The Social and Economic Realitites that Challenge All Schools

There is a commonplace belief in America today that poverty and race can't "cause" low achievement and, therefore, that low-performing schools must be failing to teach disadvantaged children adequately. After all, many people reason, there are some highly successful students from lower-class backgrounds. Their success seems to prove that social class cannot be what impedes most disadvantaged students.

Yet the success of some lower-class students proves nothing about the power of schools to close the average gap in achievement between low-income and middle-class children, or between black and white, or immigrant and native children. In every social group, there are low and high achievers alike. On average, the achievement of low-income students is below that of middle-class students, but there are always some middle-class students who achieve below typical low-income levels. Similarly, some low-income students achieve above typical middle-class levels.

Widely repeated accounts of schools that somehow elicit consistently high achievement from lower-class children almost always turn out, upon examination, to be flawed. In some cases, these "schools that beat the odds" are highly selective, enrolling only the most able or most motivated lower-class children. In other cases, they are not truly lower-class schools — for example, schools enrolling children who qualify for subsidized lunches but whose parents are exceptionally well educated. In other cases, schools define "high" achievement at such a low level that all students can reach it, despite big gaps that remain at more meaningful levels.

It seems plausible that if some children can defy the demographic odds, all can, but that belief reflects a reasoning whose naiveté we reject in other policy areas. In human affairs where multiple causation is typical, causes are not disproved by exceptions. Tobacco firms once claimed that smoking does not cause cancer because some people smoke without getting cancer. We now consider such reasoning specious; although some people can smoke to excess without harm, smoking is clearly dangerous. Yet, despite

CLASS BACKGROUNDS INFLUENCE RELATIVE ACHIEVEMENT EVERYWHERE, THE INABILITTY OF SCHOOLS TO OVERCOME THE DISADVANTAGE OF LESS-LITERATE HOMES IS NOT A PECULIAR AMERICAN FAILURE BUT A UNIVERSAL REALITY.

such understanding, quite sophisticated people often proclaim that the success of some poor children proves that social disadvantage does not cause low achievement.

Partly, our confusion stems from failing to examine the concrete ways that social class actually affects learning. Describing these may help to make their influence more obvious — and help explain why the achievement gap can be narrowed, not by privatization alone, but only when school improvement in both public and private sectors is complemented by social and economic reform.

Parental Occupation and Student Achievement
Consider how parents of different social classes tend to raise children. Young children of educated parents are read to more consistently and encouraged to read more to themselves when they are older. Most children whose parents have college degrees are read to daily before they begin kindergarten, but few children whose parents have only a high school diploma or less receive the benefit of daily reading.

A five-year-old who enters school recognizing some words and who has turned the pages of many stories will be easier to teach than one who has rarely held a book. The second child can be taught, but, with equally high expectations and effective teaching, the first will be more likely to pass an age-appropriate reading test than the second. So the achievement gap begins.

If a society with such differences wants all children, irrespective of social class, to have the same chance for high achievement, it has to ensure that lower-class children enter school having the same familiarity with books as middle-class children. This requires improving the quality of settings where we provide early childhood care, beginning in infancy.

Some people acknowledge the impact of such differences but find it hard to accept that good schools should have so difficult a time overcoming them. This would be easier to understand if Americans had a broader international perspective on education. Class backgrounds influence relative achievement everywhere. The inability of schools to overcome the disadvantage of less-literate homes is not a peculiar American failure but a universal reality. The number of books in students' homes, for example, consistently predicts their test scores in almost every country. Turkish immigrant students suffer from an achievement gap in Germany, as do Algerians in France, as do Caribbean, African, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi pupils in Great Britain, and as do Okinawans and low-caste Buraku in Japan.

An international survey of 15-year-olds, conducted in 2000, found a strong relationship in almost every nation between parental occupation and student performance. The gap between the literacy of children of the highest-status workers (such as doctors, professors, and lawyers) and the lowest-status workers (such as waiters and waitresses, taxi drivers, and mechanics) was even greater in Germany and the United Kingdom than it was in the United States.

After reviewing these results, the U.S. Department of Education concluded that "most participating countries do not differ significantly from the United States in terms of the strength of the relationship between socioeconomic status and literacy in any subject." Remarkably, the department published this conclusion at the same time that it was guiding through Congress the No Child Left Behind Act that demands that every school in the nation abolish social class differences in achievement by 2014.

Other Parenting Factors
Urging less-educated, lower-income parents to read to children can't fully compensate for differences in school readiness. Children who see parents read in order to solve their own problems or for entertainment are more likely to want to read themselves. Parents who bring reading material home from work demonstrate by example to children that reading is a seamless activity that bridges work and leisure. Parents who read to children but don't read for themselves send a different message.

How parents read to children is as important as whether they do, and the social science literature confirms that, on average, more educated parents read aloud differently. When working-class parents read aloud, they are more likely to tell children to pay attention without interruptions or to sound out words or name letters. When they ask children about a story, the questions are more likely to be factual, asking for names of objects or memory of events.

More literate parents are more likely to ask creative, interpretive, or connective questions, such as "What do you think will happen next?" "Does that remind you of what we did yesterday?" Middle-class parents are more likely to read aloud to have fun, to start conversations, or as an entree to the world outside. Their children learn that reading is enjoyable and are more motivated to read in school.

Educated parents are more likely to conduct pretend conversations with infants and toddlers, long before infants can understand the language. They may ask infants about their needs, then provide answers ("Are you ready for a nap now? Yes, you are, aren't you?"). Such indirect instruction is really an invitation for a child to work through reasoning behind an order and to internalize it. Middle-class parents implicitly begin academic instruction for infants with such indirect guidance.

The cause of these social class differences in childrearing is not difficult to understand, but more difficult to affect. Parents whose professional occupations entail authority and responsibility typically believe more strongly that they can affect their environments and solve problems. At work, they explore alternatives and negotiate compromises. They naturally express these personality traits at home when they design activities in which children figure out solutions for themselves. Even the youngest middle-class children practice traits that make academic success more likely when they negotiate what to wear or to eat. When middle-class parents give orders, the parents are more likely to explain why the rules are reasonable.

Parents whose jobs entail following orders or doing routine tasks show less sense of efficacy. They are less likely to encourage children to negotiate over clothing or food and more likely to give directions without extended discussion. Following orders, after all, is how they themselves behave at work. Their children are also more likely to be fatalistic about obstacles they face, in and out of school.

Middle-class children's self-assurance is enhanced in after-school activities that sometimes require large fees for enrollment and almost always require parents to have enough free time and resources to provide transportation. Organized sports, music, drama, and dance programs build self-confidence and discipline in middle-class children. Lower-class parents find the fees for such activities more daunting, and transportation more of a problem. Organized athletic and artistic activities may not be available in their neighborhoods, so lower-class children's sports are more informal and less confidence-building, with less opportunity to learn teamwork and self-discipline. For children with greater self-confidence, unfamiliar school challenges can be exciting. These children, who are more likely to be from middle-class homes, are more likely to succeed than those who are less self-confident.

Parents from different social classes supervise homework differently. Consistent with overall patterns of language use, middle-class parents — especially those whose own occupational habits require problem solving — are more likely to assist by posing questions that break large problems down into smaller ones and that help children figure out correct answers. Lower-class parents are more likely to guide children with direct instruction. Children from both classes may go to school with completed homework, but middle-class children are more likely to gain in intellectual power from the exercise than lower-class children.

Twenty years ago, researchers Betty Hart and Todd Risley visited Kansas families from different social classes to monitor conversations between parents and toddlers. Their 1995 book, Meaningful Differences, reported that, on average, professional parents spoke more than 2,000 words per hour in the presence of their children, working-class parents spoke about 1,300, and welfare mothers spoke about 600. By age three, children of professionals had vocabularies that were nearly 50 percent greater than those of working-class children and twice as large as those of welfare children.

The researchers also tracked how often parents verbally encouraged or reprimanded children. Toddlers of professionals got an average of six encouragements per reprimand. Working-class children had two. For welfare children, the ratio was reversed — an average of one encouragement for two reprimands. Children whose initiative was encouraged from a very early age are more likely, on average, to take responsibility for their own learning.

Differences like these cannot be overcome by schools alone, no matter how high the teachers' expectations or how much freedom from public regulations these teachers might have. For all children to achieve the same goals, the less advantaged would have to enter school with the verbal fluency and problem-solving orientation that is now more characteristic of middle-class children.

Social Class and Race Discrimination
Social class differences in role modeling also make an achievement gap almost inevitable. Middle-class professional parents tend to associate with similarly educated professionals. Working-class parents have fewer professional friends. On average, working-class children must struggle harder to motivate themselves academically than children who assume, based on their parents' social circle, that the only adult roles are doctor, lawyer, teacher, social worker, manager, or businessperson.

Even disadvantaged children usually say they plan to attend college. College has become such a broad rhetorical goal that black eighth-graders tell surveyors they expect to earn college degrees as often as white eighth-graders do. But despite these intentions, fewer black than white eighth-graders actually graduate from high school four years later; fewer enroll in college the following year; and fewer still persist to get bachelor's degrees.

This is not due simply to the cost of college. Disadvantaged students don't feel as much parental, community, or peer pressure to take the courses or get the grades required for college. Lower-class parents say they expect children to get good grades, but are less likely to enforce these expectations. Teachers and counselors can stress the importance of doing well in school to lower-class children, but such lessons compete with children's own self-images, formed early in life and reinforced daily at home, in the community, and by peers.

Many private school leaders believe that they have an advantage because they can require more parental involvement. But in actuality, when private schools serving disadvantaged children demand parental involvement, they must usually settle for fund-raising assistance or field-trip chaperoning.² Demanding academic support from parents who are themselves poorly educated is unlikely to make a big difference in student achievement.

Throughout American history, many black students who excelled in school were not rewarded for that effort in the labor market. Many Americans believe that, today, blacks and whites with similar test scores have similar earnings and occupational status. But this belief is too optimistic, especially for black males with high school educations. Evidence for this comes from employment discrimination cases, such as the prominent 1996 case in which Texaco settled for a payment of $176 million to black employees after taped conversations of executives revealed pervasive racist attitudes, presumably not restricted to executives of this corporation alone. Studies continue to find that black workers with darker complexions have less labor market success than those with identical education, age, and criminal records but lighter complexions.

In studies where blacks and whites with similar qualifications are sent to apply for job vacancies, the whites are typically more successful. In one recent study where young, well-groomed, and articulate black and white college graduates, posing as high school graduates with identical qualifications, submitted applications for entry-level jobs, the applications of whites with criminal records got positive responses more often than the applications of blacks with no criminal records.

So black students' expectations that their academic efforts will be less rewarded than efforts of white peers is rational for the majority of black students. As a result, some will reduce their academic motivation. Teachers can urge them not to do so and, instead, press these students to redouble their efforts in response to the greater obstacles they face. But as long as racial discrimination persists, the average achievement of black students will be lower than the average achievement of whites, simply because many blacks (especially males) who see that academic effort has less of a payoff will respond rationally by reducing their effort.

AS LONG AS RACIAL DISCRIMINATION PERSISTS, THE AVERAGE ACHIEVEMENT OF BLACK STUDENTS WILL BE LOWER THAN THE AVERAGE ACHIEVEMENT OF WHITES, SIMPLY BECAUSE MANY BLACKS (ESPECIALLY MALES) WHO SEE THAT ACADEMIC EFFORT HAS LESS OF A PAYOFF WILL RESPOND RATIONALLY BY REDUCING THIER EFFORT.

as long as racial discrimination persists, the average achievement of black students will be lower than the average achievement of whites, simply because many blacks (especially males) who see that academic effort has less of a payoff will respond rationally by reducing their effort.
Health, Welfare, and Housing
In addition to race and social-class differences in child rearing, role modeling, labor market experiences, and cultural characteristics, the lower achievement of lower-class students is also caused by differences in actual social and economic conditions.

Overall, lower-income children are in poorer health. They have poorer vision, partly because of prenatal conditions and partly because, even as toddlers, they watch too much television — because their parents can only afford poor-quality child care. Because of poor training, their eyes may wander or have difficulty tracking print or focusing. Part of the over-identification of learning disabilities for lower-class children may be attributable to undiagnosed vision problems that could easily be treated by optometrists and cancel the need for special education placement.

Lower-class children have poorer oral hygiene, more lead poisoning, more asthma, poorer nutrition, less-adequate pediatric care, more exposure to smoke, and a host of other health problems. Because of less-adequate dental care, for example, they are more likely to have toothaches and resulting discomfort that affects concentration. Lead poisoning and iron-deficiency anemia, more prevalent for low-income children, depress cognitive ability and lead to lower average academic achievement. Low-income children are less likely to have standard vaccinations — nominally required of all schoolchildren — and are more likely to be absent from school than healthier children. If school makes any difference at all, higher absenteeism rates resulting from poorer health must perpetuate the achievement gap.

Low-income children who live in communities where landlords use high-sulfur home heating oil, and where diesel trucks pass en route to industrial and commercial sites, are more likely to suffer from asthma, the leading cause of chronic school absenteeism. When asthmatics do attend school, they are likely to be drowsy from lying awake at night, wheezing.

There are fewer primary-care physicians in low-income communities, where the physician-to-population ratio is less than a third of that in middle-class communities. So disadvantaged children — even those with health insurance — are more likely to miss school for relatively minor problems, such as common ear infections, for which middle-class children are treated promptly.

Each of these well-documented social class differences in health is likely to have a palpable effect on academic achievement; combined, their influence is probably huge.

The growing unaffordability of adequate housing for low-income families also affects achievement. Rents have been rising more rapidly in urban areas than the wages of working parents with children. Families having difficulty finding stable housing are more likely to be mobile, and student mobility is an important cause of academic underperformance. A federal government study found that 30 percent of the poorest children had attended at least three different schools by third grade, while only 10 percent of middle-class children had done so. Black children were more than twice as likely as white children to change schools this often. It is hard to imagine how teachers, no matter how well trained, can be as effective for children who move in and out of their classrooms as they can be for those who attend regularly. Private and quasi-private schools, where eligibility to attend does not depend on residence within an attendance zone, might have an advantage in this respect — but only if schools are located in the heart of low-income communities and adequate transportation is provided, conditions rarely met.

Wealth vs. Income
Differences in household wealth are also likely to be important determinants of achievement, but these are usually overlooked because most analysts focus only on annual family income to indicate disadvantage. This makes it hard to understand why black students, on average, score lower than whites whose family incomes are the same.

But children can have similar family incomes but be of different economic classes. For low income families, blacks are likely to have been poor for longer than whites with similar income in any year.

White families are also likely to own more assets that support children's achievement than are black families at the same income level, partly because black middle-class parents are more likely to be the first generation in their families to have middle- class status. Although median black family income is about two-thirds of white median income, black families' financial assets are only 3 percent of whites'. Among other things, this difference means that, among white and black families with the same middle-class incomes, the whites are more likely to have college savings. This makes white children's college aspirations more practical, and therefore more commonplace.

Narrowing Social, Economic, and Education Gaps
If we properly identify the actual social class characteristics that produce differences in average achievement, we should be able to design policies that narrow the achievement gap. Certainly, improvement of instructional practices is among these, but a focus on school reform alone is bound to be frustrating and ultimately unsuccessful. To work, school improvement must combine with policies that narrow social and economic differences between children. Where these differences cannot easily be narrowed, school should be redefined to cover more of the early childhood, after-school, and summer times, when the disparate influences of families and communities are most powerful.

Because the gap is already huge at age three, the most important new investment should probably be in early childhood programs. Pre-kindergarten classes for four-year-olds are needed, but barely begin to address the problem. The quality of early childhood programs is as important as the existence of such programs themselves. Too many low-income children are parked before television sets in low-quality day-care settings. To narrow the academic achievement gap, care for infants and toddlers should be provided by adults who can create the kind of intellectual environment that is typically experienced by middle-class infants and toddlers. This requires professional caregivers and low child-adult ratios.

After-school and summer experiences for lower-class children, similar to programs middle-class children take for granted, would also be needed to narrow the gap. This does not mean remedial programs where lower-class children get added drill in math and reading. Certainly, remediation should be part of adequate after-school and summer programs, but advantages that middle-class children gain in summers and after school comes from self-confidence and awareness of the outside world they acquire in organized athletics, dance, drama, museum visits, recreational reading, and other activities that enhance inquisitiveness, creativity, self-discipline, and organizational skills. After-school and summer programs can substantially narrow the achievement gap only by duplicating such experiences.

Provision of health-care services to lower-class children and their families is also required to narrow the achievement gap. Some health services are relatively inexpensive, such as school vision and dental clinics. A full array of health services will cost more, but cannot be avoided if we truly intend to raise the achievement of lower-class children.

And we have to address the urban housing crisis for low-wage working families if children's lives are to be stable enough to benefit from improved instruction. This will require new housing subsidies as well as tax and labor market policies that can raise the wages of working parents who are trying to provide better opportunities for their children.

The connection between social and economic disadvantage and an academic achievement gap has long been well-known. Most educators, however, have avoided the obvious implication: Improving lower-class children's learning requires ameliorating the social and economic conditions of their lives. Calling attention to this link is not to make excuses for poor school performance. It is only to be honest about the social support schools require if they are to fulfill the public's expectation that the achievement gap will disappear.

Independent schools provide an option for parents who want alternatives to regular public education. In a democratic society, preserving such options is critical. But increasingly, leaders of independent schools have claimed a second role: utilizing their flexibility and freedom from regulation to demonstrate new and better ways of overcoming problems faced by regular public schools. Independent schools cannot hope to play this new role well if their leaders remain unsophisticated about the social and economic contexts in which the education of children from different social classes takes place in an industrial society.

Richard Rothstein is a research associate of the Economic Policy Institute and a visiting lecturer at Teachers College, Columbia University. He is the author of Class and Schools: Using Social, Economic, and Educational Reform to Close the Black–White Achievement Gap (Teachers College Press, 2004.)

Notes

¹Much of this article is adapted from Class and Schools. Using Social, Economic, and Educational Reform to Close the Black-White Achievement Gap, by Richard Rothstein (Teachers College Press, 2004).

²Luis Benveniste, Martin Carnoy, and I described how private and public schools differ in their approaches to students with similar socioeconomic backgrounds in All Else Equal (RoutledgeFalmer, 2003).Class backgrounds influence relative achievement everywhere. The inability of schools to overcome the disadvantage of less-literate homes is not a peculiar American failure but a universal reality.