tive or for-profit postsecondary educational in-
Figure 3. Indicators of **Higher Education Eq- stitution.”
uity in the United States, 2016 Historical Trend
Report. A different collection of datasets the What can we as parents, school educators
researchers used shows that 60 percent of stu- and government could do to narrow the wid-
dents from the top quarter of households by ening gap of income inequality-based educa-
socioeconomics graduate with bachelor’s de- tional achievement of children?
grees within 10 years of finishing high school―
four times as often as students from the lowest U.S. schools have historically been thought of as
the great equalizer―the social institution best
quarter of households.
suited to ensure that all children have an equal
opportunity to learn, develop, and thrive. It is
unrealistic, however, to think that school-based
strategies alone will eliminate today’s
stark disparities in academic success.
Economic policies that reduce inequality; family
support policies that ensure children grow up in
stable, secure homes and neighborhoods; and
early-childhood education policies that pro-
mote cognitive and social development should
all be part of a comprehensive strategy to close
the economic achievement gap. Nonetheless,
schools do have a key role to play in the efforts
to reduce this gap.
“Differences in enrollment patte rns by family
income reflect the stratification of the financial,
academic, and other resources that are required
to enroll in different colleges and universities,”
Laura Perna and Roman Ruiz of the University
of Pennsylvania and a colleague wrote in an es-
say accompanying the report. “Students from
higher-income families have the resources that
enable meaningful choice from among the ar-
ray of available options nationwide. But, re-
source constraints and structural failures often
limit the ‘choices’ of students from lower-in-
come families to the local or online, non-selec-
62
SPRING 2017
The government levels can help close the
achievement gap by providing students with
necessary assistance in order to achieve high
performance in academics. Closing the edu-
cation achievement gap by improving the out-
comes of lower-social-class children requires
that we reform their social conditions by de-
creasing income equality, reducing racial and
ethnic segregation and other forms of dis-
crimination, equalizing home environments,
reducing the impact of criminality on society,
improving the quality of schools in low-income
neighborhoods, and lessening parents’ psycho-
logical distress. Policymakers should develop
labor market, health, and social policies, such
as those recommended in Table 1, that will im-
prove the living conditions of lower-social-class
children and their families and will likely have a
palpable impact on children’s achievement. The
greater the gaps that remain in such conditions,
the greater the gaps that will likely remain in
achievement by race and social class
Among the school-based strategies that might
be most effective, Prof. Reardon suggested
three specific areas:
a) states and school districts could devote a
greater share of their resources and efforts
to the earliest grades, including kindergarten
and preschool. Because achievement gaps are
self-perpetuating, the earlier we intervene to
reduce them, the more effective we will be at
eliminating them in the long run.
b) growing evidence suggests that more time in
school (for example, extending the school day
or year or providing after-school or summer-
school programs) may help to narrow academic
achievement gaps―if the added time is used
effectively (Dobbie & Fryer, 2011; National Cen-
ter on Time and Learning 2015).
c) states and school districts can do more to
ensure that all students have equal access to
SPRING 2017 63