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New studies show widening ‘education gap’ |
Two recent studies suggest the ever-widening income gap between wealthy and poor families in America has led to a similar widening of the education achievement gap between the wealthiest and poorest students.
In one study, Stanford University sociologist Sean F. Reardon found the gap in standardized test scores between high- and low-income students has been growing for about the last half century, and that gap is 30 to 40 percent larger among children born in 2001 than it was among children born 25 years earlier.
“As the children of the rich do better in school, and those who do better in school are more likely to become rich, we risk producing an even more unequal and economically polarized society,” Reardon notes in his research.
Another study, by researchers from the University of Michigan, found a growing disparity between rich and poor children in college completion in recent decades. The study examined two groups of students – one born in the early 1960s, the other around 1980 – and found rates of college completion among the two groups increased by only four percentage points for low-income students, compared to an increase of 18 percentage points for those who grew up in high-income families.
Much of the data in both studies predates the recession that began in 2007, raising debate over whether the effects noted in both studies have been exacerbated in recent years by the economic downturn.
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