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It’s a decade-old study about the relationship between books in the home and student achievement, but the study is new to me and every bit as relevant now as it was then, especially right now at the beginning of the school year.

The study looked at the difference between black and white children’s reading and math test scores in kindergarten and first grade. Taking the children’s race as the only factor, the black children scored quite a bit lower than the white children — 40 percent of a standard deviation lower for the stat-savvy among you.

When the study controlled socioeconomic status (SES), the gap went down to 13 percent of a standard deviation difference between the black and white kids. That’s still a significant difference, but the gap has closed considerably.

Then the study added the number of children’s books in the home into the equation. Just like that, the gap between the black and white children essentially disappeared.

Racial factors were irrelevant in the kindergarten and first grade test scores of the children, according to the authors of the study. Take race out of the picture and keep the parent(s)’ occupation and income more-or-less equal, and the controlling factor in student scores on the tests was simply the number of children’s book the child had access to. And not just in reading where you would expect a correlation. It was equally true with math.

The findings of the study are both superficially obvious and very significant. Sure, having kids books at home is important, everyone knows that. And lots of children’s books indicate that the parents value books and are probably readers. Other studies have arrived at similar conclusions counting the number of adult books in the house. But the overwhelming importance of children having books at their disposal during their early years — which usually is accompanied by adults who read a variety of books to children over and over and model the importance of reading to their children with their own behavior — simply cannot be overstated. Children who are raised by people who read books have a significant advantage in school over children from similar homes where books are less valued.

This article appears in Aug 7-13, 2014.

9 replies on “Race, Class, Bookishness And Kindergarteners”

  1. Oh, don’t worry. The teachers can fix that.
    – This message brought to you be the Republican Party and the current tool that is Obama’s Secretary of Education.

  2. I think this says that parents who care and work hard at parenting, matter. Presumably the kids didn’t buy the books themselves and won’t read them unless prompted or read to. Parents do that. Hopefully this isn’t a revelation to the current crop of parents
    My only wish is that this study doesn’t lead to the Affordable Book Act where a huge bureaucracy is created by Washington to hand out free books ( produced by politically favored publishers) that end up costing tax payers 50% more than they do now.

  3. This is just one of many studies that point out why parenting is the most significant variable in how well and how much students learn. There is a set of studies that compares students by the sort of language used in the home. Do parents talk with their children or talk at them? The difference is significant in determining how much vocabulary students bring to school with them. There is an old saying that “the meaning of deprivation is the deprivation of meaning.” When students come to school they are not equally prepared to learn. How well students have been prepared is a function of parenting. In many (if not most) cases the “preparation for school gap” is never closed.

  4. Yes, parents matter but not every child has the good fortune to have great parents. Some don’t even have parents present. Whatever led to those situations is NOT the child’s fault. How do we (as a society) ensure that child still has every opportunity?

  5. You have just given us a reason to wrap up a child’s book with every gift we give over the year. Birthday, Christmas two books a year and a wonder to start the young brain. Want to feel great tonight, give a book to one of the neighborhood kids.
    It’s not coming down from Washington or Phoenix, it needs to start right in the home, nothing new about that. Set one day a month for Library Day and celebrate the wonders up and down the aisles in the free books.
    Everyone can afford free. No excuse, parents need the awareness and a couple trips to the Library for a lifetime of learning.
    Today it’s like public transportation, count the number who have never been on a bus to go across town and you can match it with the number that have never been in the neighborhood Library.

  6. I would be interested to compare this information with information on the impact of e-readers , interactive cell phones, video games, and other screens. Particularly the first one:do kids with an e-reader benefit as much as kids with books BOOKS, brick ‘n mortar BOOKS?

  7. RealPatriot has asked the critical question. What can (or should) we do to ensure more children…even those with less-than-wonderful parents…have an opportunity for success. There are a whole spectrum of ready-made answers reflecting varying places on a political spectrum. But I think it comes down to what, if any, obligation we feel for other people’s children. Those who still believe that the Horatio Alger stories are a reflection of reality might say it is up to each individual to use his/her own bootstraps to pull herself/himself up. We are so atomized, living with our nuclear families, and often not even knowing our neighbors, that assuming any responsibility beyond our own families may be out of the question for many. Personally, I always think back to the neighborhood where I was raised. Everyone knew most everyone else. If you misbehaved in school you were likely to be admonished by four other kids’ parents on your way home from school, long before your parents “spoke” with you about your conduct. It really isn’t whether we need federal or state programs for everything. It is fundamentally about whether we believe in supporting other people in our own communities.

  9. So the author of this blog is saying that Black parents don’t read to their kids, or have the books in the house, or that there are two parents in the house to even read to their kids is a critical factor in their test scores? He should not be shocked by this…… Resale shops are filled with used and very cheap children’s books, The Friends of the Library Book Sales have thousands of children’s books for sale for as low as $7.00 for a big bag. I would love to see a similiar study for Hispanic children.

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