Chapter one: social class, student achievement, and the
black-white achievement gap
- Socioeconomic conditions are the major contributing factors in the black-white achievement gap, genetics play a small role
- There is a number of economic factors that contribute to the gap:
- Savings for college: children's awareness that their families have resources for college can influence their confidence in continued education.
- Home equity: Strong predictor of whether students graduate once enrolled in college.
- Access to stable rental housing: A recent statistical analysis showed that if the average mobility of black students was reduced to that of white students', 14% of the black-white score gap would be ELIMINATED.
- Childrearing vary between socioeconomic groups with regard to:
- Personal philosophies: How parents value education affects how chlidren value it
- Conversational styles: Educated parents speak using larger vocabularies and complex sentences in front of children and draw them into adult conversations, allowing them to develop intellectually, whereas lower-class children are just given orders.
- Literary practices: College-educated parents tend to read to their children at night and expose them to a greater number of books.
- Role modeling: Parents who model reading for pleasure and who rationally entertain the questions of children often produce curious, intelligent students.
- Parental Social Networks: White collar workers tend to associate with each other, blue collar with each other, etc.
- Healthcare that closely follows socioeconomic lines is also a major factor in student success, regarding:
- Vision
- Hearing
- Dental care
- Lead poisoning
- Asthma
- Immunizations
- Birth Weight
- Maternal Smoking and Alcohol Use
- Ethnically and Racially patterned cultural expectations of education
- Athletics and enrichment experiences in the summer and after class