Russel Sage Foundation

As the level of inequality has risen over the past 40 years, has the achievement gap between children in high- and low-income families also widened? Sean F. Reardon, a contributor to the RSF volume Whither Opportunity?, published a research brief over the summer that offers evidence on the question derived from thirteen nationally representative studies that include family income as well as reading and/or math scores for school-age children. Some key findings:

• The achievement gap between children from high- and low-income families is roughly 40 percent larger among children born in 2001 than among those born twenty-five years earlier.

• The gap in standardized test scores in reading between high- and low-income children has grown to about 1.25 standard deviations. To get a sense of the magnitude of this difference, consider that a gap of 1 standard deviation corresponds to roughly 3 to 6 years of learning in middle or high school.

• Among children born in the last two decades, the rich- and low-income gap at kindergarten entry was two to three times larger than the black-white gap at the same time.

This is not to suggest, of course, that rising inequality has exclusively caused the widening achievement gap. In his brief, Reardon offers four possible explanations for the growing disparity, including increased segregation by income, varying investments in children's cognitive development and changing family characteristics. Read the full brief for more.