Sacramento Head Start Alumni Association

Family Disadvantage Persists Across Generations

Nov 13, 2002

Family Disadvantage Persists Across Generations
Despite the ideal that public schools should offer opportunity to all, in practice children with different backgrounds do not do equally well. This Programme for International Student Assessment report provides some clues for assessing to what extent the discrepancy is because of home influences and to what extent it is because of experiences at school. According to the analysis, parental occupation is strongly associated with school performance, and patterns of communication between parents and children are associated with educational success. The socio-economic composition of a school's student population can be an even stronger predictor of student performance than individual home background. The report finds that family disadvantage will remain from generation to generation unless education systems take steps to mitigate its effect.
http://www.pisa.oecd.org/knowledge/summary/h.htm