Academic Performance and Income Inequality

A well-known problem in education is how academic success and income disparity interact. Since it is a contentious issue, Sean Reardon (1) suggests that the cause and mechanism of this link are not fully understood. A lot of scholarly study has concentrated on the ways in which wealth inequality impacts academic achievement in order to explain this link. It is generally accepted that a student's academic performance is significantly influenced by the family's level of income. Academic achievement gaps have grown as the income difference between students from high- and low-income families widens. Unlike low-income parents, wealthy parents can afford quality education and purchase resources needed to improve a child’s academic and cognitive skills. The inequality of revenue distribution is caused by numerous factors, such as education of parents, racism and achievement of the parents. Educational reforms that reduce social inequality should, therefore, be embraced as a means to ensure equal opportunities for students’ academic excellence. This paper looks at how income disparity affects academic achievement. The argument raised is that a standard education culture is a strategic education reform to ensure students from low-income family the accessibility of quality education.

A study by Reardon provides a sense of how income disparity affects performance by comparing the math and reading skills of students from income of about $160 000 to those of revenue of about $17 500 in 2008 (2). The study found a clear sign of increasing income achievement differences in cohorts over about sixty year period. Income gap grew within the white, Hispanic and black student populations separately and within the whole population. The difference for white and Hispanic’s appeared to increase steadily from the 1940s through 2001. On the hand, the gap between the blacks grew steadily from the 1940s to 2001(2).

Factors resulting to the gap between income and academic performance

Difference in parent’s education and cognitive skills

The other arguments for the variation in performance between high income and low-income students are the family relationships and varied socioeconomic characteristics. Parents with a strong revenue tend to have a better education than low-income parents. Although this is not a new pattern, the connection between the educational level of students family and income achievement has widened in recent years. The wages also linked to tuition attainment has been increasing since 1979 (Reardon, 5). Not only educated parents can purchase quality education for their children, but they also possess traits that positively impact their children performance. The growth of wage premium, which is usually attributed to high education levels and excellent cognitive skills, is a factor for inequality in education performance.

Given that the highly educated parents are capable of providing educational resources and opportunities for their children better than parents with little educational achievements, their children tend to have better cognitive and academic achievements. The success is seen in both preschool periods and the school years. For example, students whose parents have a college degree tend to have higher academic and cognitive skills than children whose parents have a lower level of educational background. This argument means that student from low and high-income families are highly differentiated by their education standards, which lead to the differences in their academic performance. Also, increased returns on investment in education lead to an increased net of income. Therefore, children of highly educated parents have more access to better learning opportunities.

It is evident that students who have highly educated parents have unique personal factors that make them better than others. Taylor, Steve and Sarah (1) have contributed sufficiently to the link between the educational attainment of parents and their offspring’s. They argued that such a link is to be expected evidenced by a number of investment parents put in decisions of human resource for their children. The results of their paper, Following your parent’s footsteps? Empirical analysis of the matched parent- offspring test scores, suggested that there is a positive relationship between how well parents perform in reading and mathematics in their childhood (1). It is thus agreeable that parents with good cognitive skills have a high income.

Variation in children’s cognitive development opportunities

Parents with high income are more equipped to invest resources in their children’s cognitive needs which will translate to improved academic performance. The increased rewards from investing in children’s cognition experienced by high-income families indicate that families are changing how they invest in student’s cognitive development. There is sufficient literature that argues that parents in upper and middle class have been increased they are focused on their children’s cognitive development in the past years (Reardon, 5). For example, medical practitioners in the 1960’s paid particular attention to medical and nutritional advice and the development of children became a prominent issue. The shift from the focus was partly caused by social inequality and the need for compulsory preschool education of the poor students at the time. The development of children’s cognitive skills attracted the middle-class parents who saw education as the key to economic success.

Additionally, the rise of test based accountability in education played an important role in the parents focus towards children cognition. Standardised achievement testing such as IQ test becomes more common in the mid-20th century. The importance of educational success and increased importance of test scores allowed students from high-income families improve their cognitive skills, which make them achieve better academic grades than their counterparts from low-income families.

Family structure and composition

An increased polarisation of families is a possible reason for the variation of academic performance caused by unequal family income. Trends that started in 1960 in household structure and composition are to blame the polarised family distribution. For example, parents with low levels of education are usually young, unemployed and either single or divorced. On the contrary, parents with the high level of education are mostly employed and married. It means that the interplay between the knowledge of student’s parents and income is likely going to increase. The increasing achievement gap is not only a result of high-income and low-income gap but also due to different opportunities and access to family social resources.

Moreover, the family background plays a major role in explaining cross-cultural variations in educational performance. However, there is also a link between the gender of the parent and the academic attainment of the child. Ermisch and Francesoni, as cited by Brown, Mackintosh and Taylor (3), note that the mother’s academic achievement takes more significant place in the academic performance of the child than the father’s success.

Racial profiling

Racism also plays an important role in explaining the relationship between income inequality and academic performance. While the effects of racism may not directly widen the gap between families of high-income and low-income students and academic attainment performance, it is a key factor that can help understand how racism contributed to the unequal distribution of the educational opportunities. If a knowledge level affects an income level, the factors that influence access to quality education must be put into consideration. There were shared visions and belief that shaped educational reforms when racism was a hot issue and had a direct effect on students’ academic performance. Such reforms were highly discriminative and failed to present culture taught to all students regardless of their social, economic position (Carter, Prudence L. et al, 1). It is therefore apparent that the education factors that affected parent’s performance have a significant effect on the student’s achievements. It was the lack of universal and free school offering education common that partly led to the inequality of income level experienced by the parent of students. As a result, the students of parents who have little income will most likely have lower academic achievement.

Common Education Culture Reform

As a result of income inequality, students have different opportunities to access quality education. Children from affluent backgrounds, where income is high, have better opportunities to good schooling. To help dismantle this gap, educational reforms that provide equality of opportunity by restraining pay factor can greatly improve academic achievements. One such reform is the establishment of a common culture in all schools. Reece (1) suggests that common schools are more suited to preventing injustice caused by social classes. Schools, he argues, must provide public order and discipline to all students. The idea of a common culture is a catalyst of democracy, which entails universal values and virtues. By slowing down the rise of more schools, it will be easy to teach morality. Also, basic literacy is more likely to improve if students encounter common subjects. According to Chun and Bring (455), college education is needed to avoiding the low levels of income distribution. While a lot of scholars such as Jencks (224) argued that equalisation of education attainment is not a gate pass to income equality, contemporary inequality social issues are different from social and economic events that influenced educational reforms of the 20th century. By ensuring more education for more people, there will be reduced income disparity, which will result in a smaller gap in academic performance of the children.

Effects of a Common Education Reform

With a common educational culture, students disadvantaged by low income will have better opportunities to compete fairly with high-income students. The system will ensure students who are socially different from the rest of the society that achievements have improved. However, the issue of standard education for all, rich and the poor, black and white, is debatable. Reece (2) argues that both the liberals and republicans have missed the point on the significance of a common education culture. He adds that liberals believe the poor are fundamentally different and should have their learning environment. Republican emphasized discipline and law, which puts students from low income at a terrible position to meet academic excellence. In the end, slums will embrace the idea of commonality and the dream of common school even in urban areas will flourish.

Conclusion

The link between family income and achievement has grown immensely over time. However, it is not clear whether the gap between the performance of the poor and the rich is because money can buy more achievements than it used to, or because the rich have more money than they used to have. It is agreeable that the rising income achievement gap cannot be solely explained by the rising inequality of revenue. Therefore, it is not only the increasing income inequality that has contributed to income achievement gap but factors related to income that allows the wealth to access quality education. These factors include education and cognitive skills of the parent, family structure and racial discrimination. Together, these factors create an environment that resulted in unequal income distribution. The rising gap in income level of student’s family between those with a good level of education and those without a college education is seen to be a major cause of the difference in academic performance. As a result, students whose parents are financially disadvantaged tend to perform poorly than rich students. With a good education, parents can purchase quality education and invest in cognitive development for their children. Family structure and racial problems on the other hand present opportunities that favour rich students. To ensure the gap between the high income and low-income students’ performance, a common culture of education should be introduced. A shared vision for education will take away the benefits enjoyed by private students. In the end, there will be increased performance regardless of social or economic position.

Works Cited

Reese, William J. "Public schools and the common good". Educational theory 38.4, 1988.

Reardon, Sean F. "The widening academic achievement gap between the rich and the poor: New evidence and possible explanations." Whither opportunity, 2011.

Carter, Prudence L., et al. "You can’t fix what you don’t look at: Acknowledging race in addressing racial discipline disparities." Urban Education 52.2, 2017.

Breen, Richard, and Inkwan Chung. "Income Inequality and Education." Sociological Science 2, 2015.

Brown, Sarah, Steven Macintosh, Taylor, Karl, Following you parents footsteps? An empirical analysis of matched parent offspring math scores. University of Sheffield, 2009.

Carter, Prudence L., et al. "You can’t fix what you don’t look at: Acknowledging race in addressing racial discipline disparities." Urban Education 52.2, 2017.