled to close the achievement gap between minorities and Caucasian students.  A recent article on The New York Times website explains that while “the achievement gap between white and black students has narrowed significantly over the past few decades, the gap between rich and poor students has grown substantially during the same period.”  The researchers conclude that over the past few decades, the race of a student is less important than his or her family’s income level in determining that student’s achievement level in school.  Additionally, this income imbalance is “the single most important predictor of success in the work force.”

So, what do wealthy parents do, specifically, to improve their children’s academic performance?    According to the Times report,

“One reason for the growing gap in achievement, researchers say, could be that wealthy parents invest more time and money than ever before in their children (in weekend sports, ballet, music lessons, math tutors, and in overall involvement in their children’s schools), while lower-income families, which are now more likely than ever to be headed by a single parent, are increasingly stretched for time and resources.  This has been particularly true as more parents try to position their children for college, which has become ever more essential for success in today’s economy.”

The income gap is just one factor in the achievement gap, according to a University of Chicago economist, James J. Heckman, “parenting matters as much as, if not more than, income in forming a child’s cognitive ability and personality, particularly in the years before children start school.”  Another study shows that, on average, high-income children start school with about 400 hours more than poor children in literacy activities (“places other than their homes, their day care centers, or schools—anywhere from museums to shopping malls).”

These researchers believe that when the economy recovers, these problems will continue because wealthier parents tend to be better educated, so they know how to create a family culture that fosters better academic performance for their children than their low-income counterparts.

 

Simple Intervention to Narrow African-American Achievement Gap

Among the various theories about why the achievement gap between African-American students and white students is the belief of lead researcher Geoffrey Cohen, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Colorado, that “the disparity in academic performance between white and African American students is partly fueled by a psychological effect called stereotype threat.”  Cohen and others set out to decrease that gap with a fifteen-minute writing activity.  Grace Rubenstein, writer for Edutopia on their website, reports in the article “Overcoming Underachievement:  Separating Fact From Fiction” that the results were quite surprising to the researchers.

Students from a 50% African American student population of mostly middle or lower middle class families from a middle school with a dedicated staff, adequate resources, and academically prepared students were the subjects of this research.  Despite these advantages, a persistent gap remained.  Researchers sought to find out what the intangible element is that made higher achievement elusive for minority students.  Half of the participants were asked to write about one attribute—from a list that included their relationships with friends and being good at art—that they valued.  The other half of the randomly chosen participants write about things on the list that mattered the least to them and why they might be important to someone else.

The results? African American students who wrote the affirming essay (the first group) earned final term grades that were an average 0.26 points higher than their African American classmates.  To ensure that this was not a fluke, the researchers tried this experiment again the next year with a different group of students.  This time, their averages were 0.34 points higher than their African American peers.  Cohen suggested, “the exercise changed their perception of bias at school and shifted how they interpret their academic successes and failures—steps that protected them from feeling discouraged and plunging further into the downward spiral.”