Socioeconomic status amplifies the achievement gap throughout compulsory education independent of intelligence

Stumm, Sophie von

doi:10.1016/j.intell.2016.11.006

Cited by 69 publications

(64 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…This is likely to explain why heritability is not much reduced by attempts to produce fairer measures of ‘added value’ of schools (more recently called measures of ‘progress’ in the UK), which statistically adjust current educational achievement for cognitive ability and earlier achievement (Haworth, Asbury, Dale, & Plomin, ). Specifically, we speculate that correcting for ability and earlier achievement does not in fact correct for the genetic contribution to growth, which is independent of intercepts (von Stumm, ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 96%

“…Previous research has suggested that the prediction of educational achievement from both GPS and SES increases during development (Allegrini et al, ; Selzam et al, ; von Stumm, ), but their relative contribution over time to educational achievement or their interaction has not been explicitly tested before. Longitudinal latent growth curve analysis, which disentangles initial effects on a developmental measure (intercept) from systematic increases and decreases which follow (slope), is particularly useful for this purpose (McArdle, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Predicting educational achievement from genomic measures and socioeconomic status

Stumm

Smith‐Woolley

Ayorech

et al. 2019

Developmental Science

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The two best predictors of children's educational achievement available from birth are parents’ socioeconomic status (SES) and, recently, children's inherited DNA differences that can be aggregated in genome‐wide polygenic scores (GPS). Here, we chart for the first time the developmental interplay between these two predictors of educational achievement at ages 7, 11, 14 and 16 in a sample of almost 5,000 UK school children. We show that the prediction of educational achievement from both GPS and SES increases steadily throughout the school years. Using latent growth curve models, we find that GPS and SES not only predict educational achievement in the first grade but they also account for systematic changes in achievement across the school years. At the end of compulsory education at age 16, GPS and SES, respectively, predict 14% and 23% of the variance of educational achievement. Analyses of the extremes of GPS and SES highlight their influence and interplay: In children who have high GPS and come from high SES families, 77% go to university, whereas 21% of children with low GPS and from low SES backgrounds attend university. We find that the associations of GPS and SES with educational achievement are primarily additive, suggesting that their joint influence is particularly dramatic for children at the extreme ends of the distribution.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 96%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Predicting educational achievement from genomic measures and socioeconomic status

Stumm

Smith‐Woolley

Ayorech

et al. 2019

Developmental Science

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“…After running these analyses, we were encouraged to consider whether general cognitive ability (sometimes referred to as intelligence and not included in Lawson & Farah's models) played a role in our findings. This suggestion was motivated by the long-standing debate about the distinctive role that EF might play above and beyond general cognitive ability (e.g., Blair, 2006;Engelhardt, et al, 2016;Friedman et al, 2006;Royall & Palmer, 2014) and the long history of studying effects of SES on intelligence or the effects and interactions that both can have on academic achievement (e.g., Strenze, 2007;Tucker-Drob & Bates, 2016;von Stumm, 2017;von SES EXECUTIVE FUNCTIONS AND MATH 24 Stumm & Plomin, 2015). Furthermore, Corso and colleagues (2016) found that executive functions play an important role when looking at SES influences on intelligence and reading comprehension with a sample of 110 children from Brazil (ages 9 to 12 years).…”

Section: Follow Up Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Do executive functions mediate the link between socioeconomic status and numeracy skills? A cross-site comparison of Hong Kong and the United Kingdom

Ellefson

Zachariou

et al. 2020

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology

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In the fields of education, sociology and economics, there is a long-standing connection between socioeconomic status (SES) and school outcomes in a wide variety of cultural settings, but these studies have yet to examine the possible mediating effects of domain-general cognitive factors such as executive functions (EF). Addressing this gap and building on evidence for links between EF and numeracy, the current cross-cultural study used a large sample (N = 835) of 9-to 16-year-old children from Hong Kong and the United Kingdom to the examine the independence and interplay of SES and EF as predictors of numeracy skills. Our analyses yielded three key findings: (1) EF consistently predicts numeracy skills across sites and genders;(2) Associations between SES and EF differ by site and gender; and (3) Associations between numeracy skills and SES/EF differ by site and gender. Together with previous findings, our results suggest culture-specific associations between SES, EF and numeracy, indicating that cultural insights may enable impactful shifts in public policy to narrow the achievement gap between children from affluent and disadvantaged families.

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“…The first shows that children's differences in school performance are relatively stable over time, with school grades' inter-correlations ranging from .40 to .80 across subjects and years (e.g. Kovas, Haworth, Dale, & Plomin, 2007; von Stumm, 2017). Thus, children perform relatively consistently in comparison to their peers throughout school, suggesting that the causes of their differences in performance have long-term effects.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Monozygotic twin differences in school performance are stable and systematic

Stumm

Plomin

2018

Developmental Science

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School performance is one of the most stable and heritable psychological characteristics. Notwithstanding, monozygotic twins (MZ), who have identical genotypes, differ in school performance. These MZ differences result from non-shared environments that do not contribute to the similarity within twin pairs. Because to date few non-shared environmental factors have been reliably associated with MZ differences in school performance, they are thought to be idiosyncratic and due to chance, suggesting that the effect of non-shared environments on MZ differences are age- and trait-specific. In a sample of 2768 MZ twin pairs, we found first that MZ differences in school performance were moderately stable from age 12 through 16, with differences at the ages 12 and 14 accounting for 20% of the variance in MZ differences at age 16. Second, MZ differences in school performance correlated positively with MZ differences across 16 learning-related variables, including measures of intelligence, personality and school attitudes, with the twin who scored higher on one also scoring higher on the other measures. Finally, MZ differences in the 16 learning-related variables accounted for 22% of the variance in MZ differences in school performance at age 16. These findings suggest that, unlike for other psychological domains, non-shared environmental factors affect school performance in systematic ways that have long-term and generalist influence. Our findings should motivate the search for non-shared environmental factors responsible for the stable and systematic effects on children's differences in school performance. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at: https://youtu.be/0bw2Fl_HGq0.

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Socioeconomic status amplifies the achievement gap throughout compulsory education independent of intelligence

Cited by 69 publications

References 13 publications

Predicting educational achievement from genomic measures and socioeconomic status

Predicting educational achievement from genomic measures and socioeconomic status

Do executive functions mediate the link between socioeconomic status and numeracy skills? A cross-site comparison of Hong Kong and the United Kingdom

Monozygotic twin differences in school performance are stable and systematic

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