Report Says Achievement Gap Begins Before School

According to a report released on September 30 by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), children from poor families start kindergarten without the basic skills that other children have to help them learn math, reading, and other subjects. The study, Inequality at the Starting Gate, was conducted by University of Michigan scholars Valerie Lee and David T. Burkahm, who analyzed a nationwide U.S. Department of Education survey of more than 16,000 children about to enter kindergarten. The authors say that in order to close the achievement gap, inequalities in school resources must be reduced, so that extensive efforts can be focused on these disadvantaged children well before they start school.

Starting Gate documents the relative lack of pre-school learning and enrichment experienced by children from families in the lowest fifth of socioeconomic status. Compared to the their peers from families in the highest fifth, five-year-old children in poverty owned far fewer books, were much less likely to have a home computer or to have been taken to a museum or public library, spent more hours per week watching television, and were far more likely to have moved around. These socioeconomic factors, along with disparities in parents' education and occupation, ensure that all children do not start schools as equals: new kindergartners form the lowest income group score 60% lower in math and 56% lower in reading than five-year-olds from the highest group. These socioeconomic disparities disproportionally affect African-Americans, the study states. While only nine percent of white kindergartners were in the lowest quintile, one third of African-American kindergartners were.

The report suggests policy changes to lesson these initial inequalities. The nation must refocus and redouble efforts to reach disadvanaged children before they start school, a press release from EPI declared. Starting Gate demonstrates that children who attend center-based child care before kindergarten show higher achievement, but only 20% of children in the lowest quintile were likely to have attended, compared to 65% of children in the highest quintile. Low-income and minority children are also likely to encounter less outreach to smooth the transition to school. Their first school, moreover, is likely to be an underfunded one. More resources are needed, the study concludes, both to provide children with educational opportunities before kindergarten and to "make serious and sustained efforts to correct" the fact that those young students who need good schools the most are among the least likely to get them.

Prepared October 1, 2002