Expanded Educational Production: O = f(C, R, I, N, P, Z)
i) Student Characteristics (C): This includes family income, parent’s education, home environment, health, etc. ii) School Resources (R): This includes per-student spending, student/teacher ratio, class size, quality of classroom teacher, educational equipment. iii) Instructional Processes (I): Includes type of curriculum. iv) Neighborhood Characteristics (N): Includes the crime rate of student’s neighborhood, if they have any after-school activities.
v) Peer Influences (P): Includes those of classmates, club members, team members, neighborhoods, etc. (Bresnock). vi) Student Effort (Z): Includes the number of hours the student studies, how successfully the student completes the …show more content…
Meaning that better-educated parents will read to their young childen more often and read differently, tending to ask their children questions from the readings that make them think more deeply about the themes of the books (Bluesone 265). Crossnational studies show that the number of books in a household varies substanitally by social class and affects later school perforamnce. This is because poor students who go to school with a large number of middle-class students tend to perfrom better in school than equally poor students who are seggregated in poor inner-city schools. Peer pressure, as subtle as it might seem, makes a difference in a young student’s motivation toward learning, homework, and earning good grades (Bluestone 265). Also, health makes a difference because poorer kids in inner cities tend to be in poorer health conditions and they also recerive poorer medical care. Studies have shown that 50 percent or more of minority and low-income children have vision problems that itnerfere with their academic performance (Bluestone …show more content…
According to research on the Perry Preschooll Program, a two-year intensive early intervetion program for disadvantaged African American three- and four-year-olds, spending time each morning in a preschool with follow-up afternoon visits to the child’s home led to increases in measured IQ by age 10, higher achievment scores on standardized tests, higher rates of high school graduation, higher salaries in adulthood, a higher rate of home ownership, a lower probaily of beign dependant on welfare, and fewer arrests, as compared with a control group that was followed until the young children reached age 40 (Bluestone 266).
Emperical results:
a) Variation in School Funding: The federal government can try to equalize expenditure education across the nation, but the federal contribution to local school education is about 7% on average of school expenditures (Bresnock). The difference in property wealth and taxes are what produces the gap in education funding. Different neighborhoods get different funding.
b) Home Environment and Peer Groups: Studies have shown that home environment and peer groups are the most important factors in increasing educational achievement (Bresnock). As mentioned above better-educated parents with higher income tend to raise their children for the obtaining the same or better. Also, they live in different neighborhoods meaning that they are not associated with bad neighborhood environments,