Life Factors That Leads to Achievement Gap in Education

When one thinks of the United States, they often think about the American Dream; the story of people rising up from rags to riches. But how often does this story become a reality? In most cases, the story is far from reality, especially in the United States, where the gap between the rich and the poor seems to be growing every year. This means that the richer keep getting richer and the poor are only getting poorer. According to the Pew Research Center, the number of families in poverty in 2016 was 6.1 percent higher than it was during the Pre-Great Recession times. This might not be that big of a number to some, but the research states that along with the growing number of families falling into poverty, the severity of that poverty has increased drastically. Nearly three in every ten families in poverty have an income of fifteen hundred or more below the poverty threshold. As the severity of poverty increases, living conditions, education, job possibilities, health and success in life all decrease with it. This paper will look at the different ways that income or lack thereof effects a person’s life trajectory, while taking into account their ethnicity and gender.

Education

Many assume that the United States is a meritocratic society, therefor education has been thought to be the key that unlocks advancement in the social order. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis the correlation between education and wealth is strong. As education increases, unemployment decreases. Applicants with higher levels of education are thought to have more skills and knowledge, making them more appealing to employers. The problem with education in this country is that not all education is created equal. As income inequality rises, it widens the, “educational achievement gap between the children of the wealthiest and the children of everyone else. Students with wealthier parents are able to afford private school, but students in financially poorer communities have “less experienced instructors, less access to high level science, math, and advanced placement courses, and lower levels of state and local spending on instructors and instructional materials.” 

Location 

The neighborhood a school is located in influences students’ behavior and achievement. Living in a violent neighborhood influences stress levels, protective behaviors and community interactions. Children from more violent neighborhoods fall farther behind their peers from safer neighborhoods..  Hearing gunshots near one’s home can cause emotional and post-traumatic stress in children and in parents that can cause a gap in child's achievements. Parents with symptoms of post-tramautic stress have higher levels of aggression and depression. Depressed mothers are more likely to be less responsive and less engaged with their children. These children lack a foundation for early cognitive development and vocabulary growth. A violent neighborhood causes a rise in aggressive behaviors among students. This is problematic because it can cause disciplinary actions such as suspensions from school or even arrests, reducing the time spent learning in classrooms.

One’s family background, and socio-economic standing impactss how successful they will be through out their educational career and in their professional careers. A study performed by the Economic Policy Institute found that a child’s social class is one of the most significant predictors of their educational success. The children from low socio-economic status underperformed in school and had lower cognitive and noncognitive skills compared to children from higher socio-economic backgrounds. This is a problem because low educational achievement leads to lowered economic prospects later in life, causing a lack of social mobility even across further generations.  Children from disadvantaged families usually enter school poorly prepared and lacking language development. Parents may focus more attention on their work, on providing for their family and paying the bills than on their child’s education. Families from poor socio-economic backgrounds, often times fail to nurture linguistic and analytical skills in their children, which is essential for their academic success.