by Mateo Ibranji

A new study based on big educational data found that after many years of efforts by numerous literacy programs, we are collectively as a nation making progress in fighting child inequality in the classroom. The report which was written by multiple professors of education and social work, states that the evident performance gap between high-income and low-income children has begun to shrink, even though economic inequality is worsening. In fact, “Children entering kindergarten today are more equally prepared than they were in the late 1990s.”

30 years of improvements

The reason for this improvement is directly related to children today receiving more exposure to and having more familiarity with books than they did in the 1990s. This exposure is due to the wide-spread effort to improve parenting practices in regards to reading in a child’s life which is the exact topic that BookSpring is striving to refine. Small children today are receiving more of what the authors call “‘Goodnight Moon’ time”, and this improved parent-child relationship at home is likely the reason that economically disadvantaged kids are catching up to their classmates.

Remediating economic hardship

The achievement gap that we are fighting so hard close stems from the well-developed idea that “the first few years of a child’s life are the most consequential for cognitive development.” Economic hardship significantly effects young children, causing them to fall behind early. Thanks to organizations that focus on parent-child literacy interventions, low-income families are now adopting the same parenting practices that high-income families have been implementing for years.

Emphasis on Early Childhood

When referring to early literacy organizations, the authors state that “these campaigns represent an effort to ensure that our knowledge about the unique importance of early childhood helps everyone.” It makes everyone at BookSpring extremely happy that our efforts, along with several other organizations, are making an improvement in child literacy throughout the entire United States.

Sources: Overview: Recent Trends in Income, Racial, and Ethnic School Readiness Gaps at Kindergarten Entry, S. F. Reardon & X. A. Portilla, American Educational Research Organization Open, 2016.

The Good News About Educational Inequality, New York Times, 8-28-2016.