^Thanks
I know of one study that might be interesting. It was a study of SAT scores of California residents who applied to UC.
The study did a multivariate regression of family income, parental education, and URM status against SAT scores.
The “standardized regression coefficient” for parental education was 0.27.
The “standardized regression coefficient” for family income was 0.18.
(This means that the “pure” effect of a one standard deviation increase in parental education level is to increase SAT scores by .27 of a standard deviation. The “pure” effect of a one standard deviation increase in log family income is to increase SAT scores by .18 of a standard deviation.)
Parental education level was the most significant factor. Family income was about 2/3’s as important.
This article has a few more graphs:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/03/05/these-four-charts-show-how-the-sat-favors-the-rich-educated-families/
It shows that the difference in average SAT scores between having parents whose highest degree is a high school diploma versus a bachelor’s degree is the same as changing your family income from $30,000 / year to $130,000 / year. Of course, these graphs show only the single variable effects and over the last 60 years there has been a very strong (and growing) correlation between education and income.
I think almost all social science studies have converged on very similar results. Among US families (controlling for race), about 50% of the variation in almost all measures of K-12 academic achievement seems to be explained by inheritable factors. The remaining 50% seems to be explained by environmental factors, a number of which are clearly related to household income and education level.
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.
But those choosing to stay home do not have a spouse earning minimum wage, most likely, so their income is probably still upper middle class (even if they may not think so). I chose to stay home for many years, and it sure didn’t feel like we were doing well financially when our income was cut in half … but the truth was that we WERE “well off.” Had we not been able to put food on the table, pay the mortgage, clothe the kids I would have had to go to work. I think that is probably how it is for most families.
Idk what income has to do with anything. A library is free. This is a culture issue at all spectrums. Most low income parents don’t care; school is a baby sitter. And too many middle class parents care more about sports than honors and AP courses.
A kid’s IQ is correlated with parental IQ. Gladwell explains it best, look it up. Higher IQ parents will often have higher educational attainment. It isn’t the grad degrees that benefit children, it is the genes. And people with higher cognitive skills will move higher up the ladder and will marry each other and clump together in neighborhoods. 'Twas ever thus.
Regardless of where you are on the “nature versus nurture” argument, high educational attainment parents, on average, tend to be favorable on both “nature” and “nurture” with respect to educational attainment of their kids.
Ben Carson and his older brother would have been losers had their low-income illiterate mother not made them go to the library every week. Instead they became an MD and chemical engineer, respectively.
Low to middle middle class suburban kids could be doctors and lawyers at a higher clip if their parents were less obsessed with softball and swimming and football.
The biggest advantage of living in a high-income/high achievement district is not the increased spending, but what the money is spent on. Our distract has similar spending per student as some nearby districts, but because the district has very few students that under-perform grade level, the district is free to concentrate on a variety of honors and AP classes rather than the remedial classes other nearby districts have to offer because their student populations are different. Increased spending won’t make much of a difference, it is the involvement and expectations of the parents that drive high-performing schools.
@snarlatron, more assortive mating now even than back in the days when the vast majority of women didn’t go to college and a guy with just a strong back and a willingness to work could earn a steady paycheck.
Seriously? You don’t know what income has to do with anything?
Well, let’s start with the library. Sure, the library’s free but getting there is not. I don’t have any libraries within walking distance and public transportation? Ha, what’s that? That doesn’t exist around here.
Then let’s continue with nutrition. Have you ever tried to work with kids who are so hungry that they can’t concentrate because their stomach is rumbling so loud? It’s useless. They’re not hearing a word you’re saying.
Lower income is usually associated with lower quality schools. Not always, of course, but generally.
Those with lower incomes have less access to high quality, educational daycare. They have less access to enrichment activities. Less access to books, educational toys, enrichment experiences (going to the zoo, for example).
The list goes on. I can’t believe anyone in this day and age can say with a straight face that they don’t know what income has to do with anything.
And to say low income parents don’t care is disgusting and vile. I’ve been around low income parents most of my life. They care just as much as higher income parents and let’s not pretend that higher income people don’t use tvs as a babysitter. Hell, I knew a lot of higher income kids who barely had relationships with one of their parents (usually dad) because they were often traveling for work. They would’ve gladly traded some of the nicer things in life to have memories of dad at their birthday parties.
Thank you @al2simon. The graphs made the picture very clear!
@kelsmom , I am glad that it worked for you.
One of the issues with the original survey is that the data is reported by elementary school district, and the method for determining schools districts is not consistent for the entire country. For example, Illinois has a number of very highly ranked districts and very poorly ranked districts. In Illinois, the boundaries for elementary districts are based on townships, so there are a great many small districts reported. Look up Winnetka Ill. 36. This is a very small elementary school district in northern Cook County with median income levels of $222,000 which is 2.5 times the grade level. It is one of the best performing districts in the country.
However, other states like Florida report the information for elementary schools on a county level, so the big disparities in income and achievement levels like you see in states like Illinois and Massachusetts don’t show up.
With tracking the income classes really get divided starting in 8th grade in our system. But yes, having smart parents made a huge difference to our kids. Whether it was having computers in the house early (with a Dad writing his own programs), discussions about black holes or urban planning or a house with over 1000 books, our kids had a step up that most kids just didn’t have.
Re: #32
In California, school districts are often loosely associated with cities, but their boundaries do not necessarily coincide with the city boundaries. Sometimes, a school district may cover most of more than one city (more common for high school districts); sometimes, a city may have more than one school district, each of which covers a substantial portion of the city.
The NYT article said about the study:
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I searched the Stanford CEPA paper. It does not state this anywhere. In fact, the paper never once mentions the word “asian”. The paper says it analyzed 200 million test scores of middle school students in the period 2009-2012 in several hundred largest school districts in the US. I would imagine that states like CA & NY would fall in that description. CA, a state with a population of 39 million people is 13% asian. Surely the researchers could have found a dozen Kims, Nguyens & Wangs to include in the study.
I wonder why asians were glaringly excluded from this study, since they have outsized levels of scholastic achievement?
I admittedly have not read the entire thread and have not dug through the article in detail, but I’m suspicious of the methodology and categorization being used here. First of all, which “reading and math test score data” did they analyze? They don’t specify. PARCC? If so, I call a huge BS. That test is no where near ready for use by anyone for any level of measuring anything reliable … other than specific test prep. In our school district, (Howard County, MD), supposedly white students are 2.5 years ahead of the average; Hispanic are 0.1 year ahead, and black students are -0.1. Our GT program puts kids supposedly 2 years ahead. For the average white student to be 2.5 years ahead would mean that almost all of our white kids are in the GT program (which is not true), or that our GT program really puts kids more than 2 years ahead of the national average, and our “normal” track is also ahead of average. And if that is true, then I weep for the future of our nation, because our national average must truly suck. I also find it suspicious that data for Asian Americans is “not available” … um … why? I am quite sure that if you plotted Asian Americans on the graph for Ho Co MD, it would be a smaller bubble at probably something like +3 or more, probably around the same or maybe slightly lower socioeconomic level than whites. Our Asian community is very tightly knit and has a very high rate of outside tutoring (e.g., Kumon) from early on in elementary school, regardless of socioeconomics.
If your Asian community has lots of people of Chinese or Indian origin, be aware that immigration patterns have selected immigrants from China and India to have high educational attainment. For example, about 50% of immigrants from China and about 70% of immigrants from India have bachelor’s or higher degrees (compare to about 6% in China and around a quarter in India and the US overall). So, before you make any conclusions based on the more visible characteristics of race and ethnicity, take note of the selection effect by immigration with respect to ethnic groups where many are immigrants or only a generation removed from immigration.
@OldFashioned1 has a good point when he/she said:
“…This is a culture issue at all spectrums. Most low income parents don’t care; school is a baby sitter. And too many middle class parents care more about sports than honors and AP courses.”
My take on this issue is this:
It IS a culture issue. But it’s not necessarily a racial or ethnic culture issue. It has to do with the culture in each individual FAMILY, regardless of ethnic heritage.
Consider this - my kids go to a nationally ranked charter school. The high school made the top 10 public high schools in the country this year. Their school is ~43% minority and from a household income perspective, there’s a lot of variety. There are families who are very well off and there are families who are not. There are even refugee kids who attend this school, where the parents never graduated from high school and are doing menial labor-intensive jobs in order to put food on the table & scrape by. The refugee kids’ parents didn’t even speak English a couple of years ago, yet their kids are thriving.
So what is the common denominator?
All of the parents care a LOT about education. The parents do what it takes to help their kids get the best education they can. So when the school’s administration sends information home saying, “This is what you need to do at home in order for your child to be able to complete their homework,” the parents do it. They turn the TV off. They create a supportive learning environment at home. They make sure that their kids actually do the homework. They pay attention to what their kids’ grades are. When their kids are struggling, they reach out and talk to the teachers.
And, in turn, the school does whatever it takes to help those students succeed. In the case of 1 refugee family, 1 of their kids was failing. The refugee family got paired up with a refugee relief organization in town. That person, as it turns out, graduated from that charter school and he went with the parents to each teacher conference and acted as translator. The school arranged all sorts of extra help before and after school for the student and it worked.
This same school offers a study skills & organizational skills camp in the summer before school starts. If you can’t afford to pay for it, the school boosters organization pays for it for needy families. My DD was taught how to take notes, how to study for a test, how to organize your notebooks & your locker, how to be a responsible student.
@ucbalumnus - I’m not sure I understand what point you’re trying to make. Regardless of their level of education or how long they’ve been here, I don’t understand why Asian Americans were not included. And our Asian American community runs the gamut from new-immigrants from China, but more from Korea, to those from a variety of Asian backgrounds who have been here for a couple of generations. When I say “tightly knit” … that varies too, but we have pretty well defined pockets within the county where the Korean population is quite high, for example … to the point that there are Korean supermarkets in the middle of suburbia, and some families where the parents don’t speak English and rely on the kids to translate for them. Socioeconomic status varies. I wasn’t making any assumptions about anything. As others have pointed out, regardless of socioeconomic status or race the biggest thing that seems to make a difference in childrens’ performance is the value and importance their parents put on education … and Asian Americans in my experience across the board do this, regardless of whether they’re doctors or running the local dry cleaners; whether they’ve been here for multiple generations or are new immigrants.