Socioeconomic Status And Academic Achievement

Literature on the effects of low socioeconomic status (SES) on one’s psychological well-being is well established. Prior studies show that low-SES not only impacts individuals’ mental well-being, but also affects their children’s developmental trajectories. This paper reviews one of these numerous studies and further discusses the influences of parental SES on one’s life outcomes, as well as intergenerational mobility and achievement gap through a developmental perspective.

The socioeconomic status of an individual’s parents has always been one of the clear-cut forecasters of the individual’s academic success and educational accomplishment. The correlation between family socioeconomic uniqueness and student accomplishment is one of the most forceful patterns in educational scholarship; however the reasons and means

“If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit.” Those words were the famous phrase spoke by Johnnie Cochran, one of the defense attorneys, in the case of “People of the State of California v. Orenthal James Simpson.” This eminent motto marked a key turning point in what is known as the most publicized criminal trial in American history. This case brought about many social issues in the country and the American Criminal Justice system. Of the many social topics raised by the case, a few that are most imperative are social class, education, and race.

Today in society the determination for a college degree lies beyond education towards future financial security. While college debt seems to be ever increasing, students from low-income families are less likely to attend college due to the financial hardship. The social class that a student’s family falls into shows correlation on whether that student will or not attend college (Peske & Haycock, 2006). However, looking at this issue from my own prospective it seems as though no matter the social class students are attending college. What more so seems to have an affect on outcomes for individuals is how there family’s social economic status effects how well a student performs in college. For a student from a low-income family nothing can seem more daunting than the overwhelming amount of debt we have to pay after college.

One of the realities that exist, is that the social class a family is in, has a huge impact on the education of achievement amongst their children. In the article, Gregory Mantsio cites the idea of Richard De Lone, by providing scores from the college board to examine the correlation between family income,

A good education is vital in succeeding within many industries in the UK, from Business to Medicine, Politics to Art. It unfortunately does not come as a surprise that only 58.6% of students attained 5 or more GCSE’s at grades A* to C (Department for Education 2012). In comparison, albeit falling this year on previous years, 94.4% of students in private schools attained the same results (The Independent 2012a). Following the recent recession, Social mobility has begun to decline and is lower today than it was thirty years ago. It is now less likely that a child of parents in a low-income bracket will rise to the top-income bracket than it was in

This research supports the belief that individual achievement is more strongly connected with socioeconomic status rather than school characteristics. The actual quality of the schools programs and facilities does not have the negative effect on academic achievement that social class does. A student’s socioeconomic background is largely measured

In Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum, Anyon takes a gander at course work and understudy instructor collaboration in grade schools situated in groups with shifting levels of financial status, and she endeavors to discover proof of the distinctions in student work in schools in poorer communities versus those in wealthier groups, with an end goal to bolster the contention made by different types of knowledge that government funded schools in our general public give diverse sorts of information and distinctive instructive encounters to offspring of diverse social classes.

In “Inequality by Design”, the argument is made that social environment affects where individuals end up, not individual talent or market capitalism (Fischer et al 1996). This social environment includes advantages and disadvantages we get from our parents, the resources our friends share can share with us, quantity and quality of schooling, and the historical era we are born in (Fischer et al 1996). The argument made in “Inequality by Design”, is closely related what shapes one’s trajectory into college. Though college may not be the final destination in “where we end up” as stated in the argument, college is a large contributing factor to where we end up and the social environment affects has a large effect on one’s trajectory into college. When looking back on my trajectory into college, I can see that my social environment had a large part in shaping my path to college, however some factors of the social environment had a larger role than others. In Gregor Aisch and his colleges article “You Draw It: How Family Income Predicts Children’s College Chances” (2015), it is shown that this is true not only for myself but also for children who were born around 1980. The income percentile of children’s parents, which is a factor of the child’s social environment, is closely related to whether or not the children attend college. Within this paper we will discuss the advantages and disadvantages that my social environment gave me on my trajectory to college and how parent’s income

The literature review addresses the following question: Does social class inequality affect higher education? The theoretical paradigm that is considered for this question is the Critical paradigm, in which is mainly qualitative and inductive. Critical paradigm is appropriate to answer this particular question because it involves inductive reasoning that begins from a specific observation to a more generalize. The paradigm also looks at how people are at a disadvantage when it comes to obtaining a higher education and incorporates observations and interviews that cultivate a conversation and the interviewee’s reflection. By interviewing people in different social classes and asking how it affects their education, researchers are able to identify the affects social class has on higher education.

In this article William Clark sets out to answer two questions: Is socioeconomic status evident in suburban access – does income matter in residential choice? And Are African Americans in the suburbs living in more integrated settings than those in the city? The author analyzes data sets from the Current Population Surveys 1998 to 2000 and the 2000 Census in his research. He finds that there an increase in the number of African American living in the suburbs. Between 1960 and 1990 the number of African American has tripled. He also found that socioeconomic status is a factor in suburban selection. In other words, income matters. Clark notes that African Americans with a high income, with college degrees, who are homeowners and professionals

The development of children can depend on many factors, one of the important ones being socioeconomic status (SES). SES can be defined as a multidimensional construct, including measures of social factors such as power, prestige and hierarchical social status, and economic resources (Hackman and Farah, 2009). Child development can be studied from multiple dimensions such as physical, mental, social, and emotional development among others. For the purposes of this study, I will be focusing on how socioeconomic status affects child cognitive development.

Thomas avoids two common shortcomings of studies oabout adopted children. Many are based on “convenience samples” and “small numbers of observations” (Brodzinsky, 1993; Shiano & Tuan, 2008). By using pooled data from the American Community Survey (ACS) over a

However social class is not the only factor influencing educational achievement; Girls achieve higher grades than boys in Standard Assessment Tests (SATs) and GCSE’s (Mitsos and Browne, 1998), in 2010 to 2011 54.3 per cent of black pupils achieved five or more A* to C grades at GCSE compared to 58 per cent of white pupils and 61.8 per cent of Asian pupils (Attew, 2012). Therefore educational achievement is also affected by gender and ethnicity.

The literature thus firmly supports the thesis that socio-economic status is directly correlated with academic success, due to the superior financial and social capital resources available to the middle-class student. Furthermore, the interdependence between multiple factors means that the cumulative impact of risk factors may be greater than the simple sum of separate factors (Sparks, 1999:10)