ETS Study Examines Collision of Poverty and Education
By Angela Harvey
More than one in five children in the United States live in poverty, and a new report by the Education Testing Service (ETS) documents the devastating effect this crisis has on educational achievement.Achievement gaps have continued to grow as the gulf between the richest and the poorest American families has widened, according to the report“Poverty and Education: Finding the Way Forward.” ETS is a nonprofit that develops, administers and scores tests and conducts educational research, analysis and policy studies. Richard J. Coley, executive director of the Center for Research on Human Capital and Education and Bruce Baker, a professor at Rutgers University Graduate School of Education, authored the report.
“While education has been envisioned as the great equalizer, this promise has been more myth than reality,” says Baker. “Not only is the achievement gap between the poor and the non-poor twice as large as the achievement gap between black and white students, but tracked differences in the cognitive performances of students in every age group show substantial differences by income or poverty status.”
The report spotlights an analysis of the average 2011 National Assessment of Educational Progress reading scores for students in the fourth and eighth grades. Fourth-graders who were eligible for free lunch scored 29 points lower than those not eligible. Similar results were seen in eighth grade, where students eligible for free lunch scored 25 points lower.
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The ETS report also tracks the relationship between household incomes and SAT critical reading scores for seniors in 2012,
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