The Family: America's Smallest School (PDF) - ETS

Policy Information ReportThe Family: America’s Smallest School

This report was written by:Paul E. BartonRichard J. ColeyEducational Testing ServiceThe views expressed in this reportare those of the authors and do notnecessarily reflect the views of theofficers and trustees of EducationalTesting Service.Additional copies of this report canbe ordered for $15 (prepaid) from:Policy Information CenterMail Stop 19-REducational Testing ServiceRosedale RoadPrinceton, NJ 08541-0001(609) 734-5212pic@ets.orgCopies can be downloaded from:www.ets.org/research/picCopyright © 2007 byEducational Testing Service.All rights reserved. EducationalTesting Service, ETS, and the ETSlogo are registered trademarks ofEducational Testing Service(ETS). LISTENING. LEARNING.LEADING. is a trademark of ETS.September 2007Policy Evaluation andResearch CenterPolicy Information CenterEducational Testing ServiceTable of ContentsPreface ............................................................................................................2Acknowledgments ..........................................................................................2Highlights .......................................................................................................3Introduction ...................................................................................................6The Parent-Pupil Ratio ..................................................................................8What Research Reveals .......................................................................8Out-of-Wedlock Births .......................................................................10Number of Parents in the Home .......................................................11The New Inequality ............................................................................13Family Finances ...........................................................................................14Median Family Income ......................................................................15Children Living in Poverty ................................................................16Food Insecurity ..................................................................................17Parent Employment ...........................................................................17Literacy Development in Young Children ..................................................19Early Language Acquisition ..............................................................19Reading to Young Children ...............................................................20The Child Care Dimension ..........................................................................23A Look at Day Care for the Nation’s 2-Year-Olds .............................23Type of Day Care ........................................................................24Quality of Day Care ...................................................................25The Home as an Educational Resource .....................................................26Literacy Materials in the Home ........................................................26Technology .........................................................................................27A Place to Study .................................................................................28Dealing With Distractions .................................................................28The Parent–School Relationship ................................................................32Getting Children to School ................................................................32Parent Involvement in School ...........................................................34Putting It Together: Estimating the Impact ofFamily and Home Factors on Student Achievement .................................37Concluding Comments ................................................................................39Appendix Table ............................................................................................42

PrefaceAll parents have witnessed their children doing things,good and bad, which remind them of themselves.These incidents serve as powerful reminders of thecritical role parents play as teachers. Indeed, “theapple does not fall far from the tree,” as the foundationestablished and nurtured at home goes a long wayin ensuring student achievement in school as well assuccess in later life. The important educational roleof parents, however, is often overlooked in our local,state and national discussions about raising studentachievement and closing achievement gaps.One of the four cornerstones of The OpportunityCompact, the National Urban League’s Blueprint forEconomic Equality, is the Opportunity for Childrento Thrive. Through this guiding principle, we assertthat every child in America deserves to live a life freeof poverty that includes a safe home environment,adequate nutrition and affordable quality health care.We further assert that all children in America deservea quality education that will prepare them to competein an increasingly global marketplace.For the Opportunity to Thrive to be realized, andfor us as a nation to reach the ambitious educationalgoals that we have set for ourselves, we must keepclear in our minds that our family is our first andsmallest school.The authors of this report, Paul Barton and RichardColey, tell us how we benefit from paying attentionto the role of our families. They examine many facetsof children’s home environment and experiences thatfoster cognitive development and school achievement,from birth throughout the period of formal schooling.They stress that we should think of strengtheningthe roles of both schools and families, that schoolsneed parents and communities as allies, and thatrecognizing the importance of the role families playshould in no way lessen the need to improve schools.The report also reveals the complexity of anyeffort to strengthen the role that families play ineducating children, the many levels on which suchefforts need to take place, and the sensitivity that isnecessary whenever we contemplate the formationand functioning of families — our most importantinstitution, and at the same time our most private one.The National Urban League commends EducationalTesting Service for this timely and critically importantreport and joins it in urging parents, educators,administrators and policymakers to consider its findings.Marc H. MorialPresident and CEONational Urban LeagueAcknowledgmentsThis report was reviewed by Carol Dwyer, DistinguishedPresidential Appointee at ETS; Drew Gitomer,Distinguished Presidential Appointee at ETS; LauraLippman, Senior Program Area Director and SeniorResearch Associate at Child Trends; Isabel V. Sawhill,Senior Fellow and Cabot Family Chair at the BrookingsInstitution; and Andrew J. Rotherham, Co-Founder andCo-Director, Education Sector. The report was editedby Amanda McBride. Christina Guzikowski provideddesktop publishing. Marita Gray, with the help of her5-year-old son, Ryan, designed the cover. Errors of factor interpretation are those of the authors.

HighlightsThe family and the home are both critical educationinstitutions where children begin learning long beforethey start school, and where they spend much of theirtime after they start school. So it stands to reason thatimproving a child’s home environment to make it moreconducive to learning is critical if we are to improvethe educational achievement of the nation’s studentsand close the achievement gaps. To do this, we needto develop cooperative partnerships in which familiesare allies in the efforts of teachers and schools. Thekinds of family and home conditions that researchhas found to make a difference in children’s cognitivedevelopment and school achievement include thosehighlighted below. 1The Parent-Pupil Ratio. The percentage of twoparentfamilies has been in long-term decline. Singleparentfamilies are rapidly becoming a significantsegment of the country’s family population.• Forty-four percent of births to women under age30 are out-of-wedlock. The percentage is muchhigher for Black women and much lower for Asian-American women. While the percentage decreasesas women’s educational attainment rises, the ratefor Black and Hispanic college-educated womenremains high.• Sixty-eight percent of U.S. children live with twoparents, a decline from 77 percent in 1980. Only35 percent of Black children live with two parents.In selected international comparisons, the UnitedStates ranks the highest in the percentage of singleparenthouseholds, and Japan ranks the lowest.Family Finances. Income is an important factor ina family’s ability to fund the tangible and intangibleelements that contribute to making the home aneducationally supportive environment. At all incomelevels, however, parents have important roles to playin facilitating their children’s learning, many of whichare not dependent upon the availability of money.• Among racial/ethnic groups, Asian-Americanfamilies, on average, have the highest median familyincome; Black families have the lowest.• On average, White and Asian-American familieswith children have higher incomes than White andAsian-American families without children. Theopposite is true for Black and Hispanic families,however; and these families have much loweraverage family incomes than their White andAsian-American counterparts. There are also largedifferences in family income across the states,ranging from median family incomes in excessof $70,000 in several northeastern states to lessthan $40,000 in New Mexico, Mississippi, andWashington, D.C.• Nationally, 19 percent of children live in poverty.The percentages increase to nearly a third or moreof Black, American Indian/Alaskan Native, andHispanic children. Among the states, the percentageranges from a low of 9 percent in New Hampshireto a high of 31 percent in Mississippi.• Nationally, 11 percent of all households are “foodinsecure.” The rate for female-headed households istriple the rate for married-couple families, and therate for Black households is triple the rate for Whitehouseholds. One-third or more of poor householdsare food insecure.• Rates of parent unemployment are high, and arealarmingly so for some groups. Nationally, onethirdof children live in families in which no parenthas full-time, year-round employment. This is thecase for half of Black and American Indian/AlaskanNative children. More than 40 percent of children inAlaska, New Mexico, Louisiana, and Mississippi livein such families.Literacy Development. Literacy development beginslong before children enter formal education, and iscritical to their success in school.• There are substantial differences in children’smeasured abilities as they start kindergarten. Forexample, average mathematics scores for Black andHispanic children are 21 percent and 19 percentlower, respectively, than the mathematics scores ofWhite children.• By age 4, the average child in a professional familyhears about 20 million more words than the averagechild in a working-class family, and about 35 millionmore words than children in welfare families.1Readers will find sources for the data and definitions of the variables discussed in this section in the main body of the report.

• Sixty-two percent of high socioeconomic status(SES) kindergartners are read to every day by theirparents, compared to 36 percent of kindergartnersin the lowest SES group. White and Asian-Americanchildren, those who live with two parents, andchildren with mothers with higher education levelswere also more likely to have a parent read to themdaily than their counterparts who were Black orHispanic, lived with one parent, or had motherswith lower educational levels.Child Care Disparities. The availability of highqualitychild care is critical when parents work outsidethe home.• About half of the nation’s 2-year-olds are in somekind of regular, nonparental day care, split amongcenter-based care; home-based, nonrelative care;and home-based relative care. Black children arethe most likely to be in day care.• Overall, 24 percent of U.S. children were in centerbasedcare that was rated as high quality, 66 percentwere in medium-quality center-based care, and 9percent were in low-quality center-based care. Ofthose in home-based care, 7 percent were in highqualitysettings, 57 percent were in medium-qualitysettings, and 36 percent were in low-quality care.More than half of Black, Hispanic, and poor 2-yearoldswere in low-quality home-based care.The Home as an Educational Resource. Theresources available at home — books, magazines,newspapers, a home computer with access to theInternet, a quiet place for study — can have a lastinginfluence on a child’s ability to achieve academically.• As of 2003, 76 percent of U.S. children hadaccess to a home computer, and 42 percent usedthe Internet. Black and Hispanic children laggedbehind, however.• Eighty-six percent of U.S. eighth-graders reportedhaving a desk or table where they could study, justabove the international average but well below theaverages of many countries.• Thirty-five percent of eighth-graders watch four ormore hours of television on an average weekday.Comparisons by race/ethnicity reveal considerabledifferences in viewing habits: 24 percent of Whiteeighth-graders spend at least four hours in front ofa television on a given day, while 59 percent of theirBlack peers do so.• A comparison of eighth-graders in 45 countriesfound that U.S. students spend less time readingbooks for enjoyment and doing jobs at home thanstudents in the average country participating in thestudy. On the other hand, U.S. eighth-graders spentmore time, on average, watching television andvideos, talking with friends, and participating insports activities. They also spend almost one morehour daily using the Internet.• One in five students misses three or more days ofschool a month. Asian-American students have thefewest absences. The United States ranked 25th of45 countries in students’ school attendance.The Parent-School Relationship. A significant bodyof research indicates that when parents, teachers, andschools work together to support learning, studentsdo better in school and stay in school longer. Parentalinvolvement in student education includes everythingfrom making sure children do their homework,to attending school functions and parent-teacherconferences, to serving as an advocate for the school,to working in the classroom. How involved are parentsin their children’s education? Are schools helping tofacilitate parental involvement, and doing what theycan to effectively partner with parents?• Since 1996, parents have become increasinglyinvolved in their child’s school. However, parentparticipation decreases as students progressthrough school, and parents of students earning Aaverages are more likely to be involved in schoolfunctions than the parents of students earning C’sand D’s.Putting It Together: Estimating the Impact ofFamily and Home on Student Achievement.How closely can stars in this constellation of factorsassociated with a child’s home environment predictstudent achievement?• The analysis provided here uses four family/homefactors that previous research has shown to belinked to student achievement. To some degree,each is likely to be related to the others: singleparentfamilies, parents reading to young childrenevery day, hours spent watching television, and thefrequency of school absences.

• Together, these four factors account for abouttwo-thirds of the large differences among statesin National Assessment of Educational Progress(NAEP) eighth-grade reading scores.* * * * *The nation has set high goals for raising studentachievement. Schools play a critical role in this effort,and it is appropriate that a serious national effortis being made to improve them. However, familycharacteristics and home environment play critical rolesas well. Reaching our ambitious national goals willrequire serious efforts to address issues on both fronts.

IntroductionRecognizing the family as the basic socializing andnurturing institution for children is intuitive. Commonsense tells us that the love and attention that babiesand children receive, their sense of security, theencouragement they are given to learn, the intellectualrichness of their home environment, and the attentionthat is devoted to their health and welfare are allcritical elements in the development of children whoare able and motivated to learn. Ironically, however,something so plain and obvious is often overlooked— or taken for granted.Even though public officials, PTA speakers,educators … often tell us how important arole the family plays, this message does nottranslate to a national resolve to improve thefamily as an educational institution.Thus began our 1992 report, America’s SmallestSchool: The Family. 2 Although the critical importancechildren’s families play in their lives in the yearspreceding school, during the hours before and afterthe school day, and throughout the days, weeks,and months of summer and holiday breaks remainsapparent, it also stays largely outside current local,state, and national education policy discussions. Thepurpose of this report is to examine information andevidence regarding the critical role the family plays inthe education of the nation’s children.Over the past 15 years, state and national effortsto raise student achievement and reduce achievementgaps have intensified. The public and public officialstake the issue of improving education seriously, as isstrongly evidenced by the prominence of the No ChildLeft Behind (NCLB) Act in the national policy agenda.NCLB includes requirements for schools to promoteand facilitate stronger school-parent partnerships.Since America’s Smallest School: The Family waspublished, not much seems to have changed withrespect to the importance public policy gives to thefamily’s role in children’s learning, even as efforts haveintensified to raise student achievement and reduceachievement gaps. Nor has there been much progresstoward improving many of the conditions that weredescribed in that report. There are, to be sure, effortsto promote the value of early childhood education,new commission reports, and more national leaderspushing for universal pre-kindergarten programs.These efforts all stem from an explicit recognitionof the need to supplement family efforts if we are tosucceed in improving student learning and reducingachievement gaps.A new report card by UNICEF on the state ofchildhood in the world’s economically advancednations paints a bleak picture for the future ofeducation in the United States. In the report, UNICEFcompared the United States with 20 other richcountries on their performance in six dimensionsof child well-being. The United States ranks in thebottom third of these 21 countries for five of these sixdimensions. It ranked 12th in educational well-being,17th in material well-being, 20th in family and peerrelationships, 20th in behaviors and risks, and 21st inhealth and safety. 3Despite these disturbing findings, one can findmany good examples of efforts to promote strongerfamily involvement in children’s education, and thisreport describes some of these. Although our review ofcurrent literature identifies many other constructiveefforts to improve family and home conditionsassociated with child development, no major effortswere found to raise the prominence of “before-school”and “after-school” issues, identified in this report, inthe very visible state and national efforts to increaseachievement and reduce achievement gaps.This report is about the family, not about theschools, except in those critical areas where thefamily and school must work together. That said, theauthors have no intention of minimizing the needfor improving our nation’s schools — and it would bea misuse of the report’s findings to argue that all ofthe responsibility for educational improvement restsoutside of the schools. Indeed, a number of ETS PolicyInformation Center reports have argued that both areimportant in raising achievement and reducing gaps.A comprehensive review of the available facts andevidence on this subject is Parsing the AchievementGap: Baselines for Tracking Progress. 42Paul E. Barton and Richard J. Coley, America’s Smallest School: The Family, Policy Information Report, Policy Information Center,Educational Testing Service, 1992.3See UNICEF, Child Poverty in Perspective: An Overview of Child Well-Being in Rich Countries, Innocenti Report Card 7, 2007.4Paul E. Barton, Parsing the Achievement Gap: Baselines for Tracking Progress, Policy Information Report, Policy Information Center, EducationalTesting Service, October 2003.

It is understandable that education reform effortswould focus on improving schools. In the broaderarena of public policy, however, we will have to go farbeyond this focus if we hope to significantly improvestudent learning and reduce the achievement gap.This report highlights some of the important familycharacteristics and home conditions that researchhas found makes a significant difference in children’scognitive development and school achievement.Because the home is, indeed, “America’s smallestschool” — though clearly not its least significant one— it behooves us to take whatever steps are necessaryto assure the homes of all of our nation’s students canprovide the critical support children need to achieve. Ifwe are to improve America’s academic standing withinthe global community, and close our all-too-persistentachievement gaps, we must help ensure nurturinghome environments and supportive, encouragingfamily lives for all students.This is by no means a small endeavor. It will requirepolicy reform, government and social interventions,and above all, cooperative partnerships amongschools, families, and communities.* * * * *The report is organized as follows:The Parent-Pupil Ratio. Research indicates anupward trend in single-parent families and largedifferences in family-composition trends acrossracial/ethnic and socioeconomic groups. The reportexamines these changing patterns and explains howthey may be leading to a “new inequality.”Family Finances. Many families are stretched thin inmeeting the basic needs that will help children becomesuccessful students. The report looks at economictrends related to child poverty, parent employment,and food insecurity.Literacy Development. Children’s experiences duringthe first years of their lives — their interactions withthe people and world around them — are criticalto their future learning. The report examines thedifferences in early language development and schoolreadiness among children of different populationsubgroups. The authors also discuss how reading toyoung children influences their language development.The Extended Family: The Child Care Dimension.The report looks at the wide variety of child careavailable to parents, and the vast differences in thequality of that care.The Home as an Educational Resource. A homeenvironment that is conducive to learning is criticalto children’s ability to succeed in school. The authorsexamine the importance of resources and conditions thatsupport learning in the home (e.g., appropriate readingmaterials, a home computer with access to the Internet,and a quiet place to study). The authors also look atconditions that can distract students from learning, suchas spending too much time watching television, playingcomputer games, and surfing the Internet. Finally, theauthors examine trends related to these factors acrossdifferent racial/ethnic and socioeconomic groups.The Parent-School Relationship. The authorsexamine why it’s important for parents to be involved intheir children’s school and to take a proactive approachto encouraging their children’s learning efforts. Theauthors then highlight trends in these behaviors.Putting It Together: Estimating the Impact ofFamily and Home on Student Achievement. Theauthors explore how a constellation of family andhome characteristics can be used to predict studentachievement.Concluding Comments. The authors discuss what familytrends imply about the future state of student learningin the United States. They then elaborate on the need toimprove conditions in both the home and the school.* * * * *This report is packed with statistics and researchfindings, and the authors have drawn upon manysources — from small research studies, to nationalcensuses and data bases, to international surveys.Readers will have different interests, differentperspectives, and different needs. The authors hopethat the information in this publication will be helpfulto a diverse audience — an audience with a commoninterest in improving student learning and reducingachievement gaps.

The Parent-Pupil RatioOur society relies on parents to nurture and socializechildren. It follows then that having two parentsparticipating in the child-rearing effort is better thanhaving just one, even if only from the standpoint oflogistics and time: time to talk with children, read tothem, help them with homework, get them up and offto school, check their progress with their teachers, andso on.Two-parent families are more likely than singleparentfamilies to be participating in the workforceand to have middle-class incomes. Today, having a“decent” family income is more dependent than everon having two parents working. Families headed onlyby mothers — as the majority of single-parent familiesare — have, on the average, much lower incomesand fewer benefits that go along with employment(such as medical insurance) than two-parent families.Adequate housing, medical care, and nutritioncontribute to children’s cognitive development andschool achievement. 5 While logic, common sense,and research all lead to the conclusion that childrengrowing up with one parent may have a disadvantage,it is often not an easy subject to discuss.What Research RevealsDespite continuing sensitivity about the topic, thereis a growing body of research on family structure andits relationship to children’s well-being. While theresearch generally focuses on whether a child liveswith one versus two parents, there is some researchon the effects of mother-only families; some researchon children with divorced parents; some on childrenwith young, unmarried parents; and some researchthat focuses on the effects on children of growing upwith absent fathers. The first comprehensive reportingof this research was undertaken by a committee of theNational Research Council (NRC), which synthesizedand cited more than 70 studies published between 1970and 1988. The NRC concluded that:High rates of poverty, low educationalperformance, and health problems are seriousobstacles to the future and well-being ofmillions of children. The problems are muchmore acute among black children …. Thedisadvantage of black children relative towhite children is due almost entirely to the lowincome of black family heads … Approximatelyone-half of black children have the additionalburden of having mother-only families. Manybegin life with an under-educated teenagemother, which increases the likelihood thatthey will live in poverty and raises additionalimpediments to their life prospects. 6The most recent and large-scale synthesis ofresearch on single-parent families in the United Statesis “Father Absence and Child Well-Being” by WendySigle-Rushton and Sara McLanahan, who start withthis overview:Cohabitation has replaced marriage asthe preferred first union of young adults;premarital sex and out-of-wedlock childbearinghave become increasingly commonplace andacceptable; and divorce rates have recentlyplateaued at very high levels. One out of threechildren in the United States today is bornoutside of marriage, and the proportion istwice as high among African Americans. 7Researchers must consider several issues whenassessing the impact growing up in a single-parentfamily can have on children’s academic success. Firstthey need to determine whether children raised insingle-parent households are different from those whogrow up with two parents in the home in ways thataffect learning and academic success. And, if they do,researchers need to then clarify how they differ. Theymust then disentangle the factors that contribute tothese differences, which involve separating factorsrelated to low income from those that are entirelydue to a growing up in a single-parent family. Whileresearch can illuminate issues related to income, it’sfar more difficult to find scientific evidence of theeffect growing up in a single-parent household has on5For a synthesis of research on such family factors, see Barton, 2003.6Gerald David Jaynes and Robin M. Williams, Jr. (Eds.), A Common Destiny: Blacks and American Society, National Research Council,National Academy Press, 1989.7Wendy Sigle-Rushton and Sara McLanahan, “Father Absence and Child Well-Being,” in Daniel P. Moynihan, Timothy M. Speeding, and LeeRainwater (Eds.), The Future of the Family, Russell Sage Foundation, 2004, p. 116.

learning. We can, however, identify with considerableconfidence the overall effects — always bearing inmind that we are talking about averages, not individualsituations. 8Sigle-Rushton and McLanahan summarize theresults of the simple correlations, which “can easily beinterpreted as the probability that a random person,drawn for a given family structure, will experience theoutcome of interest.” They summarize the results oftheir research as follows:• Academic Success. “Studies demonstrate quiteconclusively that children who live in single-motherfamilies score lower on measures of academicachievement than those in two-parent families.”The differences are substantial (in statisticalterms, about a third of a standard deviation aftercontrolling for age, gender, and grade level).• Behavioral and Psychological Problems. Fatherabsence is correlated with a higher incidence ofbehavioral and psychological problems that mayinclude shyness, aggression, or poor conduct.• Substance Abuse and Contact With Police.Father absence is correlated with a greater tendencyto use illegal substances, have early contact with thepolice, and be delinquent.• Effect on Life Transitions. Daughters who growup in single-parent families are likely to havesexual relationships at an earlier age than thoseraised from two-parent homes, and are more likelyto bear children outside of marriage. Their earlypartnerships also tend to be less stable.• Economic Well-Being in Adulthood. Researchhas established a strong link between growing upin a single-mother family and having lower incomeas adults.• Adult Physical Health and Psychological Well-Being. Adults from single-mother families havelower self-esteem than those growing up in twoparenthouseholds. Among women, research revealsa negative correlation between poor adult physicalhealth and growing up with a divorced mother. 9While, at first glance, all of these issues may notseem to be related to school achievement, each(e.g., delinquent behavior, drug use, and aggressivebehaviors) can adversely affect school achievement.And although these behaviors appear to be separateand distinct issues, they are often related, with onecondition resulting in another.Evidence also links these variables to other schoolproblems. For example, a Bureau of the Censuspublication reports that the percentage of schoolagechildren of never-married parents were morethan twice as likely to repeat a grade than childrenof married parents (21.1 percent compared to 8.4percent, respectively); the percentage for children ofseparated, divorced, or widowed parents was 13.4percent. Very similar differences were found for thepercentage of children who were ever suspended fromschool. And for both repeating a grade and beingsuspended from school, the rates were much higherfor children in families living below the poverty linethan for children living above it. 10A recent report from the ETS Policy InformationCenter found a close relationship between states’ highschool completion rates and the percentage of childrenliving in one-parent families, after controlling forsocial economic status (SES). The single-parent familyfactor, by itself, explained over a third of the variationin high school completion rates (SES, single-parentfamilies, and high student mobility together explainedalmost 60 percent of the variation). 11 Another recentETS analysis found that the variation among the statesin the prevalence of one-parent families had a strongcorrelation with the state variation in eighth-gradereading achievement. 128On this matter of disentangling effects, and for a comprehensive look at marriage and children, see the fall issue of The Future of Children(titled “Marriage and Well-Being”) published by the Brookings Institution (www.futureofchildren.org).9Sigle-Rushton and McLanahan, 2004.10Jane Lawler Dye and Tallese D. Johnson, A Child’s Day: 2003 (Selected Indicators of Child Well-Being), Current Population Reports, p. 70-109,U.S. Census Bureau, Washington, D.C., January 2007.11Paul E. Barton, One-Third of a Nation: Rising Dropout Rates and Declining Opportunities, Policy Information Report, Policy InformationCenter, Educational Testing Service, February 2005.12Paul E. Barton and Richard J. Coley, Windows on Achievement and Inequality, Policy Information Report, Policy Information Center,Educational Testing Service, 2007.

Having documented the correlation between havingtwo parents and student educational achievement, thissection now examines data on parenthood trends inthe United States.Out-of-Wedlock BirthsOf the 2.3 million births to women under age 30 in 2003-04, about 1 million (or 44 percent) were to unmarriedwomen. Figure 1 shows the percentage of out-of-wedlockbirths for women in each racial/ethnic group.Figure 1Percentage of Out-of-Wedlock Births to WomenUnder Age 30, by Racial/Ethnic Group, 2003-2004AllBlackMixed RaceHispanic44466077higher were out-of-wedlock; this was also the case for 43percent of births to Hispanic mothers. 13Figure 2Percentage of Out-of-Wedlock Births to WomenUnder Age 30, by Educational Attainment of theMother, 2003-2004AllLess thanhigh schoolHigh schooldiploma or GEDSome collegeBachelor’s degreeMaster’s degreeor more413370 10 20 30 40 50 60 70Percentage445162WhiteAsian1634Source: Data from 2004 American Community Surveys reported in Irwin Kirsch, HenryBraun, Kentaro Yamamoto, and Andrew Sum, America’s Perfect Storm: Three ForcesChanging Our Nation’s Future, Policy Information Report, Policy Information Center,Educational Testing Service, January 2007.0 20 40 60 80 100PercentageSource: Data from 2004 American Community Surveys, reported in Irwin Kirsch, HenryBraun, Kentaro Yamamoto, and Andrew Sum, America’s Perfect Storm: Three ForcesChanging Our Nation’s Future, Policy Information Report, Policy Information Center,Educational Testing Service, January 2007.These data paint a grim picture of the status ofmarriage and childbirth in the United States. Seventysevenpercent of Black, 60 percent of mixed-race, and46 percent of Hispanic births were out-of-wedlock. Mostof these out-of-wedlock births were to women with lowlevels of educational attainment. As shown in Figure2, overall, the proportion of out-of-wedlock births fallssubstantially with each additional level of educationmothers attain. The proportions are higher, however, forsome groups. Among Black mothers, for example, morethan half of births to those with a bachelor’s degree orIt’s important, however, to understand that thisdichotomy between in- and out-of-wedlock birthsoversimplifies the variation of family types. Accordingto the demographer, Harold Hodgkinson:Four million children of all ages now live withone or more grandparents, and one millionchildren of all ages are the sole responsibility oftheir grandparents … A number of factors havecreated this group, such as parents who are injail, in drug rehabilitation centers, or those whosimply are not capable of raising their children.The problems of raising young children whenyou are 65 years old are severe — yet, for manygrandparents there is no alternative.The Statistical Abstract of the United States,2002, indicates the following family types wereraising children under 18 years old: 46 percent13American Community Survey data, reported in Kirsch, Braun, Yamamoto, and Sum, 2007.10

of married couples; 43 percent of unmarriedcouples; 60 percent of single women; 22percent of gay couples; and 34 percent oflesbian couples. Several of these categoriesare new for the Census … and little is knownabout how many children are being raised byeach type. However, many teachers report anincrease in the number of children being raisedby same-sex couples. 14Number of Parents in the HomeWhat is the trend for children living in two-parentfamilies in the United States? In the nation as a wholein 2004, 68 percent of children were living with bothparents, down from 77 percent in 1980. There weresubstantial declines among the White, Black, andHispanic populations of children with two parents inthe home over that period, as shown in Figure 3. Thelowest percentage of children living with two parentswas among Black children — just 42 percent in 1980,dropping to 35 percent in 2004. Thus, the majority ofBlack children live in single-parent homes.Figure 3Percentage of Children Under Age 18 Living WithBoth Parents, by Race/Ethnicity, 1980 and 2004Percentage80706050403077688374 75’80 ’04 ’80 ’04 ’80 ’04 ’80 ’04All White Hispanic BlackSource: U.S. Census Bureau, Statistical Abstract of the United States, Table 60, June 29, 2005.654235Figure 4Percentage of Children in Single-Parent Families,by State, 2004UtahIdahoNebraskaIowaKansasMinnesotaNorth DakotaNew JerseyColoradoIndianaNew HampshireVermontConnecticutMontanaSouth DakotaWyomingHawaiiIllinoisWisconsinCaliforniaMassachusettsOregonVirginiaWest VirginiaAlaskaKentuckyPennsylvaniaWashingtonU.S.ArizonaMichiganMissouriNevadaTexasMaineMarylandOhioNew YorkNorth CarolinaOklahomaTennesseeDelawareGeorgiaAlabamaFloridaArkansasNew MexicoRhode IslandSouth CarolinaMississippiLousiana1723232424242425262626262727272728282829292929293030303031313131313233333334343434353536363838394042440 10 20 30 40 50 60 70PercentageSource: Data on one-parent families from Kids Count State-Level Data Online (www.aecf.org/kidscount/sld/compare_results.jsp?i=721).14Harold L. Hodgkinson, Leaving Too Many Children Behind: A Demographer’s View on the Neglect of America’s Youngest Children, Institute ofEducational Leadership, April 2003.11

The variation among the states in the percentageof single-parent families is considerable, as shown inFigure 4. The low is 17 percent in Utah, while SouthCarolina, Mississippi, and Louisiana have percentagesof 40 or higher.A comparison among large cities is shown inFigure 5. San Diego and Austin had the lowestpercentages of children in one-parent families,although about one-third of families fall into thiscategory. Atlanta and Cleveland had the highestpercentages of single-parent families, with about twothirdsof the cities’ families falling into this category.International comparisons are also available,although there are variations in the years for whichdata are available. In comparison with nine othercountries where data were available, the United Stateshad the highest percentage of one-parent families (28percent) and Japan the lowest (8 percent). There weresubstantial increases in all countries in this statistic forthe time periods available (see Figure 6). In addition,Figure 5Percentage of One-Parent Families,Selected Cities, 2004San DiegoAustinLos AngelesHoustonCharlotteNew YorkChicagoBostonClevelandAtlanta3133363638434552636630 40 50 60 70PercentageSource: U.S. Census Bureau, 2005 American Community Survey.Figure 6Change in the Percentage of Single-Parent Households, Selected Countries, Various Years3530282524Percentage2015105201115201320720141913191217915580’80 ’03 ’85 ’02 ’91 ’04 ’80 ’05 ’81 ’04 ’81 ’03 ’81 ’01 ’88 ’00 ’81 ’04 ’80 ’00United StatesSwedenGermany (unified)DenmarkIrelandUnited KingdomCanadaFranceNetherlandsJapanNote: Data are for children under 18 (except for Australia and Ireland, where data are for children under 15).Source: Compiled by the Bureau of Labor Statistics from national population censuses, household surveys, and other sources. Some data are fromunpublished tabulations provided by foreign countries (www.childstats.gov/intnllinks.asp?field=Subject1&value=Population+and+Family+Characteristics).12

for most of the countries included in this comparison,about one-fifth of families with children were singleparentfamilies. It is clear that the phenomenon of arising rate of children living with one parent is by nomeans confined to the United States.The New InequalityThe nation is very familiar with inequality based onrace/ethnicity and income. Reducing and eliminatingachievement gaps is national policy in education,and NCLB puts teeth into this policy by requiring thedisaggregation of test scores by race/ethnicity andpoverty. It is time to recognize that there is anotherform of inequality in the circumstance of growing upand getting educated: It is whether a child grows upwith two parents in the home, or one. (Once again, it isimportant to understand that the authors are speakingin terms of averages.)This form of inequality cuts across racial andethnic subgroups and family income status. However,it is disproportionately concentrated in minorityand low-income populations. For example, as Figure3 shows, more than half of Black children are notliving with two parents. Efforts to compensate for thedisadvantages children experience when growing upin homes lacking the personal and economic resourcesto support their learning will disproportionatelybenefit students in minority and poor families. Iflow income were combined with not living with twoparents — recognizing the double deficit — minoritystudents would predominate in any targeted effort tocompensate for deprivations and life conditions ofthe kind that have been shown to hinder educationalachievement. The next sections of the report identifysome of the family and home conditions that canaffect educational achievement.13

Family FinancesMost agree that schools must be adequately fundedif they are to educate students successfully, althoughthere continues to be significant disagreementover how much funding is sufficient. Families alsorequire resources to function effectively as educatinginstitutions, although it’s difficult to pin down exactlywhat constitutes “adequate resources.”The report does not argue that lower incomealone is the source of educational inadequacies in thefamily, just as its authors would not argue that a lowerschool budget in itself can be blamed for low studentachievement. In fact, the premise of our 2003 report,Parsing the Achievement Gap, was that it was necessaryto “decompose” income, examining the conditions andbehaviors that are shown by research to be correlatedwith school achievement – which may or may not be“determined” by how much money the family has.The most thorough examination of the effectsof family income on the success of children wasperformed by Susan E. Mayer. She cautions aboutascribing “causation” to simple statistical correlations,and in her analysis sorts out what can be attributedto income alone. While she does find a relationshipbetween family income and success, she says itis smaller than generally thought to be. Also, shesuggests that the attributes that make parentsattractive to employers may be similar to those thatmake them good parents. 15In Parsing the Achievement Gap, we identifiedfactors and conditions, which did not include income,that were related to achievement. Then we lookedat how the factors differed in high- and low-incomefamilies. The gaps in these factors mirrored the gaps inachievement between children in high- and low-incomefamilies. Examples of these factors were birthweight,changing schools, and reading to young children.This report also highlights ways families cansupport and encourage learning that do not dependdirectly on financial resources. These include settingtime limits on watching TV, reading to children, andmaking sure that they get to school. Unfortunately,some important learning supports do require money— and not just nickels and dimes. It takes financialresources to buy books for children to read, shoes forthem to wear to school, and a quiet place for themto read and study. And, more so than parents withsalaries, parents who earn hourly wages may findit difficult (and cost-prohibitive) to take time off toattend a parent-teacher conference or to do volunteerwork at school.Still other important supports for educationaldevelopment involve substantial resources:nutritious food, adequate clothing, glasses to correcta child’s vision problems, and treatment for children’shealth problems. Research has shown that these allaffect student learning and school attendance. Safetynet programs may make a considerable difference,of course, in helping families meet such needs.However, there are large holes in the net, and manyfamilies may not have the knowledge and ability toaccess these programs.Another problem many families in economic straitsface is the need to move from one place to another tofind jobs and affordable housing. This often meansthat their children will have to change schools as well— and that’s a problem, since research has shownthat changing schools frequently can have a negativeimpact on student achievement.The United States has the greatest inequality in thedistribution of income of any developed nation — aninequality that has been rising decade by decade. In2004, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau,the top and most affluent quintile (or fifth) had 50percent of the aggregate household income, while thebottom and poorest quintile had 3.4 percent of theincome. Put another way, the top-income householdshad more than 14 times more income than thebottom-income households. 16 As New York Timescolumnist Paul Krugman writes: “We’ve gone back tolevels of inequality not seen since the 1920s.” 17This section provides several measures of familyfinancial resources and examines the distribution ofthose resources among population subgroups andamong the states. The authors examine median family15Susan E. Mayer, What Money Can’t Buy: Family Income and Children’s Life Chances, Harvard University Press, 1997.16Carmen DeNavas-Walt, Bernadette D. Proctor, and Cheryl Hill Lee, Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States:2005, U.S. Census Bureau, August 2005.17“Gilded No More,” The New York Times, April 27, 2007.14

income, the proportion of children who live in poverty,and the proportion who live in families where parentemployment is unstable.While it is hard to disentangle the effects of incomefrom other characteristics associated with social class,it is clear that children from poor families often missout on many enriching extra-curricular activities thattheir more affluent peers participate in. For example,only 20 percent of school-age children in families withpoverty incomes take lessons of some sort, compared to31 percent of children in families at or above the povertyline. And only 23 percent of children in poor familiesbelong to clubs, compared to 36 percent of childrenwhose families are at or above the poverty line. 18Median Family IncomeLarge differences exist across states and populationsubgroups on any measure of income. Here we focuson the median income of families with children underage 18 in the household, and show the variationsacross states and among racial/ethnic groups. Table 1shows the 2005 median income for families with andwithout children, by racial/ethnic groups.Table 1Median Family Income for FamiliesWith and Without Children, 2005TotalIncomeWithChildrenNoChildrenAll $56,194 $55,176 $57,258White, not Hispanic 63,156 66,235 60,979Black 35,464 31,705 42,079Asian American 68,957 70,292 67,087Hispanic 37,867 36,403 41,276Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Survey, 2006 Annual Social and EconomicSupplement (http://pubdb3.census.gov/macro/032006/faminc/new03_000.htm).As Table 1 shows, there are large income differencesamong racial/ethnic groups. On average, Asian-American families have the highest incomes and Blackfamilies have the lowest. The table also shows thatfamilies with no children have slightly higher incomes,on average, then those with children. There are twonoticeable exceptions, however. White and Asian-American families with children have higher incomesthan White and Asian-American families with noFigure 7Median Annual Family Income for Families WithChildren, by State, 2005ConnecticutNew JerseyMarylandMassachusettsNew HampshireMinnesotaVirginiaAlaskaHawaiiDelawareIllinoisRhode IslandColoradoWisconsinMichiganVermontNew YorkWashingtonPennsylvaniaCaliforniaNebraskaIowaWyomingOhioNorth DakotaIndianaUtahKansasMaineNevadaGeorgiaSouth DakotaMissouriOregonFloridaArizonaNorth CarolinaIdahoSouth CarolinaTennesseeKentuckyTexasMontanaLouisianaAlabamaOklahomaArkansasWest VirginiaNew MexicoMississippiD.C.76,26676,12074,66972,27970,40365,16264,41463,08362,48861,70860,39360,23058,41658,34857,00956,79956,68056,46256,36256,29155,01854,99253,72253,54353,32352,74451,98851,74551,70551,35651,26951,07750,96649,93449,12647,40646,48646,32046,12445,89745,27445,08144,81543,31643,09442,31141,12040,59839,27537,43336,27420 30 40 50 60 70 80Thousands of DollarsSource: Income data are from U.S. Census Bureau and the 2005 American CommunitySurvey.18Dye and Johnson, 2007.15

children. The opposite is true for Black and Hispanicfamilies: Those with children have lower averageincomes than their counterparts with no children.Large differences also show up across the states, asFigure 7 shows. Connecticut, New Hampshire, NewJersey, Maryland, and Massachusetts all have medianannual family incomes over $70,000, contrastingsharply with the median incomes in Mississippi andWashington, D.C., which are about half that of theaforementioned states.Children Living in PovertyAs Figure 8 shows, differences exist in poverty ratesamong families of different racial/ethnic groups. In2005, 11 percent of White children under the age of18 were living in poverty, as were 13 percent of Asian/Pacific Islander children. Those percentages increaseto 29 percent of Hispanic/Latino children, and toabout one-third of American Indian/Alaskan Nativeand Black children.Figure 8Percentage of Children in Poverty,by Racial/Ethnic Group, 2005BlackAmerican Indian/Alaskan NativeHispanic/LatinoU.S.Asian/Pacific IslanderWhite1311192932360 10 20 30 40 50PercentageSource: Poverty data are from the American Community Survey, reported in Kids CountState-Level Data Online (www.aecf.org/kidscount).Figure 9Percentage of Children in Poverty, by State, 2005New HampshireMarylandUtahWyomingConnecticutMinnesotaNew JerseyHawaiiNorth DakotaVirginiaColoradoDelawareIowaMassachusettsWisconsinAlaskaKansasNebraskaNevadaVermontWashingtonIllinoisIndianaMainePennsylvaniaFloridaIdahoOregonSouth DakotaU.S.CaliforniaMichiganMissouriNew YorkOhioRhode IslandArizonaGeorgiaMontanaNorth CarolinaTennesseeKentuckyOklahomaSouth CarolinaAlabamaArkansasTexasNew MexicoWest VirginiaLouisianaMississippi9111111121212131313141414141415151515151516171717181818180 10 20 30 40Source: Poverty data are from the American Community Survey, reported in Kids CountState-Level Data Online (www.aecf.org/kidscount).19191919191919202020212122232325252526262831PercentagePoverty is also spread unevenly around the country,as Figure 9 shows. While 9 percent of children in NewHampshire were living in poverty in 2005, 31 percentof Mississippi children were living in poverty.16

Food InsecurityDespite the existence of federal food aid programs,many U.S. families are unable to adequately feedeverybody in the family. According to the U.S.Department of Agriculture, 11 percent of U.S.households (12.6 million families) were classified as“food insecure” at some time during 2005. This meansthat these households, at some time during the year,were uncertain of having, or unable to acquire, enoughfood to meet the needs of all household membersbecause they had insufficient money or lacked otherfood resources.Good nutrition is vital for developing mindsand bodies. Researchers using the Early ChildhoodLongitudinal Study–Kindergarten Cohort toinvestigate the relationship of food insecurity toachievement found that kindergartners from less foodsecurehomes scored lower at the beginning of thekindergarten year than other children, and learned lessover the course of the school year. 19Figure 10 shows the percentage of households whowere food insecure in 2005 by demographic groups.The 11 percent average masks the disadvantagesexperienced by certain population subgroups.For example, nearly one-third of female-headedhouseholds were food insecure at some time during2005, triple the rate for married-couple families. Therate for Black households, at 22 percent, was nearlytriple the rate of White households. In addition, nearlyone-fifth of Hispanic households were food insecure.The government further breaks down the foodsecurity statistics on households having “low foodsecurity” (households able to obtain enough food byusing various coping strategies) and “very low foodsecurity” (households in which normal eating patternswere disrupted and food intake was reduced due toinsufficient money or other resources). In 2005,7 percent of U.S. households were classified as “lowfood security,” and 4 percent were classified as “verylow food security.” Again, it is important to rememberthat this combined 11 percent represents 12.6 millionhouseholds. 20Figure 10Prevalence of Food Insecurity by HouseholdCharacteristics, 2005*All householdsHousehold composition:Female head, no spouseOther household with child**Male head, no spouseWith children under age 6With children under age 18Married couple familiesRace/ethnicity:BlackHispanicOtherWhiteParent Employment0 10 20 30 40Percentage* Food insecurity is defined as households, at some time during the year, that were uncertainFoodof having,insecurityor unableis definedto acquire,as households,enoughatfoodsometo meettimetheduringneedstheofyear,all theirthatmemberswere uncertain ofbecausehaving, ortheyunablehadtoinsufficientacquire, enoughmoney orfoodotherto meetresourcesthe needsfor food.of all their members because they** had Households insufficient with money children or other in complex resources living for arrangements, food. e.g., children of other relativesor unrelated roommate or boarder.**Households with children in complex living arrangements, e.g., children of other relatives orSource: Data calculated by the Economic Research Service using data from the Decemberunrelated roommate or boarder.2005 Current Population Survey Food Security Supplement.As one would expect, families with low incomes willtypically be those that have had less success in thejob market. Of course, income can come from othersources, and for those most in need, a substantialportion will come from the safety-net programs,such as food stamps, unemployment insurance, andwelfare. Beyond providing a steady income, parentswho maintain steady employment also model sociallyresponsible behavior for children to follow.Figure 11 shows the percentage of children wholive in families where no parent has full-time, yearroundemployment, broken out by racial/ethnic group.Overall, these percentages are high, and for somegroups the rates are alarming. While 27 percent of81110101918171618223119Joshua Winicki and Kyle Jemison, “Food Insecurity and Hunger in the Kindergarten Classroom: Its Effect on Learning and Growth,”Contemporary Economic Policy, Vol. 21, No. 2, April 2003, pp. 145–157.20U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service, Food Security in the United States: Conditions and Trends (www.ers.usda.gov/Briefing/FoodSecurity/trends.htm).17

White children live in families where neitherparent has full-time year-round employment,half of American Indian/Alaskan Native andBlack children and one-third of Hispanic childrenare in this situation.Figure 11Percentage of Children in Families Where NoParent Has Full-Time, Year-Round Employment,by Racial/Ethnic Group, 2005American Indian/Alaskan NativeBlackHispanic/LatinoU.S.Asian/Pacific IslanderWhiteSource: Employment data from the American Community Survey, reported in Kids CountState-Level Data Online (www.aecf.org/kidscount).Employment trends also vary significantly fromstate to state. Iowa, Nebraska, and Utah have thelowest percentage (26 percent) of children living infamilies where no parent has full-time, year-roundemployment. At the opposite end of the scale, onaverage, 43 percent of children in Mississippi live insuch a family. 21Taken together, the measures presented here painta bleak picture of family resources for many of thenation’s families — and the children in their care.While education and public policy generally givestrong support to improving student learning andreducing achievement gaps, the task of greatly raisingthe income floor or reducing economic inequalitythroughout the nation has not been addressed.Income inequality is growing in the United States, not2733323951500 10 20 30 40 50 60Percentagedeclining. But while national debates about incomeinequality become polarized, local pragmatic measuresmay resonate at the community level — measuresthat could help ameliorate the negative effects ofinadequate family income. These measures couldfocus on specific identifiable needs and conditions thatare clearly involved in school achievement — reachingout beyond instruction in the classroom (in thetradition of the school lunch and breakfast programsthat recognize that hungry children can’t learn andthat nutrition is a factor in cognitive development).School systems and communities could developsystematic strategies to identify needs that caninfluence learning, and set about meeting those needs— aided possibly by higher levels of government. Howabout providing free books to impoverished families,or health exams along with necessary medical, dental,and vision care for conditions that affect achievement?Perhaps schools could provide students with their ownstudy spaces (with desks, computers, reference books,paper, and pencils) and offer after-school eveningmeals. A canvass across the nation would disclose avariety of approaches that are now being used to helpchildren. The programs and services already institutedin schools throughout the country offer a rich sourceof information and experience. 22But let us not forget the services already availablethat many families don’t take advantage of. Forexample, Medicaid now covers many children’s healthneeds, but many of the parents who qualify for theprogram haven’t enrolled their children. A first andvery productive step toward helping families supportand facilitate their children’s academic success wouldbe to educate parents about the programs and servicesavailable to help, and encouraging their use.21State employment data are from the American Community Survey reported in Kids Count State-Level Data Online (www.aecf.org/kidscount)22A central source of information is the Coalition of Community Schools at the Institute for Educational Leadership.18

Literacy Development in Young ChildrenWe now have a good assessment of the achievement ofyoung children when they first enter the school system,thanks to the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study.Known as the ECLS-K, the study was conductedby the U.S. Department of Education’s NationalCenter for Education Statistics and began with thekindergarten class of 1998–99. Educators have longhad information about student achievement beginningat the fourth grade, through the National Assessmentof Educational Progress (NAEP). What hasn’t beenknown is: (1) how much of the achievement gap thatis observed among different groups of students at thefourth grade already existed when these students wereentering kindergarten, and (2) what are the factorsthat might be responsible for the early learning gaps?Many elements in the home environment influencecognitive development and learning. With ECLS-Kwe can now determine how large the achievementdifferences are in reading and mathematics amongstudents of different racial/ethnic groups and withdifferent levels of family socioeconomic status (SES)at the point of entry into formal schooling. FigureFigure 12Reading and Mathematics Achievement at theBeginning of Kindergarten, by Racial/Ethnic GroupAsianWhiteOtherHispanicBlackAsianWhiteBlackOtherHispanicMathematicsReading17.417.116.50 5 10 15 20 25 30IRT Scaled Test Score22.2Source: Valerie E. Lee and David T. Burkam, Inequality at the Starting Gate: Social BackgroundDifferences in Achievement as Children Begin School, Washington, D.C.: EconomicPolicy Institute, 2002.2119.919.919.523.225.712 shows the reading and mathematics scores ofbeginning kindergartners in the fall of 1998, by racial/ethnic groups. The data show substantial differencesin children’s reading and mathematics test scores asthey begin kindergarten. Average mathematics scoresare 21 percent lower for Black children than for Whitechildren. Hispanic children’s scores are 19 percentlower than the scores of White children. Similardifferences also exist in reading.Early Language AcquisitionWhile there have been many studies about whathappens in the early years of life and how earlyexperiences affect cognition and language acquisition,none has been as thorough as the work by Betty Hartand Todd Risley, who studied children’s languagedevelopment from birth through age 3. Theseresearchers recorded and monitored many aspectsof parent-child interactions and noted the children’sprogress. They found that in vocabulary, language, andinteraction styles, children mimic their parents.Hart and Risley observed that in working-classfamilies, “about half of all feedback was affirmativeamong family members when the children were 13 to18 months old; similarly, about half the feedback givenby the child at 35 to 36 months was affirmative.” Thatis, when the parents spoke in an affirmative mannerto a child, the child imitated this tone in talking tosiblings and parents. An affirmative tone was slightlymore prevalent among professional parents, and theirchildren shared this.Conversely, in families on welfare, verbalinteractions with the children were much more likelyto be negative and, in turn, the same was true of theinteractions of the child with the rest of the family.In the families on welfare, the researchers generallyfound a “poverty of experience being transmittedacross generations.” One example of the researchers’findings related to language exchanges is illustratedin Figure 13, which shows the estimated numberof words addressed to the children over 36 months,with the trends extrapolated through 48 months.The differences were huge among the professional,working-class, and welfare families. This researchindicates that, by the end of four years, the averagechild in a professional family hears about 20 million19

more words than children in working-class familieshear, and about 35 million more than the children inwelfare families hear. 23Figure 13Estimated Cumulative Differences in LanguageExperience by 4 Years of AgeEstimated Cumulative Words Addressed to Child(in millions)504030201000 21426348** Projected from 36 to 48 months.Source: Hart *Projected and Risley, from 1995. 36 to 48 months.Age of Child in MonthsReading to Young ChildrenProfessionalfamilyWorking-classfamilyWelfare familyChild Trends, a nonprofit, nonpartisan researchorganization dedicated to improving the lives ofchildren, sums up seven research papers, reports,and books, and cites 19 researchers to build anoverwhelming case for the value of reading to children:Children develop literacy-related skills long beforethey are able to read. By reading aloud to theiryoung children, parents can help them acquire theprerequisite skills they will need to learn to readin school. Being read to has been identified as asource of children’s early literacy development,including knowledge of the alphabet, print, andcharacteristics of written language.By the age of two, children who are readto regularly display greater languagecomprehension, larger vocabularies andhigher cognitive skills than their peers.Shared parent-child book reading duringchildren’s preschool years leads to higherreading achievement in elementary school,as well as greater enthusiasm for readingand learning. In addition, being read to aidsin the socioemotional development of youngchildren and gives them the skills to becomeindependent readers and to transition frominfancy to toddlerhood. 24Reading to children is about the simplest thingthat can be done to help them achieve, and it isa critical step in raising achievement and closingachievement gaps. For this reason, if for no other,teaching non-reading parents to read needs to be ahigh priority for communities, states, and the nation— as a key element of an education policy for children.Making sure all families have access to books andother suitable reading materials for their childrenmust also become a key part of this policy. Librarybookmobiles in poor areas, for example, could becomeas ubiquitous as the once-famous Good Humor man.There is, of course, a considerable amount ofreading going on in the American family, although it isclear that the amount and quality varies considerably.For example, ECLS-K found a strong relationshipbetween a kindergartners’ SES and the extent to whichtheir parents read to them. As Figure 14 shows, at thehighest SES quartile, 62 percent of parents reportedreading to their children every day, compared to only36 percent of parents at the lowest SES quartile. These25, 26are very large differences.Trend data displayed in Table 2 also show that, in2005, 60 percent of parents of 3- to 5-year-old childrenwho had not yet entered kindergarten read to theirchildren every day. In 1993, only 53 percent did so. Howmuch parent-to-child reading goes on in families variesa lot, depending on racial/ethnic group, SES, and family23Betty Hart and Todd R. Risley, Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American Children, Paul R. Brookes PublishingCo., 1995.24http://www.childtrendsdatabank.org/indicators/5ReadingtoYoungChildren.cfm25In statistical terms, this is a difference of about one-half of a standard deviation.26SES is measured from a scale that reflects the education, income, and occupations of kindergartners’ parents or guardians.20

Figure 14Percentage of Kindergartners Whose ParentsRead to Them Every Day, by Socioeconomic StatusHighest SESQuintilesLowest SES363925 35 45 55 65 75PercentageSource: Richard J. Coley, An Uneven Start: Indicators of Inequality in School Readiness,Policy Information Report, Policy Information Center, Educational Testing Service, March2002.structure variables. For example, in 2005, children inpoor families were less likely to have a parent read tothem regularly than children in more affluent families.And while 68 percent of White and 66 percent of Asian-American 3- to 5-year-olds were read to every day, thepercentage drops to 50 percent for Black children and45 percent for Hispanic children.Family characteristics also have an importantinfluence on learning and school success. As might beexpected, children in a two-parent family were morelikely to be read to than children in a single-parentfamily (63 percent vs. 53 percent). There was also astrong relationship between mothers’ educational leveland the frequency of reading to the child. Seventytwopercent of children whose mothers were college414662Table 2Percentage of Children Ages 3 to 5 Who WereRead to Every Day in the Past Week by a FamilyMember, Selected Years, 1993-2005 271993 1995 1996 1999 2001 2005Total 53% 58% 57% 54% 58% 60%GenderMale 51 57 56 52 55 59Female 54 59 57 55 61 62Race and Hispanic OriginWhite, Non-Hispanic 59 65 64 61 64 68Black, Non-Hispanic 39 43 44 41 47 50Hispanic 28 37 38 39 33 42 45Asian American 46 37 62 54 51 66Poverty Status 29Below 100% poverty 44 47 47 39 48 50100-199% poverty 49 56 52 51 52 60200% poverty andabove 61 65 66 62 64 65Family TypeTwo parents 30 55 61 61 58 61 62Two parents, married - - - - 61 63Two parents,unmarried - - - - 57 50One parent 46 49 46 42 47 53No parents 46 52 48 51 53 64Mother’s Highest Level ofEducational Attainment 31Less than highschool graduate 37 40 37 39 41 41High schoolgraduate/GED 48 48 49 45 49 55Vocational/technicalor some college 57 64 62 53 60 60College graduate 71 76 77 71 73 72Mother’sEmployment Status 32Worked 35 hoursor more per week 52 55 54 49 55 57Worked less than35 hours per week 56 63 59 56 63 61Looking for work 44 46 53 47 54 63Not in labor force 55 60 59 60 58 65Source: Reproduced from the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics,America’s Children: Key Indicators of National Well-Being, 2006, Federal Interagency Forumon Child and Family Statistics, Washington, D.C., U.S. Government Printing Office, TableED1. Based on National Household Education Survey analysis.27Estimates are based on children who have yet to enter kindergarten.28Persons of Hispanic origin may be of any race.29Poverty estimates for 1993 are not comparable to later years because respondents were not asked exact household income.30Refers to adults’ relationship to child and does not indicate marital status.31Children without mothers in the home are not included in estimates dealing with mother’s education or mother’s employment status.32Unemployed mothers are not shown separately but are included in the total.21

Figure 15Percentage of Children Who Were Read to EveryDay in the Past Week, 2003VermontMaineNew HampshireConnecticutMassachusettsMinnesotaPennsylvaniaColoradoOregonHawaiiWest VirginiaWashingtonRhode IslandWyomingDelawareIowaKentuckyVirginiaMarylandMichiganOhioMontanaKansasAlaskaNorth CarolinaNebraskaIdahoNew YorkIndianaU.S.North DakotaSouth CarolinaIllinoisMissouriD.C.New JerseySouth DakotaUtahWisconsinOklahomaOregonTennesseeCaliforniaArkansasArizonaFloridaNew MexicoAlabamaNevadaTexasLouisianaMississippi64615858575756565554545453535352515151515151505049494848484747474747474747464646454544434343434342413868graduates were read to daily, compared to 55 percentof children whose mothers were high school graduatesor who had obtained a GED, and 41 percent of childrenwhose mothers had not completed high school.There is also considerable variation among thestates, as can be seen in Figure 15, which shows thepercentage of parents who read to their children,under age 5, every day. The low was Mississippi at 38percent, and the high was Vermont at 68 percent; thenational average was 48 percent.30 40 50 60 70PercentageSource: Data on reading to children are from Child and Adolescent Health Measurement Initiative,National Survey of Children’s Health, Data Resource Center on Child and AdolescentHealth, 2005.22

The Child Care DimensionParents are children’s most important teachers duringtheir first five years of life. But parents are far frombeing children’s only teachers: A large proportion ofchildren are in the hands of child care providers for alarge amount of time. These providers constitute thelarger family in which children are raised. It stands toreason, then, that improving the availability of highqualitychild care will improve student learning andreduce inequality.Research supports this assertion and is clearlysummed up in the Annie E. Casey Foundation 2006Kids Count essay:A large body of research underscores howquality child care enables young childrento build the cognitive and social skills thatwill help them learn, build positive socialrelationships and experience academic successonce they enter school. 33This ETS Policy Information Report has drawnheavily from the 2006 Kids Count essay, and the essayis an excellent synthesis of what is known and beingdone to improve child care.The Head Start program provides the mostconsistent model of quality child care available in theUnited States today. But for a variety of reasons, HeadStart and similar high-quality child care programsaren’t available to many families. Until quality childcare programs are accessible to all families, parentswill continue to rely on family members, friends, andneighbors to care for their children. Of 15.5 million U.S.children in child care today, some 6.5 million (almost42 percent) are in home-based settings. And 2.5 millionof these children come from families whose incomesare below 200 percent of the poverty line. AlthoughBlack families are the most likely to use home-basedcare arrangements, White families use them as well.Hispanic families are more likely to use parental care,but when they go outside the home for child care, theyturn to family members, friends, or neighbors for childcare rather than center-based care. 34Parents use family, friend, and neighbor care forreasons having to do with cost and inability to findtransportation to child care centers. Many parentswork shifts that don’t correspond to the hours childcare centers are available. Others choose this typeof care as a matter of preference based on issues oftrust, personal comfort, culture, and preferences for ahomelike environment. Says the Casey Foundation:This form of child care has been used forgenerations and will, undoubtedly, be animportant resource for years to come. For theforeseeable future, it will represent the mostcommon type of child care for low-incomechildren under age six whose parents areworking, especially those in entry-level jobswith non-traditional schedules. 35A Look at Day Care for the Nation’s 2-Year-OldsA longitudinal survey of children has recently releasedinformation on the child care arrangements for thenation’s 2-year-olds. The Early Childhood LongitudinalStudy, Birth Cohort (ECLS-B), sponsored by theU.S. Department of Education’s National Center forFigure 16Regular Nonparental Care at About 2 Years of Age,by Primary Type of Care, 2003-04No regular care50.5%Center-based care15.8%Nonrelative care14.9%Relative care18.8%Source: Gail M. Mulligan and Kristin Denton Flanagan, Age 2: Findings from the 2-Year-OldFollow-Up of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth Cohort (ECLS-B), U.S. Departmentof Education, National Center for Education Statistics, August 2006.33Annie E. Casey Foundation, 2006 Kids Count Essay, 2006, (http://www.aecf.org/upload/PublicationFiles/2006_databook_essay.pdf).34Annie E. Casey Foundation, 2006.35Annie E. Casey Foundation, 2006.23

Figure 17Percentage of Children (at About Age 2) inRegular Nonparental Care, by Type of Careand Racial/Ethnic Group, 2003-04In regular nonparental arrangementBlackOtherWhiteAsianHispanicIn relative careBlackAsianHispanicOtherWhiteIn nonrelative careWhiteOtherBlackHispanicAsianIn center-based careBlackOtherWhiteHispanicAsian9926242119151713121211181724514944430 20 40 60 80Percentage“Other” includes Native Hawaiian, Other Pacific Islander, American Indian or Alaskan Native,and multiracial children.Source: Gail M. Mulligan and Kristin Denton Flanagan, Age 2: Findings from the 2-Year-OldFollow-Up of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth Cohort (ECLS-B), U.S. Departmentof Education, NCES, August 2006.Education Statistics (NCES), provides informationon children’s development, health, and in- and out-ofschoolexperiences in the years leading up to school. 36Type of Day Care. These data, drawn from ECLS-B, describe the nonparental care arrangements of thenation’s 2-year-olds, and provide an assessment of thequality of that care.Figure 16 shows that about half of all two-year-oldswere in some kind of regular nonparental child care.About 19 percent received care from a relative, about16 percent received care in a center (nursery school,63Figure 18Percentage of Children (at About Age 2) inLow-Quality Day Care, by Type of Care and ChildCharacteristics, 2003-04Low Quality Center-Based CareBlackOtherHispanicWhiteAsianBelow povertyAbove povertyMaleFemaleBlackHispanicOtherWhiteAsianBelow povertyAbove povertyMaleFemale01412107811815Low Quality Home-Based Care2015**Large standard error, interpret with caution0 20 40 60 80Percentage“Other” includes Native Hawaiian, Other Pacific Islander, American Indian or Alaskan Native,and multiracial children.Source: Gail M. Mulligan and Kristin Denton Flanagan, Age 2: Findings from the 2-Year-OldFollow-Up of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth Cohort (ECLS-B), U.S. Departmentof Education, NCES, August 2006.early learning center, preschool), and about 15 percenthad home-based nonrelative care (nanny, neighbor,regular sitter).As Figure 17 shows, there are differences amongracial/ethnic groups. Black children were the mostlikely to be in nonparental care at age 2. Sixty-threepercent of Black children were in nonparental care,compared to a little over 40 percent of Asian andHispanic children, and about half of White childrenand children classified as “other.”2929304153616636ECLS-B is the first nationally representative study within the United States to directly assess children’s early mental and physical development,their attachment with their primary care giver (usually their mother), the quality of their early care and education settings, and thecontributions of fathers, both resident and nonresident, to their lives. For more information, visit http://nces.ed.gov/ecls/Birth.asp.24

Quality of Day Care. ECLS-B also collectedinformation on the quality of child care. For asubsample of the children, trained field interviewersobserved the child’s care setting and recordedinformation on its quality. Overall, for children incenter-based care, 24 percent were in high-qualitycare, 66 percent were in medium-quality care(adequate), and 9 percent were in low-quality care.For children in home-based care, the quality was notrated as highly. Seven percent were in high-qualityhome-based care, 57 percent were in mediumqualitysettings, and 36 percent were in home-basedarrangements of low quality.Differences were also reported among childrenof different backgrounds, particularly for the use ofhome-based care. As Figure 18 shows, more than halfof Black and Hispanic 2-year-olds were in home-basedcare rated as low quality, compared to only 20 percentof White children and 15 percent of Asian children.Children in families below the poverty threshold(66 percent) were much more likely than non-poorchildren (29 percent) to be in low-quality child care.Raising academic performance and reducingachievement gaps require a national effort to improvethe quality of this extensive child care system. Thedata that we now have on child care for 2-year-oldsshow that minority and poor children are much morelikely to be in low-quality child care arrangements,reinforcing rather than reducing achievement gaps.While there are relatively few efforts now underwayto improve the quality of child care, there are a varietyof good models to explore and build on. Here are a fewexamples, all drawn from the Kids Count essay:• The Boston Children’s Museum, in partnership withHead Start, kindergartens, and child care teachersin the city, sponsors a citywide effort called Levelingthe Sandbox. All caregivers (including the childrenthey care for and their families) are invited to a halfdayseminar, three “child-focused” field trips to themuseum, and three family nights at the museum.• The Arizona Kith and Kin Project providescaregiver support and training groups that meetweekly for 14 weeks.• Hawaii’s Good Beginnings Alliance helped createneighborhood-based play-and-learning centersstaffed with volunteers and early childhoodeducation specialists.• The Family Support Center, run by the Ashe CountyPartnerships in North Carolina, teaches caregiversthe skills needed for raising literacy levels, andprovides a cooperative play center that is open tohome-based caregivers.• Infant/Toddler Family Day Care, Inc., in Fairfax, Va.,gives skills-training to 100 child care providers andoffers home visits by child care specialists.Any effort to upgrade the quality of child careproviders will have to take into account the fact thatthis is a diverse population. For children under the ageof 5, of a total of 4.7 million care givers, 2.3 millionare paid and 2.4 million are unpaid. Table 3 showsthe distribution of these caregivers and provides asource for those interested in obtaining more detailedinformation on the child-care enterprise.Table 3Characteristics of the Child Care Workforce forChildren From Birth to Age 5 (2002)Paid ChildCare ProvidersUnpaid ChildCare ProvidersTotal 2,301,000 2,395,000Center-based staff 550,000 42,000Family childcare providers 650,000 —Relatives 804,000 2,232,000Nonrelatives 298,000 121,000Source: Alice Burton, et al., Estimating the Size and Components of the U.S. Child CareWorkforce and Caregiving Population, Center for the Child Care Workforce and HumanServices Policy Center, University of Washington, May 2002.25

The Home as an Educational ResourceHow well are America’s “smallest schools” equipped aslearning environments? Many factors and conditionscan contribute to making the home a productive placefor children to learn including:• A quiet place to read and study• A desk or table where children can work• Books, magazines, newspapers, and referencebooks to explore; access to a public library andencouragement to visit it• A computer and access to the InternetThe availability of such resources depends onseveral factors. First and foremost is whether thefamily income is sufficient to provide them. If there isto be equality in home resources, national economicand social policies must provide a means to narrowincome inequality.A second factor is simply differences in the interestsof parents and other family members — whether thenewspaper arrives daily, the National Geographic arrivesmonthly, and so on. Parents with less interest, however,might be persuaded to obtain these kinds of materialsif they understand how important the presence of suchreading materials is in encouraging children’s interest inreading and developing their academic ability.A third factor is the parents’ understanding thatthe home is an important place for learning andeducational development. This realization may beshaped by the parents’ own childhood experiences.Some parents may view the school as the entityprimarily responsible for education. These parentsmay just need encouragement to provide the learningresources their children need at home.Literacy Materials in the HomeThe 2000 NAEP mathematics assessment asked eighthgradestudents whether they had books, magazines,encyclopedias, and newspapers in their homes. Figure19 shows the percentage of students in the states thatparticipated in that assessment who said that they hadat least three of those types of literacy materials intheir homes. Overall, 77 percent of U.S. eighth-gradersindicated that they had at least three types of literacymaterials in their home. Differences among the statesare shown.Figure 19Percentage of Eighth-Graders With Threeor More Types of Literacy Materials in theHome, by State, 2000MinnesotaMaineMontanaWyomingMassachusettsMarylandConnecticutUtahVirginiaNorth CarolinaKansasNew YorkMissouriKentuckyWest VirginiaOregonRhode IslandGeorgiaU.S.TennesseeMississippiArkansasAlabamaSouth CarolinaOklahomaD.C.New MexicoLouisianaTexasNevadaCaliforniaArizonaHawaii87868583838383828181818080807979787877777676767575747272717170706750 60 70 80 90 100PercentageSource: Data from the NAEP 2000 Mathematics Assessment, analyzed by the ETS PolicyInformation Center.Note: Data are presented for the states that participated in the 2000 assessment.In international comparisons using data from theTrends in International Mathematics and ScienceStudy (TIMSS), 31 percent of U.S. eighth-grade sciencestudents had from zero to 25 books in the home,compared with an average of all participating countriesof 44 percent. Twenty-four percent of U.S. eighth-gradershad more than 200 books in the home, compared to26

the international average of 15 percent. 37 This suggestsa high degree of inequality in the United States in theavailability of these important resources in the home.TechnologyThe big story about technology is its rapid expansionin availability and use. While just 15 percent of 3- to17-year-olds had access to a home computer in 1984,a steady increase brought that percentage to 76 in2003. 38 Home Internet use among this group grewfrom 22 percent in 1997 to 42 percent in 2003. It islikely much higher today.However, while many U.S. families take homecomputers for granted, many of our nation’s studentsstill don’t have this technology in their homes.Research shows that computer availability and use isvery uneven among racial/ethnic subgroups. Figure 20shows that White and Asian-American homes are mostlikely to have a home computer, with 87 percent andFigure 20Percentage of Children Ages 3 to 17 Who HaveAccess to Computers at Home and Who Use theInternet at Home, by Racial/Ethnic Group, 2003WhiteAsianHispanicBlackWhiteAsianBlackHispanicHome computer accessHome Internet use25244452555420 40 60 80 100PercentageSource: Child Trends calculations based on U.S. Census data.848784 percent, respectively, compared to just over half ofBlack and Hispanic homes in 2003. As shown in thefigure, the trends are similar for home Internet use.TIMSS also provides data that offer an internationalperspective on these trends. Among the 45 participants,60 percent of eighth-grade students, on average,reported having a computer at home. However, therewere great differences. For 16 of the participants(Australia, Belgium [Flemish], Chinese Taipei,England, Hong Kong SAR, Israel, Republic of Korea,the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Scotland,Singapore, Sweden, the United States, and theCanadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec) virtuallyall eighth-grade students (90 percent or more) reportedhaving a computer at home. In contrast, less than 20percent of eighth-grade students in Armenia, Botswana,Egypt, Indonesia, Moldova, and Morocco reportedhaving a home computer. 39What can be said about how much the presenceof a home computer — and using it — raises studentachievement? For many families, computers remainfairly expensive, so any good research on this questionhas to distinguish computer availability for schoolpurposes from the known relationship betweenincome and school achievement. Distinctions mustalso be made between constructive uses and those oflittle or no help to academic pursuit — such as use forgames, chat rooms, and conversing with friends viae-mail and instant messaging. Like spending too muchtime watching television, any one of these activities,when excessive, can be a “thief of time.”With so many variables to consider, it isn’tsurprising that Child Trends’ synthesis of the literaturedoes not find a clear story on the role of the computerin student achievement:Research on the effects of home computersand Internet use on children’s achievement islimited and often does not control for otherfactors. Some research indicates that thosewith access to home computers performsomewhat better in mathematics and reading,37Michael O. Martin et al., TIMSS 2003 International Science Report, TIMSS & PIRLS International Study Center, Lynch School ofEducation, Boston College, 2004.38Childtrendsdatabank.com, derived from a variety of U.S. Census Bureau reports.39Martin et al., 2004.27

though the benefit is larger for Whites andthose in higher socioeconomic groups …However, there is widespread concern thatchildren may be exposed to pornographic,violent, and other age-inappropriate materials.… Lastly, time in front of the computer mayalso take the place of time spent exercising orbeing active … 40Technology holds much promise for improvingchildren’s educational achievement, but a heavyresponsibility falls on parents in monitoring howtheir children use it. Perhaps the public school systemcan give parents guidance on the constructive use ofcomputers in the home.A Place to StudyIn international comparisons, 86 percent of U.S.eighth-grade science students reported having a studydesk or table in 2003, just above the internationalaverage of 83 percent, but well below Hungary (98percent), Israel (97 percent), Japan (96 percent),Republic of Korea (97 percent), Netherlands (99percent), Norway (98 percent), Slovenia (97 percent),and Sweden (98 percent). 41Dealing With DistractionsDistractions inside the home have skyrocketed sincethe days of The Lone Ranger and The Shadow. It isnot hard to imagine a teenager with the televisionturned on and myspace.com on the computerscreen, checking for text messages on the cell phone— perhaps even with a book open in the lap. And thereare computer and video games, and the iPod. That’s alot of competition for reading and homework.Much of the research about student distraction hasfocused on watching too much television. Some seriousefforts have been made to pin down the effects of largeamounts of television watching on school achievement.However, scientific studies were greatly hampered bythe fact that control groups were hard to find: Televisionwas already ubiquitous when the first studies were donesome 40 or more years ago. Complicating this line ofinquiry is the fact that some television programmingoffers solid educational content, so researchers musttake into account the quality of the television programschildren are watching.The effect of television was of much concern whenthe College Board commissioned a blue ribbon panel in1975 to investigate why SAT ® scores were declining. Thepanel commissioned a report synthesizing the availableresearch, which was limited. The panel’s final reportstated that: “What direct research there is on correlationsbetween television watching and academic test scoresis, in fact, entirely inconclusive.” Nevertheless, the panelwas undaunted in drawing some conclusions and notedthat “by age 16, most children have spent between 10,000and 15,000 hours watching television.” The panel cameto this bottom line: “So is television a cause of the SATscore decline? Yes, we think it is.” 42The American Psychological Association’s TaskForce on Television and Society showed equal concernfor how television might be affecting our nation’syouth. In 1992 this task force issued a report entitledBig World, Small Screen: The Role of Television inAmerican Society that linked excessive televisionviewing (particularly violent television) with negativebehaviors, such as insensitive and aggressive activity. 43Census data also provide information on the extentto which families establish rules limiting children’stelevision watching, the types of programs they’reallowed to watch, the time of day they can watchtelevision, and the number of hours they can watch it.Rules limiting the types of programs and time of daywere more common than rules limiting the number ofhours watched. The data show that children age 3 to5 in families with no television rules were read to lessoften than those with rules. Also, children living withmarried parents had more restrictions on televisionwatching than children with never-married parents. 4440www.childtrendsdatabank.org/indicators/69HomeComputerUse.cfm41Martin et al., 2004.42Willard Wirtz et al., On Further Examination: Report of the Advisory Panel on the Scholastic Aptitude Test Score Decline, College Board,1977, p. 35.43This study is described in Jane Lawler Dye and Tallese D. Johnson, A Child’s Day: 2003(Selected Indicators of Child Well-Being), CurrentPopulation Reports, P70-109, U.S. Census Bureau, Washington, DC, January 2007.44Dye and Johnson, 2007. Married includes married, spouse present and married, spouse absent (excluding separated).28

In 2006, Child Trends provided a summary of whatcan now be concluded:When students are watching televisionexcessively, they are less likely to be spendingtime doing homework or reading, participatingin after-school activities, exercising frequently,or being engaged in other intellectuallystimulating activity. Students who watch six ormore hours of television each day scored lower,on average, than did other students on theNational Assessment of Educational Progress(NAEP) mathematics assessment. Likewise,in all countries participating in the ThirdInternational Mathematics and Science Studyin 1995, eighth graders who watched morethan five hours of television per day had thelowest average mathematics scores. 45Child Trends reports that, in 2004, 31 percent ofeighth-graders watched four or more hours of televisionon an average weekday, with considerable differencesbetween White students (24 percent) and Black students(59 percent). The variation by parents’ education rangesfrom a low of 19 percent for students whose parentsattended graduate school, up to 42 percent for studentswhose parents have less than a high school education(see Figure 21). The trend in the percentage of studentswatching four or more hours is down somewhat since1991: 36 percent, compared with 31 percent in 2004 forboth White and Black students. 46In our 1992 report, America’s Smallest School: TheFamily, we showed how the variation in the amountof television watching by state closely tracked thevariation in the average achievement scores by state.Figure 22 shows the percentage of eighth-graders whowatched five or more hours of television per schoolday in 2000, the most recent year for which state dataare available. The differences among the states thatparticipated in NAEP that year are large. On one hand,few students watched five hours of television or morein Montana, Minnesota, North Dakota, Maine, andUtah, while almost a third or more did so in Louisiana,Mississippi, South Carolina, and Washington, D.C.While the authors of this Policy Information Reportbelieve there is a strong basis for advising parentsthat they need to watch over their children’s televisionviewing, it is also fair to say that no scientific certaintyhas been established as to how much time in front ofwhat types of television programming results in howmuch impact on school achievement.TIMSS provides a much broader view of a varietyof potentially distracting student activities: watchingtelevision and video, playing computer games, playingor talking with friends, doing jobs in the home,participating in sports activities, reading for enjoyment,surfing the Internet, and working at a paid job.Figure 21Percentage of Eighth-Graders WatchingFour or More Hours of Television on anAverage Weekday, 2004Race/EthnicityAllWhiteBlackParent EducationLess than high schoolCompleted high schoolSome collegeCompleted collegeGraduate school19242631313742590 10 20 30 40 50 60 70PercentageSource: Data are from Childtrendsdatabank.org, derived from Jerald G. Bachman, Lloyd D.Johnston, and Patrick M. O’Malley, Monitoring the Future: A Continuing Study of AmericanYouth (8th-, 10th-, and 12th-Grade Surveys), 1976-2004, University of Michigan, SurveyResearch Center.45http://www.childtrendsdatabank.org/indicators/55WatchingTV.cfm46Data are from Childtrendsdatabank.org, derived from Jerald G. Bachman, Lloyd D. Johnston, and Patrick M. O’Malley, Monitoring theFuture: A Continuing Study of American Youth (8th-, 10th-, and 12th-Grade Surveys), 1976-2004, University of Michigan, Survey ResearchCenter.29

Figure 22Percentage of Eighth-Graders Watching Four orMore Hours of Television per School Day, 2000MontanaUtahMinnesotaNorth DakotaMaineVermontOregonWyomingIdahoKansasNebraskaMassachusettsRhode IslandIndianaArizonaConnecticutNew MexicoKentuckyMissouriOhioCaliforniaMichiganU.S.NevadaOklahomaTexasIllinoisWest VirginiaNorth CarolinaGeorgiaMarylandNew YorkTennesseeVirginiaHawaiiArkansasAlabamaLouisianaSouth CarolinaMississippiD.C.8910101111121213131415161718181819191920202121212122222325252525252627293030310 10 20 30 40 50PercentageSource: Data from the NAEP 2000 Reading Assessment, analyzed by the ETS PolicyInformation Center.Figure 23 compares the United States with theaverage for 44 other countries, in terms of the averagehours per week eighth-grade students spent on eachactivity on a normal school day. The United States was:• A bit lower than the average in time spent reading abook for enjoyment, and doing jobs at home.• About average in time spent playing computergames and working at a paid job.48Figure 23International Comparison of Average Hours Spenton Various Activities on a Normal School Day byEighth-Graders, 2003Watch TV and videoPlay computer gamesPlay or talk with friendsSource: TIMSS, 2003Do jobs at homePlay sportsRead a book for enjoymentUse the InternetUnited StatesWork at a paid job44 country average0.60.60.70.90 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3Hours• Above average in time spent watching televisionand videos, playing or talking with friends, andparticipating in sports activities. U.S. eighth-gradestudents also spent almost one hour more usingthe Internet in a normal school day than theirinternational peers.Certainly, many of these activities are constructiveand can benefit student development. Others can beconsidered both play and educational, such as usingthe Internet. These data reveal the wide array ofactivities that compete for students’ time in a schoolday — and the heavy responsibility parents have forinfluencing their children to achieve a balance.* * * * *1.11.11.21.3The home, as a small school, needs resources, asdoes any large school. However, many families arehampered by incomes so low that simply paying therent and putting food on the table takes precedenceover anything else, including academics. That’s aproblem. But parents can compensate for these11.41.81.81.91.92.22.430

esource deficiencies by encouraging their childrento read and study, monitoring the time their childrenspend in front of the television, and making sure theyhave a place somewhere to study without distraction.A lot of school work has been done around the diningroom table under the watchful eye of a parent.Families with adequate financial resources facebetter prospects than those with significant financialproblems. However, families of all incomes need tobe encouraged to do what they can to create a homeenvironment that facilitates learning. The importanceof having at least a minimum of educational resourcesin the home should become part of a broad nationaleducational policy and program to raise studentachievement at the bottom of the achievementdistribution and reduce achievement gaps.31

The Parent-School RelationshipResearch clearly shows that when parents and schoolswork together to support student learning, childrendo better in school. There are many steps parents cantake to be more involved in their children’s schoolsand support their children’s academic efforts. Theseinclude making sure children get to school on time,attending parent-teacher conferences, and checkingwhether homework is completed.Getting Children to SchoolOf all the important things parents can do to help theirchildren succeed in school, making sure they get thereheads the list. Teachers can’t teach, and students can’tlearn, when students aren’t in school.Child Trends summarizes the research this way:School attendance is a critical factor for schoolperformance among youth. Studies showthat higher attendance is related to higherachievement for students of all backgrounds.Students who attend school regularly scorehigher than their peers who are frequentlyabsent . . . chronic truancy (regular unexcusedabsence), in particular, is a predictor ofundesirable outcomes in adolescence,including academic failure, dropping out ofschool, substance abuse, and gang andcriminal activity. 47One in five fourth- and eighth-grade students missesthree or more days of school a month — that’s morethan five weeks of a school year. Asian/Pacific Islanderstudents have the fewest absences, while Black andHispanic students have the highest rates of absenteeism(see Table 4). Absenteeism rates have been roughlystable overall since 1994. The rank order of absencesparallels the rank order of achievement in the NAEPassessment, as Table 5 shows.Table 4Percentage of Fourth- and Eighth-Grade StudentsWho Reported Missing Three or More Days ofSchool in the Previous Month, 2005Grade 4 Grade 8Total 19% 20%White Non-Hispanic 18 19Black Non-Hispanic 21 24Hispanic 21 23Asian/Pacific Islander 13 12American Indian 25 29Source: Childtrendsdatabank.org, from Student Absenteeism, The Condition of Education2006, U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics (http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/2006/section3/indicator24.asp#info).Table 5Comparison of Days Absent From School in thePrevious Month and NAEP Mathematics Scores,Grade 8, 2005Days AbsentAverage Math ScoreNone 2841-2 2803-4 2705-10 265Over 10 250Source: Data from the 2005 NAEP Mathematics Assessment, analyzed by the ETS PolicyInformation Center.Data are also available on the differences amongthe states on the frequency of student absences.Figure 24 shows the states ranked from low to highon the percentage of students absent three or moretimes a month.47http://www.childtrendsdatabank.org/indicators/106StudentAbsenteeism.cfm32

Figure 24Percentage of Eighth-Graders Who Are AbsentThree Days or More per Month, by State, 2005Figure 25Seriousness of School Attendance Problems,Grade 8, TIMSS 2003IowaMassachusettsSouth CarolinaKansasNorth DakotaSouth DakotaTexasVermontVirginiaGeorgiaIdahoIllinoisIndianaMissouriNebraskaNorth CarolinaOhioOklahomaPennsylvaniaTennesseeU.S.ConnecticutKentuckyMinnesotaNew JerseyWisconsinAlabamaArkansasCaliforniaHawaiiMaineNew HampshireNew YorkWashingtonWest VirginiaMarylandMississippiNevadaUtahArizonaDelawareMichiganMontanaNew MexicoOregonRhode IslandColoradoFloridaLouisianaWyomingD.C.181818191919191919202020202020202020202021212121212122222222222222222223232323242424252525252626272738LebanonItalyKorea, Rep. ofChinese TaipeiBelgium (Flemish)EgyptSingaporeIran, Islamic Rep. ofJordanSaudi ArabiaSlovak RepublicSloveniaHungaryPalestinian Nat’l. AuthorityHong Kong (SAR)MoroccoAustraliaBahrainMacedonia, Rep. ofChileRomaniaCyprusArmeniaNorwayU.S.MalaysiaNetherlandsTunisiaSerbiaMoldova, Rep. ofScotlandIsraelJapanNew ZealandRussian FederationIndonesiaLatviaGhanaEstoniaSwedenPhilippinesSouth AfricaLithuaniaBotswanaBulgaria413634343130302927262625242222222120181817171615141312119988877665456515147476610 15 20 25 30 35 40PercentageSource: Data from the NAEP 2005 Mathematics Assessment, analyzed by the ETS PolicyInformation Center.Alaska data are not reported since reporting standards were not met.0 20 40 60More seriousLess seriousSource: Ina V.S. Mullis et al., TIMSS 2003 International Mathematics Report, TIMMS &PIRLS International Study Center, Lynch School of Education, Boston College, 2003.33

In international comparisons made in 2003 as partof the eighth-grade TIMSS mathematics assessment,attendance rates varied widely among 45 participatingcountries. TIMSS constructed an index of good schooland class attendance based on principals’ responsesto three questions about the seriousness of attendanceproblems in the school, absenteeism, and skippingclass. High levels indicate good attendance — all threebehaviors either never occur or are reported not tobe a problem. Figure 25 provides an internationalperspective on student attendance at eighth grade.Lebanon was highest at 66 percent. The United Stateswas 26th, with a score of 18 percent, and Bulgaria, at4 percent, had the lowest score.Sometimes students have to miss school. Andbecause NAEP does not separately identify unexcusedabsences, it’s difficult to gain a clear understandingof how large a part truancy plays in our nation’sabsenteeism rates. Clearly, parents have the primaryresponsibility of getting their children to school. Butwhen poor school attendance becomes a problem theycan’t control, parents and school personnel need towork together to identify solutions.Government agencies can also do more to addresssystemic truancy problems. States, for example, setand enforce mandatory attendance ages. The U.S.Office of Justice has provided an in-depth look at theproblem, and a description of a major effort in truancyreduction, in Truancy Reduction: Keeping Students inSchool (The Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Office ofJustice, September 2001). This large project began in1998. The latest report was in April 2006, showing areduction in the unexcused absence rate from 14.6 to 7.4. 48In April 2007, The Washington Post reported that“the problem of truancy has drawn widespreadattention this year, prompting some area lawmakersto call for tough measures to keep track of the mosthabitual offenders and leading schools to crackdown on those who consistently skip class.” InFebruary 2007, Prince George’s County police begana crackdown and reported that as of April they had“caught” 425 truants. 49The Buffalo (New York) Board of Education istrying to address its truancy problem by basing 10percent of students’ grades on their attendance (butnot penalizing students for excused absences). Theresults of this policy, which was initiated in October2006, will be reviewed in a year. 50High absenteeism is a major drag on efforts toimprove student performance and reduce achievementgaps. It has also been shown to be an important factorin predicting high school completion. As schoolsintroduce more content and rigor into their schoolday, more material will be missed by those absentfrom school, and the impact will be greatest for lowachievingstudents.Parental Involvement in SchoolWhile schools are charged with the primaryresponsibility for education, the success of thatenterprise depends on a cooperative effort amongstudents, parents, and schools. Child Trendssummarizes the research on the effect parentalinvolvement has on student learning:Students with parents who are involved intheir school tend to have fewer behavioralproblems and better academic performance,and are more likely to complete secondaryschool. Parental involvement allows parentsto monitor school and classroom activities,and to coordinate their efforts with teachers… Research has found that students performbetter in school if their fathers as well as theirmothers are involved, regardless of whether thefather lives with the student or not. 51Using the Chicago Longitudinal Study database,Arthur Reynolds and Melissa Clements’ recentresearch documents the contributions of familyinvolvement. The Chicago study was conductedover a period of 17 years, with 1,539 low-income48“Truancy, Dropouts and Delinquency,” a presentation provided by Dr. Ken Seeley, President, National Center for School Engagement, TheColorado Foundation, 10/11/06, kens@coloradofoundation.org.49Nelson Hernandez et al., “Keeping Kids in the Classroom,” The Washington Post, April 30, 2007.50Peter Simon, Buffalo News, October 12, 2006.51http://www.childtrendsdatabank.org/pdf/39_PDF.pdf34

Figure 26Trends in Parent Involvement in Their Child’s SchoolPercentage1008060407788Attend ageneral meeting72children, of whom 93 percent were Black, with amatched comparison group. They found that parentinvolvement serves as a mechanism though whichthe long-term effects of interventions are achieved,ultimately leading to higher levels of studentperformance. 52National trend data on parent involvement withtheir children’s school is positive. For example, parentswho reported that they attended a general meetingrose from 77 percent in 1996 to 88 percent in 2003 (seeFigure 26).As Figure 27 shows, there was little differenceamong racial/ethnic groups of parents with respectto attending general meetings or appointments witha teacher. Somewhat fewer Black and Hispanicparents said they had attended a school event, andsubstantially fewer said they did volunteer work orserved on a committee. A problematic pattern canbe seen in these participation data when organizedby other categories. These Child Trends data showthat, for example, parent participation decreases as77Attend a scheduledmeeting with teacher6770Attend a school event391996 200342students progress through school.While more than 90 percent of parentsof children in early elementary schoolsaid they had attended a generalmeeting at school, the percentagedrops to 74 percent for parents of11th- and 12th-graders. Further, parentparticipation is lower where studentgrades are lower. Parents of studentswith A averages are much more likelyto attend school functions than theparents of students earning C’s and D’s.Parent education, poverty status, andEnglish proficiency were also related toparent involvement.A variety of efforts have beenundertaken at different levels ofgovernment to increase parentalinvolvement. For example, New YorkCity recently assigned a school-parentcoordinator in every school. And the NoChild Left Behind Act mandates thatschools provide parents with information about howthey can be involved in school improvement efforts.Act as a volunteer orserve on school committeeSource: Data from the National Center for Education Statistics, reported by Child Trends DataBank (http://www.childtrendsdatabank.org/tables/39_Table_2.htm).In Lake County, Fla., teachers will soon put students’test scores, homework scores, attendance records, andprogress reports on a secure website so that parents canaccess them. The website will also provide informationto help parents on a range of parenting and learningconcerns, with links to articles by pediatriciansand child-care experts, as well as to a weekly onlinepublication called The Informed Parent. Communicationbetween parents and teachers is encouraged. The site willalso include a homework hotline and provide studentswith access to an online tutor. 53Kentucky’s Prichard Committee for AcademicExcellence, which led Kentucky’s school reformmovement, has also undertaken a large effort toimprove parent involvement. In 1997, the committeecreated the Center for Parent Leadership, whichtrained 1,200 Kentucky parent leaders to work at thelocal level. The center now markets its services acrossthe country. 5452Arthur J. Reynolds and Melissa Clements, “Parental Involvement and Children’s School Success,” in Evanthia Patrikakou et al., School-Family Partnerships for Children’s Success, New York, Teachers College Press, 2005.53Eliva Ben-Avari, Orlando Sentinel, December 30, 2006.54See www.centerforparentleadership.org35

Figure 27Percentage of Students in Grades K to 12 WhoseParents Reported Involvement in Their Child’sSchool, by Racial/Ethnic Group, 2003Attended a general meetingWhiteBlackHispanicAttended a scheduled meeting with a teacherWhiteBlackHispanicAttended a school eventWhiteBlackHispanicActed as a volunteer or served on committeeWhiteBlackHispanic28320 20 40 60 80 100PercentageSource: Data from the National Center for Education Statistics reported in Child TrendsDataBank (http://www.childtrendsdatabank.org/tables/39_Table_1.htm).Joyce Epstein, a leading national expert in parentalinvolvement, has developed a model for families,schools, and community organizations exertingoverlapping spheres of influence on children’seducation. 55 Epstein lays out six types of cooperation:• Parenting: Health, safety, and home environment;• Communicating: Schools reaching out to parentsabout school programs and student progress;• Volunteering: Schools get most contributions fromparents by making it easy for them to participate;• Learning at Home: Helping the student, with theguidance and support of teachers;48636176747978838989• Decision-making: Giving parents meaningful rolesin school decisions; and• Collaboration with the Community: Schoolshelping families gain access to support services inthe community. 56Appleseed, a non-profit social justice agency, hasissued a report calling on federal, state, and localofficials to do a better job of abiding by NCLB’sparent involvement requirements. The report isbased on research involving 18 school districts in sixstates. It finds that despite many problems, parentinvolvement is integral to the success of studentsand schools. The report concludes that while currentparent involvement provisions in the law are solidand ambitious, more faithful implementation andenforcement are required. 57Dorothy Rich, founder of the Home and SchoolInstitute, has been leading the way toward betterhome involvement with the schools and withstudent learning for many years. She is the author ofMegaSkills ® : Building Children’s Achievement for theInformation Age. 58Lastly, a revised edition of a 1986 book hasrecently been published that offers practical advicefor establishing and improving interactions andcollaborative partnerships among schools, families,and community groups. The book also contains acomprehensive chapter on useful resources, includingguides and publications, organizations, web-basedresources, and programs related to this importanttopic. 5955see Joyce Epstein, School, Family and Community Partnerships: Preparing Educators and Improving Schools, Westview Press, 2001.56Joyce Epstein, “Six Types of School-Family-Community Involvement,” Harvard Education Letter, September/October 1997.57Appleseed, It Takes a Parent: Transforming Education in the Wake of the No Child Left Behind Act, September 2006.58www.MegaSkillsHSI.org59Anne T. Henderson et al., Beyond the Bake Sale: The Essential Guide to Family/School Partnerships, The New Press, 2006.36

Putting It Together: Estimating the Impact of Family and Home Factorson Student AchievementThis report describes a number of familycharacteristics and home conditions that influencechildren’s cognitive development and schoolperformance. These factors tend to be interrelated andrarely existing in isolation from one another. One wayto view this is as stars comprising a constellation offamily conditions and experiences that are associatedwith student achievement. We have chosen fourfactors here to represent the stars in this constellation;although we might have chosen others and foundsimilar results.These four factors are:• The Parent-Student Ratio: The percentage ofchildren under age 18 who live with one parent• Absenteeism: The percentage of eighth-graderswho missed three or more days in a single month• Reading to young children: The percentage ofchildren age 5 or younger whose parents read tothem every day•· Excessive television watching: The percentageof eighth-graders who watch five or more hours oftelevision on a school dayThe authors used these factors in a regressionanalysis to predict state eighth-grade reading scores onthe 2005 NAEP assessment. For each state, the analysiscompared the predicted score with the actual score,as shown in Figure 28. In statistical terms, these fourfactors account for two-thirds of the differences in theactual scores (r squared = .66). That is a very strongassociation. These four factors, in a sense, could standfor other factors discussed in this report, as many areinterrelated or correlated with each other. 60For 22 states, the predicted reading score waswithin 2.0 points of the actual score; in 16 states, thescore was within 2.1 to 4.0 points of the actual score;in seven states, the score was within 4.1 to 6.0 points;and the score in five states was more than 6.0 pointshigher than the predicted score.While this set of family factors shows a strongassociation with student achievement, we wantto caution against concluding that it carries moreweight than school efforts and quality. As there areinter-correlations among this large set of familycharacteristics and home conditions, there are intercorrelationsbetween family factors and schoolfactors. For example, poorer states may have a higherpercentage of single-parent families that tend to earnless income than two-parent families and, as a result,pay fewer taxes. Schools in these states may nothave the resources to attract the more qualified andexperienced teachers. And since the research is clearthat teacher quality and experience is correlated withstudent achievement, we are likely to see lower levelsof student achievement, on average, in these states.A set of school factors, found to be related, would alsolikely make a strong showing in predicting averagemathematics scores.60See Appendix table for details of this analysis.37

Figure 28Actual and Predicted Eighth-Grade NAEP Reading ScoresMassachusettsMaineNew HampshireNorth DakotaMontanaNew JerseySouth DakotaMinnesotaVermontVirginiaWyomingIowaKansasNebraskaOhioPennsylvaniaDelawareWisconsinColoradoMissouriNew YorkWashingtonConnecticutIdahoIllinoisKentuckyOregonUtahIndianaMarylandMichiganRhode IslandOklahomaTennesseeArkansasNorth CarolinaTexasGeorgiaSouth CarolinaFloridaArizonaWest VirginiaLouisianaNevadaAlabamaMississippiNew MexicoCaliforniaHawaiiD.C.ActualPredicted0 230 240 250 260 270 280 500NAEP Scale ScoreSource: Data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress Analyzed by the ETS Policy Information Center.Note: Alaska was not included in the analysis because of insufficient data.38

Concluding CommentsSchools are the primary agencies for teachingstudents, and there is a national focus on improvingthose schools — as there should be. Long beforeschools begin their jobs, however, teaching andlearning take place in the family. The quality of thathome and family teaching makes a large differencein how much children know and how ready they areto learn when they get to school. Home and familyexperiences and conditions continue to influencelearning, too, once children start school.For all children, the height of the platform onwhich they stand when they begin school will makea difference in how much they achieve during thatfirst year of school. Teachers have no magic wand towave to make all the platforms of equal height. Somestudents arrive at school able to read and armed withlarge vocabularies; others arrive unable to read andwith limited vocabularies.This report examines children’s family and homeexperiences, identifying those factors that influencelearning. The report examines differences in thesecritical experiences, where possible, by race/ethnicityand SES.Not only is the nation’s attention focused on raisingstudent achievement generally, and increasing thesupply of students ready to excel in math and science,it is riveted also on reducing the large achievementgaps that exist between minority and non-minoritystudents, and between children from low-incomefamilies and families with higher incomes. Whenpeople speak about the need for education reform,they often mean that there is a need to reduce theachievement gaps between these groups.This report clearly establishes that the gaps in criticalhome experiences mirror the gaps in early schoolachievement — gaps that persist through the end of highschool. This report and our prior reports, Parsing theAchievement Gap and Windows on Achievement andInequality, nail down, plank by plank, the platformthat children take off from when they enter school.Ignore the construction of that platform and theUnited States will not reach its ambitious goalsof raising student achievement and increasing itsability to compete in a global economy; nor will itbe successful in reducing the huge disparities inachievement among students of different racial/ethnicgroups and different levels of SES. It has been welldocumented that there are deficiencies in our schools— and that there should be no excuses for not fixingthem — and our reports have helped to documentsuch deficiencies. This report makes clear thatthere often are shortcomings and deficiencies in theschooling and support that children receive at home.And there should also be no excuses for recognizingthese shortcomings and working to fix them.While research clearly establishes that these familyexperiences and home conditions affect studentachievement, this report does not attempt to answerthe question of what portion of the differences instudent achievement is due to these factors and whatportion is a result of what happens while students arein school. Simple statistical analyses can’t account forthese inter-correlations between school and familyconditions. For example, as we’ve noted, poorer statesmay have a higher percentage of single-parent familieswho pay fewer taxes; and states with fewer resourcesmay have lower average teacher salaries, making itdifficult to attract highly qualified teachers. Whatis entangled so completely cannot be disentangledsimply — if at all.We’ve constructed a case about the importance ofout-of-school experiences in educational achievement,and how these differ among the nation’s population.Additionally, several recent ETS Policy InformationCenter publications have attempted to make aconvincing case concerning the need for schoolimprovement and standards-based education reform.We do not believe that recognizing the importance ofeither weakens the case for the other.We fully recognize that more intense and concertedefforts to improve teaching can compensate (at leastsomewhat) for learning deficiencies present when studentsarrive at school. Research, however, has not establishedthe trade-offs to tell us how much a particular investmentin school effort can make up for under-investment in theout-of-school environment, or vice versa.39

On the school front, the summation of researchfindings in our Policy Information Report Parsing theAchievement Gap identifies six core factors related toschool achievement. These factors, in their presenceor absence in students’ racial/ethnic or socioeconomicgroup, mirrored gaps in school achievement. Sinceissuing that report in 2003, we’ve seen no progressin narrowing the gaps in these critical factors by, forexample, providing more experienced teachers in theschools where students are not succeeding academically.On the before- and out-of-school fronts, we areobviously talking about a very broad terrain withvery different approaches required, depending onthe conditions and experiences involved. With thetwo-parent family having historically been, for manycultures, the basic unit for raising and socializingchildren, its decline is perhaps the most importantdevelopment in the role families play in children’searly literacy and cognitive development. Thedifference that having two parents makes in children’sacademic success is well established in volumes ofresearch studies, as summarized in this report. Itis important to always recognize, however, that weare talking about averages, and that many childrengrowing up in single-parent families are doing verywell, just as many children in two-parent families aredoing poorly.Since about the mid-1960s, the trend toward singleparentfamilies has largely been upward in the UnitedStates and in many other developed countries. Thisis not a trend that is likely to be reversed easily bychanges in public policy. The question then becomes:What can neighborhoods, communities, privateorganizations, and governments do to compensatefor this decline in the parent-pupil ratio, which webelieve is leading to a “new inequality”? This reportoffers several solutions: from expanding good childcare arrangements to arranging for mentors to read toyoung children.Clearly, low-income families are at a disadvantagewhen it comes to providing resources to support theirchildren’s academic success. For example, althoughhaving a quiet place to study is important for learningand school success, many families are forced to live inovercrowded, often chaotic conditions that make suchan amenity impossible. Changing schools frequentlyis also associated with academic difficulties, butmany parents are forced to move to find work. Evenproviding a basic necessity like good nutrition requiressubstantial resources. The uneven distribution ofincome and wealth in the United States is intertwinedwith the huge disparities in the literacy and academicachievement of our nation’s students.Another set of factors related to school achievementis within the control of parents at any incomelevel: Getting students out of bed and off to school,establishing rules for television watching, and readingto and talking with young children are examples.Making sure parents understand how important theseseemingly modest efforts can be for their children’ssuccess can improve trends associated with pooracademic performance. Equally important is assistingparents who are willing, but unable, to take thesesteps. That means providing instruction in parentingskills to those who need them, teaching non-readingparents how to read, and helping families obtainsuitable reading materials for their homes.As we’ve noted, research clearly indicates thatparent involvement in children’s learning and school,and good communication between parents and schoolpersonnel, improves students’ success in school. It’simportant to let parents know that being involvedmakes a difference, and to encourage schools to takethe lead in opening lines of communication.Lastly, child care arrangements play a critical rolein student learning. Child care, particularly good childcare, is expensive. And in America, families with theleast resources are the ones whose children are mostlikely to be in lower-quality care. The quality of childcare is most important during the first three yearsof life, when child-parent verbal interaction makes acritical difference in language development. So far, wehave only limited experience with compensatory effortsin these critical first three years of life. Early Head Startis still a young effort, and there has been little time forthoroughly documented results. On the other hand,Head Start and other programs that reach pre-schoolershave been evaluated and shown to be successful.We recommend consulting a recent BrookingsInstitution paper by Jans Ludwig and Isabele Sawhillon early intervention in the early years of a child. The40

authors point out what research has established: “…Early intervention is particularly important because of thebrain’s unusual ‘plasticity’ during a child’s early years.”They propose an intervention they call “Successby Ten”:Success by Ten is a proposed program designedto help every child achieve success in schoolby age ten. It calls for a major expansion andintensification of Head Start and Early HeadStart, so that every disadvantaged child has theopportunity to enroll in a high-quality programof education and care during the first five yearsof his or her life. Because the benefits of thisintensive intervention may be squandered ifdisadvantaged children go from this programto a low-quality elementary school, the secondpart of the proposal requires that schoolsdevote their Title 1 spending to instructionalprograms that have proven effective in furtherimproving the skills of children, especially theirability to read.This proposal is firmly based in research and on thesuccessful Abecedarian program of early childhoodeducation. They have carefully estimated both its costsand benefits. 61The responsibility for promoting constructiveefforts to address these issues needs to be acceptedand shared by a wide range of leaders and decisionmakers, including:• Presidents, governors, and chief state schoolofficers using their offices as bully pulpits to changebehaviors, including parental behavior, as well as tocreate legislation and programs• Elected officials at all levels, working with localinstitutions and community leaders to find ways tocompensate for family’s resource shortages, as well asshortcomings in the training of child care providers• School systems extending into the community,in collaboration with other community agencies,to supplement family efforts in a variety of ways,such as providing health care for children withconditions that interfere with learningIt’s essential that parents, educators, and policyleaders fully understand that raising studentachievement involves much more than improvingwhat goes on in classrooms. Leaders and policymakers must establish community, state, and nationalprograms to both improve schools and enhance thehome and family conditions that give all students abetter chance to reach high platforms from which tostart school.It is unfortunate that there are often competingviews on what our focus should be. Some point tothe need to address the conditions outside of schoolsthat have an impact on students’ capacity to learn,while others point a finger directly at the schools andtolerate no excuses. Yet both views concur that to donothing sets us up for a future that nobody wants —for individuals, for society, or for the nation’s economy.Both sides need to proceed together, as did LewisCarroll’s unlikely pair, the butcher and the beaver:But the valley grew narrow and narrower still,And the evening got darker and colder,Till (merely from nervousness, not from goodwill)They marched along shoulder to shoulder. 6261Jens Ludwig and Isabel Sawhill, Success by Ten: Intervention Early, Often, and Effectively in Education of Young Children, the BrookingsInstitution, February 2007.62Lewis Carroll, The Hunting of the Snark: An Agony in Eight Fits.41

Appendix TableStatePredicting NAEP State Achievement — 2005 Reading Grade 8Percentof ChildrenLiving WithOne ParentPercentof ChildrenRead toEvery DayPercent ofStudentsWatching 5or More Hoursof TV onSchool DayPercentof StudentsAbsent 3or MoreDays inMonthActualScorePredictedScoreDifferenceBetweenActual andPredictedAlabama 36% 43% 28% 20% 252 255.2 3.2Arizona 31% 43% 18% 20% 255 261.0 6.0Arkansas 38% 44% 28% 19% 258 255.9 -2.1California 29% 45% 18% 18% 250 262.5 12.5Colorado 26% 56% 16% 23% 265 264.8 -0.2Connecticut 27% 58% 20% 19% 264 265.1 1.1Delaware 35% 53% 16% 22% 266 263.7 -2.3District of Columbia 68% 47% 49% 27% 238 239.9 1.9Florida 36% 43% 25% 26% 256 254.3 -1.7Georgia 35% 46% 26% 15% 257 259.6 2.6Hawaii 28% 55% 25% 22% 249 259.9 10.9Idaho 23% 49% 12% 21% 264 266.1 2.1Illinois 28% 47% 21% 20% 264 260.8 -3.2Indiana 26% 48% 17% 19% 261 263.9 2.9Iowa 24% 53% 16% 19% 267 265.7 -1.3Kansas 24% 51% 14% 20% 267 265.8 -1.2Kentucky 30% 52% 20% 15% 264 265.0 1.0Louisiana 44% 41% 29% 24% 254 251.8 -2.2Maine 33% 64% 12% 21% 270 269.8 -0.2Maryland 33% 51% 26% 24% 261 257.1 -3.9Massachusetts 29% 58% 15% 18% 274 268.1 -5.9Michigan 31% 51% 20% 24% 261 260.4 -0.6Minnesota 24% 57% 12% 19% 268 269.3 1.3Mississippi 42% 38% 32% 23% 251 249.9 -1.1Missouri 31% 47% 20% 19% 265 261.6 -3.4Montana 27% 51% 9% 29% 269 264.1 -4.9Nebraska 23% 49% 13% 19% 267 266.6 -0.4Nevada 31% 43% 22% 24% 253 256.8 3.8New Hampshire 26% 61% 13% 20% 270 269.4 -0.6New Jersey 25% 47% 16% 20% 269 263.5 -5.5New Mexico 38% 43% 19% 26% 251 257.1 6.1New York 34% 48% 25% 22% 265 257.7 -7.3North Carolina 34% 50% 24% 19% 258 260.0 2.042

StatePredicting NAEP State Achievement — 2005 Reading Grade 8Percentof ChildrenLiving WithOne ParentPercentof ChildrenRead toEvery DayPercent ofStudentsWatching 5or More Hoursof TV onSchool DayPercentof StudentsAbsent 3or MoreDays inMonthActualScorePredictedScoreDifferenceBetweenActual andPredictedNorth Dakota 24% 47% 11% 19% 270 266.9 -3.1Ohio 33% 51% 19% 19% 267 263.2 -3.8Oklahoma 34% 46% 22% 20% 260 259.5 -0.5Oregon 29% 56% 13% 24% 263 265.7 2.7Pennsylvania 30% 57% 16% 21% 267 265.6 -1.4Rhode Island 39% 54% 16% 24% 261 262.8 1.8South Carolina 40% 47% 31% 19% 257 255.2 -1.8South Dakota 27% 47% 16% 18% 269 264.2 -4.8Tennessee 34% 45% 25% 20% 259 257.8 -1.2Texas 32% 42% 21% 18% 258 259.9 1.9Utah 17% 47% 9% 24% 262 265.9 3.9Vermont 26% 68% 11% 18% 268 273.3 5.3Virginia 29% 51% 26% 20% 268 259.3 -8.7Washington 30% 54% 16% 23% 265 263.9 -1.1West Virginia 29% 54% 23% 23% 255 260.4 5.4Wisconsin 28% 46% 16% 21% 266 262.6 -3.4Wyoming 27% 53% 13% 19% 268 267.4 -0.6Note: Alaska was not included in the analysis because of insufficient data.43

Regression ResultsThe REG ProcedureModel: MODEL1Dependent Variable: avescoreNumber of Observations Read 50Number of Observations Used 50Analysis of VarianceSource DF Sum of Squares Mean Square F Value Pr > FModel 4 1619.41209 404.85302 21.72 |t|Intercept 1 269.34657 8.3332 32.32

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