Stephen Krashen: Are Their Rich Kids Smarter Than Our Rich Kids?

by dianeravitch Stephen Krashen, a professor emeritus at the University of Southern California and a noted linguist and researcher, wrote the following commentary: "Hanushek, Peterson and Woessmann (2014) claim that when we examine students from "advantaged" families, American students do poorly in math: Our rich kids do worse than rich kids from other countries. Hanushek et. al. conclude that this shows that poverty is not the only factor affecting school performance. Their conclusions are based on their analysis of data from the 2012 PIRLS examination, tests given to 15-year-olds in a large number of countries. "Berliner (2014) argued that Hanushek et. al. used an invalid measure of "advantaged": at least one parent who graduated college. He also argued that a more valid measure is parental income. Many college graduates, Berliner pointed out, are not in high-income professions. "Here is Berliner's paper, followed by my analysis, confirming that Berliner is, for the most part, right: Parental education is not the way to define "advantaged." Poverty, defined by parental income, predicts math and reading achievement for 49 states in the US even when parental education is controlled, and predicts math achievement on international tests. "Berliner, D. 2014. Criticism via Sleight of Hand https://dianeravitch.net/2014/07/29/david-berliner-responds-to-economists-who-discount-role-of-child-poverty/ "Krashen, S. 2014: http://skrashen.blogspot.com/2014/08/do-american-rich-kids-do-worse-on_3.html"