The Impacts of Socioeconomic Status on Education Are Even Larger Than We Realize

By: Michael Ma

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We all know by now that household income affects the quality of student education. Schools built in zip codes that have higher-income families typically have much higher levels of funding than lower-income neighborhoods. Higher-income families also have more resources to supplement their children’s learning or, say, to better prepare them for college admissions. For instance, top family income individuals are 8 times more likely to obtain a bachelor’s degree by their mid-twenties compared to individuals from the lowest quarter of family incomes in the United States (U.S. Census Bureau, 2014). However, despite this generally known reality, socioeconomic status impacts students’ quality of education in even more multifaceted ways than anticipated.

Besides the aforementioned methods in which higher-income households may utilize their resources to attain a higher level of education for their children, there exists evidence that even inherently growing up in a household with a higher socioeconomic status positively affects educational outcomes, while the opposite is true for disadvantaged families. A report by the American Psychological Association found that socioeconomic status affects overall human functioning, from mental to physical health to even a propensity to learn (American Psychological Association, 2017). Even before structured schooling begins, children from lower-income families have less exposure to the development of fundamental literacy skills—such as vocabulary, phonological awareness, and oral language (Buckingham, Wheldall, & Beaman-Wheldall, 2013). In fact, by age 3, children with professional parents already have a two times wider exposure to vocabulary when compared to children in working-class families (Hart & Risley). This statistic doesn’t even account for the fact that higher-income families have the disposable income to afford more books, resources, and other materials to further help their children learn—not to mention that this is all occurring before truly structured education has even begun.

The gap to access doesn’t end there. On average, low-income students enter high school with literacy skills 5 years behind those of high-income students (Reardon, et. al, 2013). This shocking statistic can partially be attributed to the fact that lower socioeconomic status is linked to higher exposures to adversity and subsequently decreased educational success, which causes toxic stress and negatively impacts a student’s ability to learn (Committee on Psychosocial Aspects of Child and Family Health et al., 2012). In fact, even just the perception of one’s family’s economic challenges and personal financial struggles takes students’ minds away from learning and negatively affects students’ academic outcomes, not to mention additional emotional distress (Mistry, Benner, Tan, & Kim, 2009). Given all this in mind, what in the world should we do to address this severe gap in access & education?

The good news is that research indicates that school conditions contribute more to differences in learning rates due to socioeconomic status than family characteristics do (Aikens & Barbarin, 2008). In other words, schools are still ultimately the “final frontier” in ensuring that all students have fair & equitable access to quality education; that is, administrators and educators can uniquely have an outsized impact in closing the education gap. Classroom environment plays an important role in academic outcomes regardless of students’ personal backgrounds; in particular, a focus on improving teaching and learning as well as the creation of an information-rich environment positively improves the quality of schools in low socioeconomic neighborhoods (Muijs, et al., 2009).

We can do more to close the gap. Products like ETGE’s tech and other educational resources can help to improve the quality of education for students in lower-income neighborhoods around the country. Although it is immensely difficult to help lower-income students with issues like not having to spend as much time thinking about essentials or topics such as financial stress, it is much more feasible for educators to work on an institutional level and provide sufficient academic resources & support for their students to succeed the best they can while in school. In short, digital technology & products are the future of education – with services like Effective to Great Education, we can work to improve educational quality & access for all students, no matter their background.