Nothing is a surprise here. Performance in school is contingent on the parent’s level of education and ability to help, guide, push, demand and teach at home. When a kid doesn’t have that at home and doesn’t have face to face instruction from a teacher, then the kid’s learning suffers. It’s the same reason why blacks and Hispanics don’t perform well without the China Plague. Additionally, if you were to evaluate inner-city teachers’ educations you would understand why inner-city schools perform so poorly. A lot of those teachers are functionally illiterate. After all, they have degrees in education. You can’t get much more watered-down than that.
Exactly.
Good post.