Interactive graph and article discusses achievement gap between low income and upper income 6th graders (up to four grade levels!).
Using the interactive graph, what caught my attention is the 100% ignored achievement gap between the solid middle class suburban schools and upper middle class suburban schools. I noticed a 1.5-2.0 grade level gap between these 6th graders! How many middle class parents suspect the 6th graders in the nearly wealthier district are two years ahead?
Though note that the average isn’t “solid middle-class suburban” as thought of by typical CC denizens.
I note that the podunk school district in the boonies where I grew up (where a small town CPA would be solidly in the upper-quartile) is at +0.6. All of the “solidly middle-class” (mostly white) suburban districts I know of and can find are +1.3 or above (the rich ones range from +2.0 to +2.5). The only ones below average (of the ones I know of) are heavily minority and are -0.6 or below.
OK, I found an exurb that isn’t minority-majority at +0.6 and another exurb (way out there in the boonies) at -0.3.
Haven’t yet found a “regular” middle-class district that is adjacent to a rich school district that is 2 grades worse, however.
@PurpleTitan I’m sure it depends on state and region. But I found quite a few strongly middle class and safe, with what everyone calls “good schools,” at +0.2 to +0.6. Nearby wealthier upper middle class enclaves are +2.5. A two year gap in 6th grade is pretty terrifying.
But I wonder how much stronger the correlation will be to parental educational attainment.
I live in a majority-minority school district which is +.7
Next to an almost all white district which is +2.2.
The second one probably spends twice as much per pupil as ours.
Looking around, I’ve found a 4 grade spread within the county I live in. Yikes.
We live in a very mixed economic area, and our public school district would be considered “middle class” (althoug it runs the gamut from dirt poor to well off). Our middle schools are absolutely awful … they are holding pens, rather than educational institutions. I tried so hard to get people mobilized to expect more when D was in middle school, but it just didn’t work. Not enough people cared. I moved the kids to private school when D was in high school and S was in middle school. S didn’t want to attend the private high school, so he went to school in an adjacent district. It was no farther to the out of district school than it was to the in district school … but what a world of difference! The economic makeup of the other district is somewhat more upper middle class, although they also have a mixed group (it’s the way things are in our area). I really believe the difference is parental expectations, which were higher (academically) in the neighboring district than in our own.
We spend in the bottom third for our county, and are majority minority about 1/2 a grade on the plus side. But there are adjacent wealthy districts that are 2 or more grades ahead, and others that are more than 1 grade behind. Our district is a little to the right of the middle in wealth. We run the gamut of students on welfare to a smaller contingent of quite wealthy. More of an issue is the economic segregation that happens starting in 8th grade when math and science gets tracked.
Very interesting chart. It might also be interesting to know the proportion of families that send their children to public schools, numbers of students exempted from testing or sent out of district because of disability, and numbers of homeschooled students when comparing districts.
Some districts in a regional area, most of which are majority-minority (grade level, % white, median family income):
+3.2, 52%, $205k
+2.5, 42%, $192k
+1.9, 78%, $147k
+1.8, 52%, $136k
+1.7, 18%, $105k
+1.3, 54%, $134k
+0.4, 8%, $92k
+0.2, 31%, $106k
+0.2, 31%, $72k
+0.2, 54%, $99k
+0.1, 29%, $67k
-0.4, 11%, $63k
-0.4, 25%, $75k
-0.4, 20%, $80k
-0.4, 9%, $84k
-0.5, 36%, $84k
-0.6, 20%, $83k
-0.7, 70%, $76k
-0.7, 7%, $83k
-0.8, 22%, $57k
-1.0, 13%, $75k
-1.3, 8%, $41k
-1.3, 2%, $56k
-1.7, 10%, $59k
-1.9, 8%, $58k
-2.1, 1%, $54k
Given how our median income lines up with results I think our district is actually doing relatively well. Does anyone know if you can locate a particular school district in the second chart with the disparity between races?
I don’t understand this. Why not apply the same “shoot the messenger” logic that people apply to SAT / ACT scores?
Since students in affluent school districts do better on these assessment tests that students from poorer school districts, why isn’t the conclusion that the assessment tests are flawed and biased? We can just say that the test results aren’t meaningful since they just measure parental income. That way we get to ignore the unpleasant data that we’re being confronted with.
Three districts near me( 1 borders 2 and 3 borders 2, i.e. 2 is between 3 and 1):
Kind of shocking to me.
I’m from a high-income suburb with excellent schools (sometimes mentioned here on CC). The students from the district I attended are a full 3.0 grade levels above average. Now, I do a lot of volunteer teaching at a district in a low income area. That school is 2.2 grade levels below average. So the difference between my school and the one where I now teach is more than 5 grade levels apart. I’ve had the sense when I was teaching that the things that the students were asked to do and were able to do were quite different from what I did in 5th grade, but I wasn’t sure if I just wasn’t remembering 5th grade very well. Still, I have a great impression of the schools where I volunteer–the teachers seem committed and experienced, facilities are good, they have a school garden, Smartboards in the classrooms, etc.
It’s interesting to look at this alongside the data from NPR about how much money schools spend per student (http://www.npr.org/2016/04/18/474256366/why-americas-schools-have-a-money-problem). The data suggest that it’s not as simple as the amount of money spent per student being higher in wealthier districts. If I look up the two districts mentioned above on the money map, I find that the amount of spending per student differs less than $1000. Both are in high cost of living states, with the wealthier school in the more expensive location, so that’s not it.
Parental education level is probably the biggest factor that is not written about in articles like these.
It does correlate to income, and also correlates to race and ethnicity (at least in part due to immigration patterns).
I think everyone who is informed knows this.
Then people do nothing to fix the problem, and then claim that top colleges are biased when they do not admit more students from these lower income districts.
Parents who are more involved, educated, and have higher expectations for their kids and their school is ground zero for improving. Throwing money at the problem will not work, as we have seen for years, if you do not have that.
@ucbalumnus , thanks for very informative statistics. Are there any studies done to relate parental education and their children’s achievements? I know of many people who chose to stay home for some reason (mainly taking care of the children) despite having higher education; thus dropping income level significantly.
wow looking just at some of the schools in our state, there is at least a 6 level spread among the sixth graders.
Re: #17
Don’t know of any specific studies. But there is a site http://school-ratings.com that includes parental education level along with ratings (1-10 scale), API scores, race/ethnicity, and free and reduced price lunch in California K-12 school listings.
For example, Francisco Middle in San Francisco has 57% Asian enrollment and a rating of 2, going against typical stereotypes; see http://school-ratings.com/school_details/38684786059844.html . But only 10% of students have college graduate parents.
Meanwhile, Mariano Castro Elementary in Mountain View has 72% Latino enrollment and a rating of 7; see http://school-ratings.com/school_details/43695916048003.html . But 43% of students have college graduate parents (including 29% with graduate school).