<p>^^
It shows valuing education is as important as high income in determining test score.</p>
<p>Actually, it may well relate to the OP. Immigrants come to this country with very different levels of education. Not all Asian-Americans do equally well, and the difference has more to do with parental educational achievements than income (or wealth) per se. </p>
<p>In more general terms, I do think that parental educational levels are more closely associated with SAT success than wealth.</p>
<p>Bomgeedad,I agree it is important, however I don't believe the stat that you are referring to illustrates that mindset in and of itself. I don't know what specific stat you are referring to but am quite familiar with comperable ones. Once again one may get into the correlation/causation debate.</p>
<p>
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In more general terms, I do think that parental educational levels are more closely associated with SAT success than wealth.
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<p>In general, isn't parental educational attainment associated with income? Better education, better economic opportunities, more income, more opportunity for discretionary income to build wealth. Taking lessons learned and imparting that wisdom on your kids. Having the money to facilitate those lessons(better schools, enrichment programs, associations with those that share that mindset) learned is huge in testing outcomes.</p>
<p>In general that is true, but not necessarily. It depends on the situation of the parents at the time their children are in high school. For example, in the 1980s, a large number of highly educated Soviet Jews immigrated to this country. In the Boston area, they very often drove cabs (I once had the pleasure of discussing French and Russian literature in French with a taxi-driver who had been an engineer in the USSR).<br>
Another example is that of immigrants from the PRC whose children become very successful academically within a few years of arriving in the US, regardless of the income or occupation of their parents. Invariably, the parents were well educated in the PRC even if they are not fluent in English or familiar with the American school system. The same analysis can be applied to children of Vietnamese immigrants. Those that became academically successful within a few years of arriving were often children of refugees who had been well educated within their own country. I knew a family in which the father, once a prominent figure in his country, had become a night porter in an apartment complex. But his many children became doctors, engineers, computer scientists. But there were also Vietnamese children who did not do well academically. One young man once told me that in his town which was one of the first communities to accept Vietnamese refugees in sizable numbers, the Vietnamese kids were either vals and sals or on the verge of dropping out. The difference was not in the income level of the parents but in their own educational achievements in their home country (most could not speak English adequately) and their aspirations for their children. By contrast, the majority of immigrants from Latin America have much lower educational levels.</p>
<p>But that is precisely why I quoted that low income students from certain group can outscore high income students from other group.</p>
<p>Let's look at someone else which is definitely not statistics, inspiration stories on magazines about how some students who came from groups that are not expected to succeed academically can overcome the obstacles. Most of the time behind them there are parent who highly value education. One story is that the girl whose mother required her to write a "journal" everyday even when she was just beginning elementary school and showed it to the mother. Only much later she finds out her mother is illiterate.</p>
<p>I posted at the same time as marite. I just want to add that even better example is that the elite college's black student population are full of students from children of African immigrants.</p>
<p>I think many are also from the Caribbean countries.</p>
<p>^Yes. Again, refugees from Papa Duvallier's Haiti were generally well educated (another opportunity to speak French with taxi drivers!).</p>
<p>True, also from Caribbean countries, I forget to mention that. I think they often benefit from the British education system that was in place.</p>
<p>I think it is worthwhile to reread xiggi's earlier posting about a book that discusses the factor about high SAT scores.</p>
<p><a href="My%20favorite%20part,%20personally,%20is%20that%2032%%20of%20students%20taking%20the%20SAT%20report%20that%20they%20are%20in%20the%20top%2010%%20of%20their%20class--and%20another%2026%%20say%20they%20are%20in%20the%20next%2010%.">quote=dmd77 #55</a>
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Keep in mind that not all high school students take the SATs. I would seriously doubt that even 50% of the students from my kids' public high schools would have opted to take the SATs -- in fact, it is quite likely that the only ones taking the tests are in the top 30%-40% of students. So it is quite plausible that more than half of SAT takers are, indeed, in the top 20% of their high school classes. It is probably relatively rare for students in the bottom half of their high school classes or even bottom 2/3rds of most public schools to even be attempting the test. Most of those kids are not headed off toward competitive four-year colleges -- they are entering the work force, attending local community colleges, joining the military, or enrolling in any of the hundreds of public colleges and small private colleges that essentially have open enrollment.</p>
<p>According to this document: <a href="http://www.collegeboard.com/prod_downloads/about/news_info/cbsenior/yr2007/cbs-2007_release.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://www.collegeboard.com/prod_downloads/about/news_info/cbsenior/yr2007/cbs-2007_release.pdf</a>
48% of high school graduates took the SAT last year. (Yes, I noted the use of the word graduates.)</p>
<p>If you assume that all of those are in the top half of the class (which might be true in public schools where many students don't take the SAT but would not be true in private schools where every student takes the SAT, and so this represents the worst case), one would still expect that fewer than 32% would be in the top 10% of their class. In fact, I would expect that 10% of those 3.1 million HS graduates would be in the top 10% of their class... for 310,000 students. If all of those took the SAT, that would mean that 310,000/1,500,000 or about 20% should self-report as in the top 10%... unless there's enormous grade inflation in the schools. Which is why I'm laughing. </p>
<p>Even if you assume that the 3.1 M graduates represent the top 80% of students, you still don't get to 32%, by the way. You'd get to around 24%.</p>
<p>
That hits the nail on the head. </p>
<p>To all you parents who responded to my sentiments with comments like, "Because the long work hours would interfere with their studies and social life, I wouldn't want them to have to work more hours in order to buy the books" or - We send checks for food "because we do not pay for a food plan".</p>
<p>Try to understand: some kids don't have this money (mine don't) -and many parents do not have the financial ability to make those choices.They don't help with the cost of text books and food because they don't have the money. Maybe some of those kids have better financial aid that closes the gap. Then again, maybe some of them are like mine, with single moms and non-contributing fathers whose paper income leads to a financial aid gap of many thousands of dollars -- which is why you can very often have a child of a parent earning $35K year attending a "100% need" school with an expected parental contribution of $15K. </p>
<p>My d. qualified for a Pell grant last year. My expected payment was more than $10K over and above the FAFSA EFC. For the coming year, the amount has almost doubled, because we don't get the sibling-in-college break any more. So my expected parental contribution jumped from $12K to $20K. </p>
<p>I don't CARE if other families make more money or their kids have an easier time. But I do CARE that they and their kids are oblivious and disdainful of the difficulties others face. I'm not worried about MY kids, either -- I use my kids as an example, but I personally think that the work experience, real world employment contacts, and maturity gained from taking on greater responsibility for their own lives puts my kids at an advantage. </p>
<p>I just think there is a clear divide between the relatively small segment of kids at private colleges who need to rely on earnings to meet basic needs as well as for extras, and those who don't -- and that divide is expressed in the lack of understanding that anyone could possibly face those difficulties. It's like living on another planet - with a huge divide between those who can resolve financial problems with a phone call home and those who can't.</p>
<p>To the parent who said: "My kids don't hang with people who do social things they can't afford." </p>
<p>That's precisely the point: there is a monetary and social divide, and "afford" is often the defining characteristic for who hangs with whom. To say that your kid chooses or prefers to hang with kids who are either like him or sensitive to his needs doesn't erase the fact that there is a divide -- it's not like the kids who ours choose not to hang out with don't exist.</p>
<p>
Well, you really do have to look at those high school graduation rates, estimated to be about 71% - see <a href="http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/cr_baeo.htm%5B/url%5D">http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/cr_baeo.htm</a> - So you have 48% of 71% taking the test (34% of high schoolers overall) -- the 32% of those who report that they are in the top 10% comes to 10.9% all high schoolers. The fact that SAT-takers are not drawn randomly from the overall pool of high school graduates makes that figure seem kind of low, actually. </p>
<p>If you include the 26% who say they are in the top 20%, you have 58% total of kids reporting that they are in the top 20% -- numerically those kids represent only 19.8% of the overall number of SAT test takers as compared to overall number of high-school attendees (including non-graduates). So I'm wondering where the other 0.2% of top-20 kids went.</p>
<p>Calmom--I don't understand why paying for food separately instead of the food plan which would cost more represents a choice from wealth. My kid is on FA too; the FA budget is the same whether we pay for the food plan or pay the food separately. It would cost us more to keep him on the food plan. Your objection makes no sense.</p>
<p>I also don't understand your problem with my kids not hanging with people who do things they can't afford. Look, you can't be friends with everyone. Some of their friends are wealthy, most are not. But there are thousands of people to be friends with at most schools--losing the jetsetting class is no loss at all.</p>
<p>You throw around words like "disdain" which obviously do not reflect what I have written. Your D has also quite obviously grown up in a more upper middle class environment, with more privileges than mine--maybe sometime if you're visiting her in NYC, you can come over to Jersey and see our neighborhood, and find out why our home equity doesn't count for us much as yours does. I can guarantee it's not a neighborhood you'd want to live in.</p>
<p>I have also said that my kid works hard for what he needs for school, just like yours does. My D washed dishes throughout her school years. The parents who you are addressing have all said that their kids work and are also on FA.</p>
<p>So who are you arguing with?</p>
<p>Calmon, Perhaps the social divide is accentuated by being in NYC, where there is just so much more venues to spend money on. In my experience, family who pay full cost of children's college don't usually provide a large allowance. Such kids usually work during school terms, and it is hard to pick out among those work who are on FA.</p>
<p>Garland, you wrote I don't understand why paying for food separately instead of the food plan which would cost more represents a choice from wealth.. My point is that many parents can't afford to send their kids any money for food. If you say you send your kid money for food "because it costs less than the food plan" -- that's a rationalization for why you choose to send money, but it fails to acknowledge the fact that I said some parents don't have money to send. It doesn't matter that it is cheaper than the food plan, they can't pay for the food plan either. It's no a choice of paying $X or $X+ -- the parents have 0 to offer in either case, the kids work to earn what they need. </p>
<p>You said, *I also don't understand your problem with my kids not hanging with people who do things they can't afford. * I didn't say I had any problem at all with that, I said that represents an economic divide. You can't say that low income kids on campus choose to hang out with other low income kids because they can't afford to hang out with the rich kids, and at the same time pretend that there are no economic/class divisions. As long as the who-to-hang-out-with decision is based even in part on affordability, it's a decision made as a result of economic disparity.</p>
<p>As to your other comments about my neighborhood, I don't have a clue as to what you think my neighborhood is like, but the point is (a) I am not asking for sympathy, I am pointing out that there are other kids who are far worse off than my kids, and I seem to be unique in that I an my kids are not in denial as to their existence and the problems they face, (b) I am a single parent and I earn about $50K a year. According to the financial aid award from my d's college for next year, the "parental contribution" is about $20K, i.e. 40% of my pre-tax income. I can't handle that. So my d. will be paying some part of that through her earnings.</p>
<p>I am surprised that college students are so keenly aware of an economic divide among themselves as opposed to economic differences and choose friends on the basis of income. S's friends run the gamut from the very well off to the low income on full ride. I've met them and they seem very comfortable with themselves and with one another. This summer I found out that their most popular restaurant outing is to one where you can eat dinner for less than $5.00.</p>
<p>My son says, "you parents talk about this more than we (they) do or care. After the first few weeks we(they) all look, dress, eat and smell like homeless people. Our clothes don't match, but we are happy".</p>