Test Scores and Demographics
The U.S. Department of Education’s Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (ECLS) tracks more than 20,000 US schoolchildren from kindergarten through the fifth grade. The ECLS gathers each child’s test scores and demographic information, and asks the children’s parents questions.
According to the ECLS, a child with at least 50 kids’ books in his home scores roughly 5 percentile points higher than a child with no books, and a child with 100 books scores another 5 percentile points higher than a child with 50 books.
But the ECLS data show no correlation between a child’s test scores and how often his parents read to him.
And the number of books in a home is just as strongly correlated with math scores as reading scores.
Here is a sampling of other factors that correlate with high test scores, and factors that don’t:
Correlates: Highly educated parents. Parents have high income. Parents speak English in the home. The child’s mother was 30 or older at time of the child’s birth. Parents are involved in the PTA.
Doesn’t correlate: The child regularly watches TV at home. The child’s mother didn’t work between birth and kindergarten. The parents regularly take child to museums. The child attended Head Start. The child is regularly spanked at home.
The child of a young, single mother with limited education and income will typically test about 25 percentile points lower than the child of two married, high-earning parents.
“Do parents matter?,” by Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt