Actually, there is a great deal of research that shows that children who have involved parents, children whose parents converse with them, children whose parents read to them, children in families with good educations and extensive vocabularies, and children whose parents expose them to different activities -- these children do much better in school.
It's not new, and it's not confined to the United States. This is true for all cultures, and in countries in North America, South America, Europe, and Asia.
Research has also shown that children in middle and upper class families tend to have these advantages, and children in lower class families tend not to have these advantages (although there are obviously exceptions throughout the spectrum).
The question is whether lower-class children do not get these advantages because they and their parents tend to be of lower intelligence (which would explain why they end up at the bottom of the spectrum), or whether they just have not developed the knowledge and habits of the middle and upper class, without which they have little chance of succeeding.
If it is the former, there is little chance of changing their situation, and the American dream of upward mobility is, for most, as elusive as the mythical pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. However, if it is the latter, there is a chance that education, properly done, could break the cycle of poverty and allow some children to escape.
Which do you believe?
Yes, yes,...I have seen these reports in the lay press. And...I **BELIVE** them! ( I do. I really do!)
But...What is **really** going on here? How much learning is actually occurring in the institutional school, and how much would be considered the parent's and child's **own** “homeschooling” or “afterschooling”.
I think this is an important question to ask and answer. Why? Answer: Because if the true learning is occurring because of the institutionalized child's “afterschooling” ( homeschooling) then no amount of tinkering or money will improve test scores in a **typical** government school.
The answer then, for dysfunctional families, is a KIPP environment which attempts to recreate at school the environment that would normally be found in a functional family that values education.
If, as many government school defenders point out, it is the parent's fault that the child is not learning, then **PLEASE** stop doing the same thing over and over in the government school. I would think the solution would be to look to charter and private schools that are having success with disadvantaged kids and try to figure out what they are doing right. How are these successful school compensating for the dysfunctional family?