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Re: Fwd: [ARN-state] Poverty, Family Life and Academic Performance
The statistic that got my attention was 92 percent of children live with
both parents. What would happen if 92 percent of families stayed
together in the US?
Elsie
Susan Harman wrote:
This is, of course, what Richard Rothstein and others (me) have been
saying and writing for years. ETS and NYT are cutting edge again.
Susan
Begin forwarded message:
From: Bob Schaeffer <bobschaeffer@earthlink.net>
Date: Sat Dec 8, 2007 6:45:20 AM US/Pacific
To: ARN Main List <arn-l@interversity.org>, arn2-strategy
<arn2-strategy@yahoogroups.com>, ARN State
<ARN-state@yahoogroups.com>, CARE List <care@yahoogroups.com>,
FCARForum@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [ARN-state] Poverty, Family Life and Academic Performance
Reply-To: ARN-state@yahoogroups.com
IN GAPS AT SCHOOL, WEIGHING FAMILY LIFE
New York Times "Parenting" Column -- December 9, 2007
by Michael Winerip
<>
The federal No Child Left Behind law of 2002 rates schools based on how
students perform on state standardized tests, and if too many children
score poorly, the school is judged as failing.
But how much is really the school’s fault?
A new study by the Educational Testing Service — which develops and
administers more than 50 million standardized tests annually, including
the SAT — concludes that an awful lot of those low scores can be
explained by factors that have nothing to do with schools. The study,
“The Family: America’s Smallest School,” suggests that a lot of the
failure has to do with what takes place in the home, the level of
poverty and government’s inadequate support for programs that could
make
a difference, like high-quality day care and paid maternity leave.
The E.T.S. researchers took four variables that are beyond the control
of schools: The percentage of children living with one parent; the
percentage of eighth graders absent from school at least three times a
month; the percentage of children 5 or younger whose parents read to
them daily, and the percentage of eighth graders who watch five or more
hours of TV a day. Using just those four variables, the researchers
were
able to predict each state’s results on the federal eighth-grade
reading
test with impressive accuracy.
“Together, these four factors account for about two-thirds of the large
differences among states,” the report said. In other words, the states
that had the lowest test scores tended to be those that had the highest
percentages of children from single-parent families, eighth graders
watching lots of TV and eighth graders absent a lot, and the lowest
percentages of young children being read to regularly, regardless of
what was going on in their schools.
Which gets to the heart of the report: by the time these children start
school at age 5, they are far behind, and tend to stay behind all
through high school. There is no evidence that the gap is being closed.
“Kids start school from platforms of different heights and teachers
don’t have a magic wand they can wave to get kids on the same
platform,”
said Richard J. Coley, director of E.T.S.’s policy information center
and co-author of the report with Paul E. Barton, a senior researcher.
“If we’re really interested in raising overall levels of achievement
and
in closing the achievement gap, we need to pay as much attention to the
starting line as we do to the finish line.”
What’s interesting about the report — which combines E.T.S. studies
with
research on families from myriad sources, including the Census Bureau
and Child Trends research center — is how much we know, how often
government policy and parental behavior does not reflect that
knowledge,
and how stacked the odds are against so many children. (The study is at
www.ets.org/familyreport.)
Being raised by a single parent in itself steepens the odds
considerably. Keep in mind that findings are based on statistical
averages, and we all know people raised by a single parent who have
thrived; I count seven nieces, nephews and cousins in my own extended
family. But on average, the child with a single parent is 2.5 times
more
likely to repeat a grade. That child on average scores a third of a
standard deviation lower on tests — the difference between 500 and 463
on the SAT.
And the demographics are not promising. In 1980, 77 percent of American
children lived with two parents compared with 68 percent today. For
black children the numbers are more stark: 42 percent lived with both
parents in 1980, versus 35 percent today. In contrast, in Japan, 92
percent of children live with both parents.
Single parents on average will have less income and less time for a
child, given all the demands. While 11 percent of white children
live in
poverty, 36 percent of black children and 29 percent of Hispanic
children are poor. Half of black children live in families where no
parent has year-round full-time employment, according to the analysis.
By age 4 the average child in a professional family hears about 35
million more words than a child in a poor family. While 62 percent of
kindergartners from the richest 20 percent are read to at home every
day, 36 percent of kindergartners in the poorest 20 percent are read to
daily.
The report also found that 24 percent of white eighth graders spend at
least four hours in front of TV on a weekday compared with 59
percent of
black eighth graders.
These issues are intertwined in complex ways. A child watching five
hours of TV can be a case of neglect or it may mean a single parent is
trying to make ends meet by working two jobs and is not around to
supervise. Absence rates are higher for poor children, whose families
are more transient than wealthier families.
But whether it is a parent’s fault or the societal pressures on the
parent, the results are hard on the child: The average scores for black
and Hispanic children on reading and math assessments at the start of
kindergarten are 20 percent lower than for white children.
And when those children are ready to apply to college, one of the
surest
predictors of how they will perform on the SAT is their family’s
income:
for every $10,000 of additional family income, the SAT score climbs an
average of about 10 points, according to statistics from the College
Board.
The report describes how much we rely on child care from an early age —
half of 2-year-olds are in some kind of nonparental care — and how much
worse that care is for poor and minority children. According to the
report, poor children are twice as likely to be in low quality care as
middle and upper class children, black children more than twice as
likely as white children.
And it is black families who rely on day care most: 63 percent,
compared
with 49 percent of whites and 44 percent of Asians. Says Mr. Coley,
“Our
day care system may be reinforcing the gap rather than closing it.”
Another way to support parents of young children is paid leave when a
child is born, which is routine in most of the world, but not in the
United States.
According to Dr. Jody Heymann, director of the Institute of Health and
Social Policy at McGill University, 172 of the 176 countries she
surveyed this year offer guaranteed paid leave to women who have just
had babies. The four that do not? Liberia, Papua New Guinea, Swaziland
and the United States.
The United States guarantees 12 weeks of unpaid leave under the federal
Family and Medical Leave Act, but many parents do not qualify for even
that, since employers with fewer than 50 workers are exempt.
To better support young families, California in 2004 became the first
state to pass a law providing paid leave for new parents. A few more
states, including New Jersey and New York, are considering similar
legislation.
Mr. Coley believes this kind of government support is necessary if we
are serious about closing the gap. “We don’t seem to get it,” he said.
“Or maybe we think we can’t afford it, I don’t know.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/09/nyregion/nyregionspecial2/
09Rparenting.html
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