Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion The Rich-Poor Divide Starts With Kindergarten

The last sentence above is inconsistent with some other evidence. Looking, for example, at the report "Historical View of Subgroup Performance Differences on the SAT" at http://professionals.collegeboard.com/profdownload/pdf/06-1868%20RDCBR06-5_070105.pdf , the differences in academic achievement between blacks and others in Figure 2 are generally larger than the differences between low-income students and others in Figure 8.

I'll point out that the SAT uses a definition of "low income" that is perhaps overly broad for accurately assessing the impact of poverty on achievement: they define "low income" as having a family income less than $30,000/year, and that limits its usefulness. It may be a relatively good proxy threshold for the presence or absence of a parent with a college degree, but it wouldn't be a good line to choose as definition of poverty, or as a proxy to demarcate the presence or absence of a functionally literate parent with a high school diploma: that line would fall closer to about $15,000 or $16,000 dollars/year, which happens to be right around the Federal poverty threshold for a family of three in 2006.

In 2006, according to the U.S. Bureau of the Census, nearly 25% of black families had family incomes below $15,000, with only a little less than 12% of white families and a little more than 16% of Hispanic families falling into that range. 6.6% of black families made less than $5000/year, triple the rate for whites and nearly double the rate for Hispanics. The bulk of whites and Hispanics who had family incomes below $30,000/year had incomes above $15,000/year, while most blacks who had family incomes below $30,000/year had incomes below $15,000/year. It is worth noting that the median income of all black families in 2006 barely crossed the $30,000 "low income" threshold, at $31,969. Because of the fact that whites and Hispanics together make up a much greater share of the population than blacks, the scores of the "low income" group are drawn primarily from the scores of white and Hispanic children whose families are making between $15,000 and $30,000, and this leads to the impression that the lower scores of blacks are not adequately accounted for by their low income, when in fact the question of income has not been adequately addressed by the data collection and analysis methods.

My rural-ish psychiatrist brother-in-law uses $40,000/year as his informal cutoff below which he expects an increase in psychological problems due to lack of money.

I won't argue that financial stress goes up below that threshold. I think it's fairly obvious. But it doesn't negate my point, that the SAT data lumps disparate income groups together in ways that may distort the relationship of poverty and race to test scores.

I read this entire thread and went off down every rabbit hole link provided (nice article about the problems gifted people deal with, btw)...but I have nothing to add, because there isn't anything to even say.

Everything said here was correct, pretty much. The situation is too complex with too many factors to consider. The economy, cost of college, dumbing down of college coursework, lack of jobs, debt, illiterate parents, politically correct policies where everyone is expected to have equal cognitive abilities when they don't, etc...

I'm going to go read about the rise in unwed mothers, because that directly applies to my life since I'm in my 20s and a huge percentage of the moms I know are single mothers or live with boyfriends.

Race differences in SAT scores are are large even when accounting for income.

http://www.jbhe.com/features/49_college_admissions-test.html
The Widening Racial Scoring Gap on the SAT College Admissions Test
Journal of Blacks in Higher Education

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There are a number of reasons that are being advanced to explain the continuing and growing black-white SAT scoring gap. Sharp differences in family incomes are a major factor. Always there has been a direct correlation between family income and SAT scores. For both blacks and whites, as income goes up, so do test scores. In 2005, 28 percent of all black SAT test takers were from families with annual incomes below $20,000. Only 5 percent of white test takers were from families with incomes below $20,000. At the other extreme, 7 percent of all black test takers were from families with incomes of more than $100,000. The comparable figure for white test takers is 27 percent.

But there is a major flaw in the thesis that income differences explain the racial gap. Consider these three observable facts from The College Board's 2005 data on the SAT:

• Whites from families with incomes of less than $10,000 had a mean SAT score of 993. This is 129 points higher than the national mean for all blacks.

• Whites from families with incomes below $10,000 had a mean SAT test score that was 61 points higher than blacks whose families had incomes of between $80,000 and $100,000.

• Blacks from families with incomes of more than $100,000 had a mean SAT score that was 85 points below the mean score for whites from all income levels, 139 points below the mean score of whites from families at the same income level, and 10 points below the average score of white students from families whose income was less than $10,000.

When comparing greatly different sample sizes, (such as the dramatically different numbers of whites and blacks making >$100,000/year in the SAT sample), and particularly when dealing with the extremes of data sets, one generally needs to do further statistical analysis to correct for statistical artifacts due to the sample structure. Do you know if this has been done with the SAT data you reference? It doesn't sound like it.

It would be interesting to have more data on the parental literacy level and English proficiency and/or parental educational level, family status (two parent or one parent families, parent/grandparent/adoption/foster caregiver status of children), family size, and academic rigor of school attended for both black and white families, especially at the extremes of income in the SAT sample. "Income" clearly has its own impact on educational opportunity and family stress, but it would be interesting to examine whether there are really racial divides in the level of resilience and resistance to the negative educational effects of poverty as well as apparent resistance to the positive effects of wealth between families that are really very close in all other respects.

If we found, for example, that white families with very low incomes were much more likely to include a parent with proficient literacy skills, we wouldn't need to look much further to understand why their children had better educational outcomes. If we found that black children with family incomes higher than $100,000 had a much higher chance of having been adopted or fostered into the family, or to have been raised by relatives other than a parent, it might give us some insight into why the higher family income did not seem to provide the same benefit. We might, though, want to look at the reasons why those differences were there, and whether we as a society could eliminate or ameliorate some of the negative effects of the difference in circumstances and help identify and promote circumstances and behaviors that lead to great outcomes.

Certainly, IQ plays a role in achievement. IQ is highly heritable. This can lead to a certain fatalism regarding our ability to increase the level of literacy and educational achievement among lower income groups, and even to subtle and not-so-subtle racism and classism. There is, however, strong evidence that parental interaction style and language use in infancy and early childhood has a significant impact on IQ, particularly verbal IQ, and there is also evidence that parental interaction style and language use differs by both race and income level.

I think it is vitally important that we really examine this problem closely, because the economic drag and human impact of poverty and poor educational achievement on our society is staggering, and I believe that it is crucial that we recognize which factors are driving it, and which of those factors are within our power to change and which are not, so that we don't waste our resources on futile exercises, but we do take all the effective actions we can to deal with the issues that are under our control. Some of the apparent racial differences in achievement could be due to differences in family and educational circumstances that are not picked up by the data collection methods we are using. Others could be caused by real differences in IQ between racial and income groups that are nonetheless not due to genetic factors and that are open to change.

And the simple answer is "income is not the only factor."

The SAT has a large language component, and white kids have a natural advantage there, because even if they're ignorant of the fundamental rule of grammar that applies to what they're trying to accomplish, they can rely on what "sounds right." It's already established that there's a cultural bias in play.

As aculady has stated more thoroughly than I will, further statistical analysis is needed. We know that the educational levels of these selected groups will not match up. For example, with the black group making over $100k being so small in comparison to the corresponding white group, high-income individuals in industries like sports and entertainment, where education and success are not necessarily correlated, will have an outsized effect on the overall statistics for that group.

Therefore, it would be useful to break down these income groups further by educational level and/or profession, to see what disparities still exist.

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Not quite what you are asking for, but statistics on 1995 SAT scores broken down by race and income are at http://lagriffedulion.f2s.com/testing.htm#APPENDIXB . The children of whites with only a high school diploma outscored the children of blacks with graduate degrees.