Press "Enter" to skip to content

Income Inequality Leads to Education Inequality, Which Leads to Income Inequality…

I'm headed to some teacher professional development at school this morning. We'll spend our time talking about ways to improve our school.

But this remarkable article from Stanford professor of education and sociology Sean F. Reardon notes that, despite all of the improvements our public schools have made over the last few decades (and don't be fooled: we are improving, not failing), the gap between rich students and their poor and middle-class counterparts has grown. Income now explains more of the achievement gap than race. What's happening? Parents are just being good parents... but thanks to growing inequality, rich parents have much more to spend on helping their kids than the rest of us:

High-income families are increasingly focusing their resources — their money, time and knowledge of what it takes to be successful in school — on their children’s cognitive development and educational success. They are doing this because educational success is much more important than it used to be, even for the rich.

With a college degree insufficient to ensure a high-income job, or even a job as a barista, parents are now investing more time and money in their children’s cognitive development from the earliest ages. It may seem self-evident that parents with more resources are able to invest more — more of both money and of what Mr. Putnam calls “‘Goodnight Moon’ time” — in their children’s development. But even though middle-class and poor families are also increasing the time and money they invest in their children, they are not doing so as quickly or as deeply as the rich [Sean F. Reardon, "No Rich Child Left Behind," New York Times, 2013.04.27].

Parents at all levels are acting in the best interests of their children. But rich parents have a growing advantage in the opportunities they can provide their kids outside of the public school resources available to all of us. That growing advantage is crowding out social mobility.

Restoring social mobility won't be easy. It will take more than my Spearfish colleagues and I will be able to come up at our two-hour meeting this morning. But Reardon points to policies like better maternity and paternity leave and support for better daycare to give all kids access to the advantages currently claimed by the lucky few riding the wave of income inequality.

11 Comments

  1. SDBlue 2013.04.29

    Websites for KELO and KSFY are reporting South Dakota lawmakers are assembling a "special committee" to figure out new ways to fund education. I always thought we had the money for education. South Dakota Republicans just chose to keep the money in the general fund rather than invest in our teachers and our kids.

  2. Momma 2013.04.29

    We are not wealthy South Dakotans because I choose to stay home. My husband makes enough for us to get by. I am happy to say that I stayed home and preschooled our son at home. He is now a third grader and is the top reader in his class and hopefully will be on the honor roll. Because of our experience, I encourage my girlfriends to stay home and be available to supplement their children's education. My wealthy friends have alot of respect for our family and my son is invited over to their "big" homes for playdates. Our wish is for our children to do better than us.

  3. Douglas Wiken 2013.04.29

    Jeez Larry, I hope "Momma" posts again even if your grammar correction is correct.

  4. larry kurtz 2013.04.29

    it reads like "momma" wants her progeny to wish for better parents..."alot."

  5. larry kurtz 2013.04.29

    Her comment certainly firms Cory's point.

  6. Donald Pay 2013.04.29

    What does money buy that contributes most to achievement? It's probably not the things we think, like more trips to museums, travel to different parts of the country or even overseas, an instrument and music lessons, and more exposure to the arts generally. With adequate funding, public schools can provide poor students with good experiences in these areas, except travel.

    If you can't travel broadly, you can still learn a lot by going more deeply into local history and culture. Of course, everyday things like cooking or baking are opportunities for learning about math, biology, physics and chemistry, so you don't need rich parents to do those things.

    My daughter said that when she was in college there were many people who had travelled overseas and had a much broader background than she did. Still, none of them had raised chickens, dodged rattlesnakes or harvested food from the garden.

    My guess is the most important thing money buys is stability, especially in family dynamics and housing. If kids are moving to different schools every other year because of financial/family instability, they are going to have social and educational gaps.

  7. grudznick 2013.04.29

    grudznick agrees with Mr. Pay. A woman or man can learn as much in the woods or the field on some days as with a really good teacher and a thick math book.

  8. caheidelberger Post author | 2013.04.29

    Stability, a nice space of one's own to study at home, Mom and/or Dad having the luxury to spend more time with the kids, good breakfast every day, no need to work all weekend at Subway to save up for college... yeah, money matters.

  9. John H 2013.04.30

    I am not going to argue that money doesn't ease certain burdens that all families face...however, I have never had one of my kid's teachers say "If you made more money, your daughter/son would certainly be doing better in school."

  10. caheidelberger Post author | 2013.04.30

    And I'll never say that to you at parent-teacher conferences, John. I don't have data on student income in my classroom. I don't track and would not want to track such data; I prefer to operate under the assumption that every child who enters my classroom can learn French. I'm speaking anecdotally, which you should take with caution. Given that caution, I suspect I can find low-income and high-income kids posting a wide range of scores on any given day.

    But see the science above from Reardon. Individuals vary, but look at groups, and you see rich kids outperforming poor kids. All kids are scoring better, says Reardon, but rich kids' scores are growing faster, and the gap is widening. When kids compete for college admission, scholarships, internships, jobs, etc., that gap matters. When rich families can afford more opportunities, their kids get more lines on their résumés, more connections/networking opportunities, more experiences they can use get ahead.

    Here's a grossly oversimplified illustration. Reardon is talking about much more than GPA, but suppose it's 1983, and we have a group of applicants for an internship. The poor kids in the pool have an average grade of B-; the rich kids in the group have an average grade of B. The rich kids have a little advantage, but not much. Now, roll ahead a generation. In our 2013 applicant pool, the poor kids have a B average, while the rich kids now have an A average. Our whole 2013 pool beats our 1983 pool, but within today's pool, the rich kids have a much greater advantage. The poor kids have much less chance to overcome that advantage with a good interview, hard work, luck, whatever. This is a deep problem, a sort of Darwinian economic selection that we must address with policy.

Comments are closed.