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Poverty trumps gender
Posted By katie allison granju
Leslie Snow says that in all our hyperbolic debate over various “gender crises” in American public education, we’ve missed the real concern:
The final finding highlights an old crisis that has fallen out of favor since the gender wars have taken center stage. The study finds that family income is closely associated with academic performance. On standardized tests, children from the lowest-income families have the lowest average tests scores. An incremental rise in family income correlates with an increase in test scores.
The AAUW study has the media focused on gender issues once again, but the report should also reignite interest in the role poverty plays in education. A recent study highlighted in Education Week shows that American students’ academic achievement is far more likely to be affected by wealth or poverty than their peers in other nations.
Poverty may not be as sexy a crisis as gender equality. It may not inspire heated debates on TV talk shows or generate books by angry authors, but it’s long been linked to poor academic performance, and it deserves to be the crisis du jour.
May 30th, 2008
