Charting the Emergence of Educational Disparities in Toddlers from Low-Income Families

• In Event: 3-072 - Social, Cognitive, Communicative, and Motivational Predictors of School Readiness and Achievement: Infancy to Childhood

Integrative Statement

Introduction: Achievement gaps are recognized as persistent disparities in measurable educational outcomes of different groups of students, often distinguished by socioeconomic status and ethnicity (Carpenter et al., 2006). Such disparities have been observed in children as young as 3 years of age as a function of ethnicity (Burchinal et al., 2011; Magnuson & Waldfogel, 2005) and family income (Chmielewski et al., 2016; Morsy & Rothstein, 2015), but the origins of such disparities remain largely misunderstood.

Methods: To better understand the emergence of educational disparities, we examined cognitive and communicative development of toddlers from low-income families at 14 and 36 months (m), using longitudinal data from the control group of the Early Head Start Research and Evaluation Project (Love et al., 2005). We restricted the sample to children from English-speaking families whose mothers identified as European American (N = 324) or African American (N = 272). Infant-mother interaction (3-bag task) and quality of the home environment (HOME inventory) were assessed at 14m. The Bayley Mental Development Index (MDI) was administered at 14 and 36m, the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (CDI) at 14m, and the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT) at 36m; see Table 1a for descriptive statistics and t-tests comparing subgroups.

Results/Discussion: At 14m, there was no evidence of delays. Fewer infants than expected scored below cut-offs on the standardized assessments. For the MDI, 9.6% of infants in the European American subgroup and 8.4% in the African American subgroup scored below the cut-off (< 85), with 15.7% the expected value based on a normal distribution (μ = 100, σ = 15). The difference between subgroups was not significant, χ2(1, N = 538) = .23, p = .63. For the CDI, only 3.1% of infants in the European American subgroup and 5.9% in the African American subgroup scored below the cut-off (10th percentile), with no significant difference between subgroups, χ2(1, N = 596) = 2.77, p = .10. However, at 36m, a substantial percentage of children scored below cut-offs (< 85). For the MDI, 42.4% of the African American subgroup was below the cut-off in comparison to 21.9% of the European American subgroup; χ2(1, N = 389) = 18.9, p < .001. For the PPVT, 67.3% of the African American subgroup was below the cut-off in comparison to 42.0% of the European American subgroup, χ2(1, N = 392) = 24.7, p < .001.

Comparison of subgroups at 14m indicated significant differences in infants’ sustained attention, an index of early executive functioning (Cuevas & Bell, 2014), alongside differences in maternal education, home environment, and parental supportiveness/negativity; see Table 1a. Table 2a presents regression models used to predict MDI and PPVT scores at 36m. Ethnicity was significant in both models, over and above the effects of child, maternal, and contextual factors.

The findings indicate greater susceptibility to delays in the African American subgroup and help to identify targets for early intervention given the cascading effects of early delays on later academic abilities (Bornstein et al., 2013).

Authors

• Teresa Ober, The Graduate Center CUNY
  Presenting Author

• Patricia J. Brooks, College of Staten Island and The Graduate Center CUNY
  Non-Presenting Author

• Rachel M Flynn, Northwestern University
  Non-Presenting Author