'Income Achievement Gap' Almost Double Black-White Performance Gap, Report Shows

'Income Achievement Gap' Almost Double Black-White Performance Gap, Report Shows: In a dramatic illustration of the impact of income inequality on how children do in school, the achievement gap between children from high and low income families is far higher than the achievement gap between black and white students, a pathbreaking research report from Stanford University has shown.



The report by Sean Reardon, a Stanford professor of education and sociology, shows that the income achievement gap--the difference in the average standardized scores between children from families at the 10th percentile of income distribution and children at the 90th percentile--is now "nearly twice as large as the black-white achievement gap."

A half century ago, the situation was just the reverse. The black-white gap was one and a half times as large as the income achievement gap as defined in the report, Reardon found.