Customer Reviews

Inequality at the Starting Gate: Social Background Differences in Achievement as Children Begin School

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Lee and Burkham discuss the need to understand how race, class, and ethnicity translate into academic differeneces before children even begin school. The book examines the disadvantages for children with a poor background or from minority families. Social inequity has shown to impact children as they enter the school system. More than 16000 children were studied as they entered kindergarten; the survey data examined how disadvantages correlate with cognitive skills in reading and math. Socio-economically disadvantaged children were shown to start kindgergatrten with significantly lower cognitive skills than those children who were not disadvantaged.

The detailed analysis of the U.S. Department of Education Early Childnhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Cohort data provided throughout the book makes the argument strong. This book can help anyone understand one aspect of the achievement gap and stresses the negative academic consequences on a child that comes from a disadvantaged situation. In order to make a positive impact on the achievement gap situation, we must take a look at helping children at young ages before they even step through the school "starting gates."

Althought the book is slightly dry and overwhelming, there are many important facts and detailed analyses that target the impact of disadvantages at a young age and how this affect a child's learning from the beginning. Anyone who is truly interested in the achievement gap will find this book helpful.

Lee and Berkham use data from the U.S. Department of Education's Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Cohort (ECLS-K) to show that various variables affect `cognitive skills' of children, such as everything from socioeconomic context to television habits, particularly as children first enter school. They contend that of all influences, socioeconomic status has the most impact on child learning, and propose several directions for policy based on their analysis, including beginning out-of-home daycare/school at an earlier age and increasing school resources in low SES communities.

Why only a "2" star rating? The book is dry and ahistorical: there is no analysis of *why* or *how* we find ourselves in the dire situation of today. Instead, Lee and Burkam act as if we could disentangle race and class through hierarchical modeling, and construct the problem as a simple one of addition: race contributes this much to learning, class this much, school resources this much, and so on. In fact, historically this is absurd, particularly in the Unites States where class formation occurred along the lines of race institutionalized in slavery. There is no simple number that will extricate race from class.

There are many other problems with the work, even within its own paradigm. For example, Lee and Burkam use a hierarchical least squares regression model to disentangle the effects of (in order): race; social class; child demographics; home demographics; education expectations and pre-K care; at-home activities; outside-home activities (p. 49-56)

However, this model has a bias that is left unexamined in the report: the order in which the variables are used in the hierarchical analysis matters. This model is mathematically hierarchical; when it is applied to social science situations, it is generally used to study phenomena that are naturally hierarchically structured. For example, the first level might divide students by state, then by district, then by school, and so on (in naturally nested subunits of students). However, students are not naturally divided into race, social class, and so on in the same naturally hierarchical way. In fact, Lee and Burkam rank their chosen variables in order of what they believe most characterize students: first, at the top as the most significant characteristic, race, then, social class, and so on. Their analysis would yield different numbers/correlations, in other words, if they had ranked their variables differently. Their 'results', then, that SES matters more than class, are in fact invalidated by their own construction of the problem.

Other question marks: This research is published by EPI, according to them, a non-profit thinktank (turns out EPI is funded by labor unions and similar organizations). Of note is that this research is published `in-house'. Also: Lee and Burkam do not critically question the hierarchical framework of testing and of their own quantitative framework, do not analyze their assumptions, and so on.

This research could have been published as one article--certainly it does not merit a book.