Why Does the Black/White Achievement Gap Emerge? Parenting Practices Shaped by Structural Conditions

• In Event: 3503 - Educational Inequality and Segregation: New Findings

Abstract

Researchers have sought to understand why cognitive skill disparities between black and white children persist in American society, but the most thorough examinations study school-aged children during a period when the black/white achievement gap is already well established. Using the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study—Birth Cohort of 2001, we find trivial black/white differences in cognitive skills at 10 months of age but a large disparity at 24 months, suggesting that the gap emerges in force during this 14-month period. Unlike previous work, our models completely explain the black/white achievement gap at two years of age. We find that black/white differences in parenting are the principal mechanism, but its role is ecologically conditioned, partly accounted for by factors we can measure (i.e. socioeconomic status and neighborhood quality) and factors we have yet to measure (i.e. stress, social isolation).

Authors

• Benjamin G. Gibbs, Brigham Young University

• Douglas B. Downey, Ohio State University