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Citation:

Alexander, K. L., & Entwisle, D. R. (1996). Schools and children at risk. In A. Booth & J. F. Dunn (Eds.), Family-School Links, (pp. 67-88). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers.

Annotation:
In this qualitative study of 20 Baltimore elementary schools, the authors set out to determine if schools offset the out-of-school circumstances that put children at risk academically, if schools magnify children's difficulties by reinforcing the outside patterns of advantage/disadvantage, or if schools are essentially irrelevant in offsetting the out-of-school circumstances that put children at risk academically. Results indicate that although schools help children keep pace academically, they do not make enough of a difference to offset the educational disparities that originate in out-of-school circumstances. The researchers found that the increasing achievement gap between at-risk children and others over the elementary years can be attributed almost entirely to gains that high socioeconomic status (SES) children make when school is not in session. They also found that home resources in high SES families play some role in promoting children's achievement in summer, but the human resources that usually accompany material resources may be the critical variable that offsets the difference between low and high SES children's achievement. Twenty Baltimore public elementary schools were randomly selected within strata defined by racial composition and community socioeconomic status. Next, a random sample of all regular education first-grades in the 20 schools was selected. Only 3% of the parents declined to have their children participate in the study. By comparing children's winter gains with their summer gains, the authors set up a natural experiment: because schools are not implicated in summer gains, but are implicated in winter gains, the difference in the amounts children learn in summer and winter suggest how much school contributes to cognitive growth. Since most studies neglect seasonal variation in children's learning rates, this oversight may be most serious in the first few grades, which is when the largest seasonal disparities are registered. The authors recommend further study to better define the circumstances of children's smooth transition to first grade and their ability to move forward academically even when schools are closed. Although home-school partnerships that focus on getting outsider groups more involved in schools address only part of the problem, low SES and high SES parents can boost children's learning through encouragement and support.