Class and schools

The more I read and study, the more convinced I am that the home environment is a huge factor in student achievement. Even though educators have some concerns about No Child Left Behind, it is clearly directed at reaching many students who come from challenging backgrounds. Recently, I completed the book “Class and Schools” by Richard Rothstein. Rothstein makes a compelling case that the home and socio-economic status are large contributors to student success in school. Here are a few items that he mentioned that are significant.

• Most parents with college degrees read to their children daily before the children begin kindergarten. Few children whose parents have only a high school diploma or less benefit from daily reading. On average, a typical middle-class child who began to read at home will have higher lifetime achievement than a typical low-income child who was taught only at school.
   
• Twenty years ago, two researchers from the University of Kansas visited the homes of families from different social classes. The researchers found that, on average, professional parents spoke more than 2,000 words per hour to their children. Working class parents spoke about 1,300 words, and welfare mothers spoke about 600 words. So, by age 3, children of professionals had vocabularies that were nearly 50 percent greater than those of working class children and twice as large as welfare children. 
   
• Organized sports and activities build self-confidence in children. Lower-class parents find the fees and time involved in those activities more daunting, and transportation also may be a problem. Furthermore, homework is a challenge for children in low-income families due to a lack of space, quiet time and support from parents.
   
• An international reading survey of 15 year olds, conducted in 2000, found a strong relationship in almost every nation between parental occupation and student literacy. The gap between the literacy of higher class workers and lower class workers was even greater in Germany and the United Kingdom than it was in the United States.

So what is the answer? In part, we need to create opportunities earlier for children from low-income families to get involved in educational programs. Secondly, we need to recognize that the same system that creates opportunities for middle- and upper-income students will not work for low-income students. Extra learning time, summer school and alternative schools have helped to reach students that lack the parental support system to be successful. 

I want to applaud our schools in South Dakota who have recognized the differences that exist within our student groups and have attempted to differentiate the instruction to respond to this challenge. Our improved scores on the Dakota Step in all sub-group areas indicate that real progress is being made with our at-risk students in South Dakota.