The Answer To Closing Education Gaps Is Not Race Or Wealth, But Family Values

[Kamaji]

The Answer To Closing Education Gaps Is Not Race Or Wealth, But Family Values

Policymakers and educators should ask: Are there observable practices among Asian students that could apply more broadly?

BY: HELEN RALEIGH
SEPTEMBER 05, 2023

Many education policymakers and equity advocates on the left have insisted that different educational outcomes among various racial and ethnic student groups are mainly due to demographic factors, such as race and socioeconomic status. But a new study has shown that culture, rather than demographics, is mainly responsible for “excellence gaps,” the disparities in advanced academic performance between different student groups.

Two researchers from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, Meredith Coffey, Ph.D., and Adam Tyner, Ph.D., analyzed nearly two decades of assessment data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) on eighth-grade reading, math (from 2003 to 2022), and science (from 2009 to 2019). They defined “excellence” as students who earned “advanced” scores on math and readings of the NAEP assessment. They used the mother’s education as a proxy for the student’s socioeconomic status since the NAEP questionnaire collects such data by asking test-takers to select from the following options: “She did not finish high school,” “She graduated from high school,” “She had some education after high school,” “She graduated from college,” or “I don’t know” (the final group was excluded from the analyses).

Some of the study’s findings confirmed what was expected: Within the same racial or ethnic group, socioeconomic status correlates to education outcomes because the share of students achieving at the advanced level declines as socioeconomic status decreases. For example, the percentage of black students who scored “Advanced” in math dropped from 3 percent of the highest socioeconomic status (mothers who graduated from college) to 0.5 percent of the lowest socioeconomic status (mothers who didn’t finish high school). Across racial groups, black students of the highest socioeconomic status outperformed lowest-socioeconomic-status white students whose mothers didn’t finish high school (2.5 percent) in math.

But data from Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) students presented a different picture. We already knew that Asian students outperformed all racial groups overall. But the Fordham researchers found that in math, 13 percent of the lowest-socioeconomic status AAPI students (mothers didn’t graduate from high school) achieved the Advanced level, outperforming the highest-socioeconomic status black (3 percent) and Hispanic students (6.8 percent), surpassed only by the highest-socioeconomic status white students (16.3 percent) and Asian students of higher socioeconomic status. Reading scores demonstrate a similar pattern, suggesting that poor social and economic conditions are not necessarily barriers to academic achievement.

Further, the study revealed that racial/ethnic excellence gaps within the highest-socioeconomic status group (college-educated mothers) are much wider than those in the lowest-socioeconomic status group (mothers who didn’t graduate from high school). For example, the gap between AAPI and black students whose mothers graduated from college is 14.5 percentage points. Meanwhile, “for the two lowest SES groups, the white-black and white-Hispanic excellence gaps are small, ranging from 0.3 to 2.0 percentage points. The researchers were surprised that wealth doesn’t always guarantee better education outcomes because “fewer black and Hispanic students from the highest-SES group (those with college-educated mothers) are achieving at advanced levels than we would expect given their socioeconomic status.”

The study also finds that advanced achievement for all racial/ethnic and socioeconomic status groups has been trending higher between 2000 and 2019, and the most significant improvement came from Asian and Hispanic students. For example, the percentage of students scoring at the advanced level in math increased 100 percent from 2003 to 2022 for Hispanic students and 92 percent for Asian students. However, the trend was reversed in the last three years, and advanced math and reading achievement dropped for all racial/ethnic groups, likely due to extended school closures and ineffective remote learning during the Covid-19 pandemic.

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Source:  https://thefederalist.com/2023/09/05/the-answer-to-closing-education-gaps-is-not-race-or-wealth-but-family-values/

[Kamaji]

Bingo!!!!!!


Winner, winner, chicken dinner.

[PeteS in CA]

There's no magazine filled with silver bullets, but children will tend to do well who have:

* Intact families;

* Parents with a good work ethic;

* Parents who teach and live good morals;

* Parents who express value for education;

* Parents who tell their kids that they can succeed;

* Parents willing to take alternative action if their children's schools won't educate.

Preferrably, all of the above.

[Kamaji]

There's no magazine filled with silver bullets, but children will tend to do well who have:

* Intact families;

* Parents with a good work ethic;

* Parents who teach and live good morals;

* Parents who express value for education;

* Parents who tell their kids that they can succeed;

* Parents willing to take alternative action if their children's schools won't educate.

Preferrably, all of the above.

Exactly - culture.

[Fishrrman]

There's this troublesome graph that keeps getting in the way: