It is a well-known fact that children from affluent families tend to do better in school. Yet the income divide has received far less attention from policy makers and government officials than gaps in student accomplishment by race.

Now, in analyses of long-term data published in recent months, researchers are finding that while the achievement gap between white and black students has narrowed significantly over the past few decades, the gap between rich and poor students has grown substantially during the same period.

“We have moved from a society in the 1950s and 1960s, in which race was more consequential than family income, to one today in which family income appears more

determinative of educational success than race,” said Sean F. Reardon, a Stanford University sociologist. Professor Reardon is the author of a study that found that the gap in standardized test scores between affluent and low-income students had grown by about 40 percent since the 1960s, and is now double the testing gap between blacks and whites.

In another study, by researchers from the University of Michigan, the imbalance between rich and poor children in college completion — the single most important predictor of success in the work force — has grown by about 50 percent since the late 1980s.

The changes are tectonic, a result of social and economic processes unfolding over many decades. The data from most of these studies end in 2007 and 2008, before the recession’s full impact was felt. Researchers said that based on experiences during past recessions, the recent downturn was likely to have aggravated the trend.

“With income declines more severe in the lower brackets, there’s a good chance the recession may have widened the gap,” Professor Reardon said. In the study he led, researchers analyzed 12 sets of standardized test scores starting in 1960 and ending in 2007. He compared children from families in the 90th percentile of income — the equivalent of around $160,000 in 2008, when the study was conducted — and children from the 10th percentile, $17,500 in 2008. By the end of that period, the achievement gap by income had grown by 40 percent, he said, while the gap between white and black students, regardless of income, had shrunk substantially.

Both studies were first published last fall in a book of research, “Whither Opportunity?” compiled by the Russell Sage Foundation, a research center for social sciences, and the Spencer Foundation, which focuses on education. Their conclusions, while familiar to a small core of social sciences scholars, are now catching the attention of a broader audience, in part because income inequality has been a central theme this election season.

The connection between income inequality among parents and the social mobility of their children has been a focus of President Obama as well as some of the Republican presidential candidates.

One reason for the growing gap in achievement, researchers say, could be that wealthy parents invest more time and money than ever before in their children (in weekend sports, ballet, music lessons, math tutors, and in overall involvement in their children’s schools), while lower-income families, which are now more likely than ever to be headed by a single parent, are increasingly stretched for time and resources. This has been particularly true as more parents try to position their children for college, which has become ever more essential for success in today’s economy.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/10/education/education-gap-grows-between-rich-and-poor-studies-show.html?_r=1&hp

 

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Yes

Depends.

 

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cant just blame it on income level, you can blame it on the failed welfare system that many states make a profit off.

what am I speaking off, well since the feds pushed the administration of welfare food stamps and other safety net programs down to state, it creates incentive for state departments to get as many cases as the can. why because for every new file a case worker opens the state receives xx mount of federal dollars to administer the program.

its common for school counselors to tell teen girls that get pregnant to drop out and we will sign you up for public housing welfare foodstamps etc....

 

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The affluent understand that you can make more money with your brain than you can with your brawn, so they tend to demand academic excellence with their children.

First of all, the children obviously have no control over their economic situation, stupid or not. Are their parents poor because they are stupid? Sometimes, probably. Stupid, lazy, uneducated, poor choices, certainly those things are a factor.

Why the growing gap? I would say that there has been a further decline in the overall effectiveness of public education, as well as a correspondingly growing gap between public school quality in affluent areas vs. in poor areas. I'm assuming that the wealthy children being tested are also public school educated, but if not obviously private schools vs. public there has always been a big gap.

Also if you want to point to things that kids may be doing instead of learning that has arisen over this time period, I think you have to consider computer use and the internet as a recreational activity. Way more kids spend their time on facebook and other activities like that, particularly since this is something low-income families are more likely to be able to afford vs. other activities and they tend to have a lot less supervision to limit that time.

 

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no body tells dumb ass !@#$ to get pregnant, they are stupid to get pregnant in the first place. how stupid can people be?

 

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Always great to have internet experts with no real knowledge of the fields talking out of their ass

As to the gap, I think the trend likely doesn't show a growing inequality, in the 1950s/60s poverty may have even been a larger issue.

But higher education is a much larger goal now than then back then. The wealthy are more universally striving to succeed educationally. There is also a growing movement to "get into the best schools", with the competition starting earlier. So families have more incentive to excel in school mark-wise.

 

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try living in a bible belt state where condoms and birth control is evil and they believe that abstinence is the only true from of birth control. many of the high schools around here dont even have sex ed.

trust me there are more bible thumpers in the US then non bible thumpers.

I got in a heated debate with this older lady in child development class about putting my teen daughter on birth control when she hits 15-16. She says so you support your teen daughter having sex? I said hell no but look at reality, I lost my virginity at 15 and by 16 I was having sex regularly. We debated back and forth and my final statement was do you want to pay more taxes to support these teen mother and their children? People fail to realize that social services cost money and it comes from tax dollars.

Never mind the fact that having a child at that age severely hampers their ability to become a productive adult.

 

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Poor people in civilized capitalist societies are poor because they are lazy minded and take the easiest way out in life. For instance, it is easier to go get a shovel and start shoveling shiz for $10 an hour then go home and get drunk on cheap liquor and beat up your kids if you haven't left them already, than it is to shovel your shiz all day, then go to school at night and learn how to write computer code in the evening so you can get the eff out of the ditch. Many poor people could get out of poverty by making better use of their down time BUT IT IS TOO HARD WHEN YOU ARE MENTALLY LAZY.


Also, I have been hearing about this "growing gap" for 40+ years now. Isn't everyone besides just one guy poor by now? Or is the "growing gap" some juked up statistical nonsense?