From the article: “Part of the answer might be that in such communities, students and parents from wealthier families are constantly competing for ever more academic success. As parents hire tutors, enroll their children in robotics classes and push them to solve obscure math problems, those children keep pulling away from those who can’t afford the enrichment.”
It seems to me that the NYT agenda here is to greatly oversimplify the problem. I don’t see wealth as a primary driver of student performance. I am sure that the wealth gap contributes, but I also know a lot of wealthy parents who don’t do anything to supplement their kids, or even challenge them to take even one Honors or AP course, because they “don’t want to push them too hard,” but then they will spend endless money on travel sports and fancy vacations. They just don’t make their kids education a priority.
It seems to me that it would be easy to get at the answer by looking at what parents of higher performing students do differently than parents of low performing students in the same district, when you control for wealth and IQ. I think they would find a few common themes that are not very expensive to do, but take time and effort on the part of the parents, would explain a huge amount of the difference.
The more successful kids:
- Are closer to one or both parents and have received more of their parents’ time and attention over time
- Were talked to and read to more, and from an earlier age
- Were taught to put a higher premium on education
- Were taught to read earlier and have spent more time reading
- Were taught to put more importance on math and taught that math success comes through practice not ability
- Were taught that effort matters more than ability and that success comes from hard work
- Were given more encouragement to be curious and ask a lot of questions from an early age, especially “Why?”