A new study led by Cassandra Bolar, associate professor of psychology at the University of West Georgia, examines the impact of socioeconomic characteristics and parental engagement in the school system on children’s proficiency in mathematics and reading in kindergarten.
The research team reviewed data from more than 18,000 kindergarten students across the country, finding that parental engagement, educational attainment, and household income were the stronger predictors of children’s readiness in reading and mathematics. In contrast, parental depression and marital status were not significant predictors of kindergarten readiness once other family and socioeconomic factors were considered.
By race, the authors found African American children’s reading scores were comparable to those of their White peers when family income, parental education, and family engagement were controlled for. However, differences in mathematics readiness remained, with African American and Hispanic children scoring slightly lower than White children. Asian children scored higher than their White peers in both reading and mathematics. There were also gender differences, with boys outperforming girls in mathematics and girls outperforming boys in reading.
“Research has demonstrated that racial bias experienced in early childhood educational settings may contribute to inequities in teaching quality, discipline strategies, and expectations; especially in math-related domains in which stereotypes about ability are pervasive,” the authors write. “Such mechanisms may explain why disparities persisted in math scores and not reading scores for African American children in the current study. Taken together, the findings of the current study should be considered based on the understanding that early academic disparities are not solely the product of family-level characteristics but are embedded within broader systems of racialized opportunity.”
A University of West Georgia faculty member since 2019, Dr. Bolar received her bachelor’s degree from the University of Georgia and her master’s and doctoral degrees in human development and family studies from Auburn University in Alabama. Her study co-authors include scholars from the Georgia Institute of Technology and two HBCUs: North Carolina Central University and Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta.
