Sean Reardons' research shows how family income has become increasingly predictive of education success. His findings and coments lay the basis for a heartbreaking front-page story in the Sunday, Dec. 23, New York Times.
Stanford University School of Education professor Sean Reardon had the "Quotation of the Day" in the Sunday, Dec. 23, issue of the New York Times, starkly addressing how the growing chasm between rich and poor in the United States is jeopardizing our identity as the land of opportunity.
“It’s becoming increasingly unlikely that a low-income student, no matter how intrinsically bright, moves up the socioeconomic ladder,” said Reardon in the Times. “What we’re talking about is a threat to the American dream.”
Reardon’s comments and research are featured in a stunning — and saddening — front-page opus that tells the tale of three high school girls, classmates in a troubled school in Galveston, Texas. All are from extremely disadvantaged backgrounds, but they buck the odds — with support from a great counselor and an Upward Bound program — to graduate high school with stellar achievements and the chance to go on to pursue a college education.
Once they make it to college, though, their dreams begin to unravel, and the story details, in all its complexity, why so many promising kids from poor families have such a tough time making it through. The piece is by Jason DeParle, one of the most gifted writers on the New York Times staff and also one of the most authoritative and knowledgeable journalists writing about poverty in the United States today.
The story is mainly a narrative about these three young womens’ lives, but it hangs, in large part, on research by Reardon. “Income has always shaped academic success, but its importance is growing,” DeParle writes. “Professor Reardon, the Stanford sociologist, examined a dozen reading and math tests dating back 25 years and found that the gap in scores of high- and low-income students has grown by 40 percent, even as the difference between blacks and whites has narrowed.
“While race once predicted scores more than class, the opposite now holds,” DeParle continues. “By eighth grade, white students surpass blacks by an average of three grade levels, while upper-income students are four grades ahead of low-income counterparts.”
This latest story is a must-read. To get a full copy, please visit http://nyti.ms/VZiDis.
This is the fourth time in a little more than a year that Reardon’s work has been cited in the Times, including another page one story a few months ago.
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