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including the income and education level of the child’s parents and the mother’s

age at the birth of her first child—the gap between black and white children is

virtually eliminated at the time the children enter school.

This is an encouraging finding on two fronts. It means that young black children

have continued to make gains relative to their white counterparts. It also means

that whatever gap remains can be linked to a handful of readily identifiable

factors. The data reveal that black children who perform poorly in school do so

not because they are black but because they tend to come from low-income, low-

education households. A typical black child and white child from the same

socioeconomic background, however, have the same abilities in math and

reading upon entering kindergarden.

Great news, right? Well, not so fast. First of all, because the average black child is

more likely to come from a low-income, low-education household, the gap is

very real: on average, black children still are scoring worse. Worse yet, even

when the parents’ income and education are controlled for, the black-white gap

reappears within just two years of a child’s entering school. By the end of first

grade, a black child is underperforming a statistically equivalent white child.

And the gap steadily grows over the second and third grades.

Why does this happen? That’s a hard, complicated question. But one answer may

lie in the fact that the school attended by the typical black child is not the same

school attended by the typical white child, and the typical black child goes to a

school that is simply…bad. Even fifty years after Brown v. Board, many

American schools are virtually segregated. The ECLS project surveyed roughly

one thousand schools, taking samples of twenty children from each. In 35 percent

of those schools, not a single black child was included in the sample. The typical

white child in the ECLS study attends a school that is only 6 percent black; the

typical black child, meanwhile, attends a school that is about 60 percent black.

Just how are the black schools bad? Not, interestingly, in the ways that schools

are traditionally measured. In terms of class size, teachers’ education, and

computer-to-student ratio, the schools attended by blacks and whites are similar.

But the typical black student’s school has a far higher rate of troublesome

indicators, such as gang problems, nonstudents loitering in front of the school,

and lack of PTA funding. These schools offer an environment that is simply not

conducive to learning.

Black students are hardly the only ones who suffer in bad schools. White

children in these schools also perform poorly. In fact, there is essentially no

black-white test score gap within a bad school in the early years once you control

for students’ backgrounds. But all students in a bad school, black and white, do

lose ground to students in good schools. Perhaps educators and researchers are

wrong to be so hung up on the black-white test score gap; the bad-school/good-

school gap may be the more salient issue. Consider this fact: the ECLS data

reveal that black students in good schools don’t lose ground to their white

counterparts, and black students in good schools outperform whites in poor

schools.

So according to these data, a child’s school does seem to have a clear impact on

his academic progress. Can the same be said for parenting? Did all those Baby

Mozart tapes pay off? What about those marathon readings of Goodnight Moon?

Was the move to the suburbs worthwhile? Do the kids with PTA parents do

better than the kids whose parents have never heard of the PTA?

The wide-ranging ECLS data offer a number of compelling correlations between

a child’s personal circumstances and his school performance. For instance, once

all other factors are controlled for, it is clear that students from rural areas tend to

do worse than average. Suburban children, meanwhile, are in the middle of the

curve, while urban children tend to score higher than average. (It may be that

cities attract a more educated workforce and, therefore, parents with smarter

children.) On average, girls test higher than boys, and Asians test higher than

whites—although blacks, as we have already established, test similarly to whites

from comparable backgrounds and in comparable schools.

Knowing what you now know about regression analysis, conventional wisdom,

and the art of parenting, consider the following list of sixteen factors. According

to the ECLS data, eight of the factors show a strong correlation—positive or

negative—with test scores. The other eight don’t seem to matter. Feel free to

guess which are which.

The child has highly educated parents.

The child’s family is intact.

The child’s parents have high socioeconomic status.

The child’s parents recently moved into a better neighborhood.

The child’s mother was thirty or older at the time of her first child’s birth.

The child’s mother didn’t work between birth and kindergarten.

The child had low birthweight.

The child attended Head Start.

The child’s parents speak English in the home.

The child’s parents regularly take him to museums.

The child is adopted.

The child is regularly spanked.

The child’s parents are involved in the PTA.

The child frequently watches television.

The child has many books in his home.

The child’s parents read to him nearly every day.

Here now are the eight factors that are strongly correlated with test scores:

. The child has highly educated parents.

. The child’s parents have high socioeconomic status.

. The child’s mother was thirty or older at the time of her first child’s birth.

. The child had low birthweight.

. The child’s parents speak English in the home.

. The child is adopted.

. The child’s parents are involved in the PTA.

. The child has many books in his home.

And the eight that aren’t:

. The child’s family is intact.

. The child’s parents recently moved into a better neighborhood.

. The child’s mother didn’t work between birth and kindergarten.

. The child attended Head Start.

. The child’s parents regularly take him to museums.

. The child is regularly spanked.

. The child frequently watches television.

. The child’s parents read to him nearly every day.

Now, two by two:

. Matters: The child has highly educated parents.

. Doesn’t: The child’s family is intact.

A child whose parents are highly educated typically does well in school; not

much surprise there. A family with a lot of schooling tends to value schooling.

Perhaps more important, parents with higher IQs tend to get more education,

and IQ is strongly hereditary. But whether a child’s family is intact doesn’t seem

to matter. Just as the earlier-cited studies show that family structure has little

impact on a child’s personality, it does not seem to affect his academic abilities

either. This is not to say that families ought to go around splitting up willy-nilly.

It should, however, offer encouragement to the roughly twenty million American

schoolchildren being raised by a single parent.

. Matters: The child’s parents have high socioeconomic status.

. Doesn’t: The child’s parents recently moved into a better neighborhood.

A high socioeconomic status is strongly correlated to higher test scores, which

seems sensible. Socioeconomic status is a strong indicator of success in general—

it suggests a higher IQ and more education—and successful parents are more

likely to have successful children. But moving to a better neighborhood doesn’t

improve a child’s chances in school. It may be that moving itself is a disruptive

force; more likely, it’s because a nicer house doesn’t improve math or reading

scores any more than nicer sneakers make you jump higher.

. Matters: The child’s mother was thirty or older at the time of her first

child’s birth.

. Doesn’t: The child’s mother didn’t work between birth and kindergarten.

A woman who doesn’t have her first child until she is at least thirty is likely to

see that child do well in school. This mother tends to be a woman who wanted to

get some advanced education or develop traction in her career. She is also likely

to want a child more than a teenage mother wants a child. This doesn’t mean that

an older first-time mother is necessarily a better mother, but she has put

herself—and her children—in a more advantageous position. (It is worth noting

that this advantage is nonexistent for a teenage mother who waits until she is

thirty to have her second child. The ECLS data show that her second child will

perform no better than her first.) At the same time, a mother who stays home

from work until her child goes to kindergarten does not seem to provide any

advantage. Obsessive parents might find this lack of correlation bothersome—

what was the point of all those Mommy and Me classes?—but that is what the

data tell us.

. Matters: The child had low birthweight.

. Doesn’t: The child attended Head Start.

A child who had a low birthweight tends to do poorly in school. It may be that

being born prematurely is simply hurtful to a child’s over-all well-being. It may

also be that low birthweight is a strong forecaster of poor parenting, since a

mother who smokes or drinks or otherwise mistreats her baby in utero isn’t

likely to turn things around just because the baby is born. A low-birthweight

child, in turn, is more likely to be a poor child—and, therefore, more likely to

attend Head Start, the federal preschool program. But according to the ECLS

data, Head Start does nothing for a child’s future test scores. Despite a deep

reservoir of appreciation for Head Start (one of this book’s authors was a charter

student), we must acknowledge that it has repeatedly been proven ineffectual.

Here’s a likely reason: instead of spending the day with his own undereducated,

overworked mother, the typical Head Start child spends the day with someone

else’s undereducated, overworked mother. (And a whole roomful of similarly

needy children.) As it happens, fewer than 30 percent of Head Start teachers have

even a bachelor’s degree. And the job pays so poorly—about $21,000 for a Head

Start teacher versus $40,000 for the average public-school kindergarten teacher—

that it is unlikely to attract better teachers any time soon.

. Matters: The child’s parents speak English in the home.

. Doesn’t: The child’s parents regularly take him to museums.

A child with English-speaking parents does better in school than one whose

parents don’t speak English. Again, not much of a surprise. This correlation is

further supported by the performance of Hispanic students in the ECLS study.

As a group, Hispanic students test poorly; they are also disproportionately likely

to have non-English-speaking parents. (They do, however, tend to catch up with

their peers in later grades.) So how about the opposite case: what if a mother and

father are not only proficient in English but spend their weekends broadening

their child’s cultural horizons by taking him to museums? Sorry. Culture

cramming may be a foundational belief of obsessive parenting, but the ECLS

data show no correlation between museum visits and test scores.

. Matters: The child is adopted.

. Doesn’t: The child is regularly spanked.

There is a strong correlation—a negative one—between adoption and school test

scores. Why? Studies have shown that a child’s academic abilities are far more

influenced by the IQs of his biological parents than the IQs of his adoptive

parents, and mothers who give up their children for adoption tend to have

significantly lower IQs than the people who are doing the adopting. There is

another explanation for low-achieving adoptees which, though it may seem

distasteful, jibes with the basic economic theory of self-interest: a woman who

knows she will put her baby up for adoption may not take the same prenatal care

as a woman who is keeping her baby. (Consider—at the risk of furthering the

distasteful thinking—how you treat a car you own versus a car you are renting

for the weekend.) But if an adopted child is prone to lower test scores, a spanked

child is not. This may seem surprising—not because spanking itself is necessarily

detrimental but because, conventionally speaking, spanking is considered an

unenlightened practice. We might therefore assume that parents who spank are

unenlightened in other ways. Perhaps that isn’t the case at all. Or perhaps there

is a different spanking story to be told. Remember, the ECLS survey included

direct interviews with the children’s parents. So a parent would have to sit knee

to knee with a government researcher and admit to spanking his child. This

would suggest that a parent who does so is either unenlightened or—more

interestingly—congenitally honest. It may be that honesty is more important to

good parenting than spanking is to bad parenting.

. Matters: The child’s parents are involved in the PTA.

. Doesn’t: The child frequently watches television.

A child whose parents are involved in the PTA tends to do well in school—

which probably indicates that parents with a strong relationship to education get

involved in the PTA, not that their PTA involvement somehow makes their

children smarter. The ECLS data show no correlation, meanwhile, between a

child’s test scores and the amount of television he watches. Despite the

conventional wisdom, watching television apparently does not turn a child’s

brain to mush. (In Finland, whose education system has been ranked the world’s

best, most children do not begin school until age seven but have often learned to

read on their own by watching American television with Finnish subtitles.) Nor,

however, does using a computer at home turn a child into Einstein: the ECLS

data show no correlation between computer use and school test scores.

Now for the final pair of factors:

. Matters: The child has many books in his home.

. Doesn’t: The child’s parents read to him nearly every day.