I love economics, and when “Freakonomics” came out, I got it right away. One thing that struck me the most was the chapter on parenting: “What Makes a Perfect Parent”?. The authors have shown that success in school does not depend on what parents do, but who the parents are.
What factors are not strongly correlated with success in school (determined by test scores)?
The child’s family is intact.
The child’s parents recently moved into a better neighborhood.
The child’s mother didn’t work between birth and kindergarten.
The child attended Head Start.
The child’s parents regularly take him to museums.
The child is regularly spanked.
The child frequently watches television.
The child’s parents read to him nearly every day.
Now for the factors that are strongly correlated:
The child has highly educated parents.
The child’s parents have high socioeconomic status.
The child’s mother was thirty or older at the time of her first child’s birth.
The child had low birthweight. (negative correlation)
The child’s parents speak English in the home.
The child is adopted. (negative correlation)
The child’s parents are involved in the PTA.
The child has many books in his home.
So how does this apply to my work? I was on the scholarship committee this year, and found that a great predictor of success in school (grades, participation in activities) was the line for income on their parents tax return that was submitted (for "need-based" scholarships). This makes our job difficult. The most deserving of scholarship awards (if you assume that we are to give them for academic scholars) were the same people who didn’t need the money.
There were a couple of exceptions, but I’m not sure what to make of them. For instance, there were two girls that did well despite the low earnings of their mother, who they worked with. When discussing one of them, a Spanish teacher noted that this dirt poor girl (mother was unemployed and earned $0 during the year) went on trips to Guatemala and Argentina the last two years through the school. Another teacher said that her parents are divorced, and the father earns a good living.
We only let kids apply for the awards if they have been accepted into college already – a letter confirming this had to be part of the application. But I’m sure that a great number of the needs-based scholarships awarded are going to kids that won’t ever survive a year in college – even at the community college level. There just aren’t too many poor kids who do great in school. I work in an urban school with lots of kids who come from very poor families, and I have high expectations for them. Seeing this data all at once was pretty demoralizing. I guess Levitt and Dubner, the authors of Freakonomics were on to something.