Julia Isaacs, Katherine Magnuson, Center on Children and Families at Brookings, December 2011

Many children and youth from families of low socioeconomic status do poorly in school. On average, they perform less well on standardized tests compared with more advantaged youth and are less likely to graduate high school and complete college. These lower levels of academic achievement and educational attainment contribute to lower levels of economic success in adulthood and lower social mobility in our society. Children born into families at the bottom fifth of the income distribution are twice as likely as middle-class children to remain in that bottom bracket as adults (Isaacs, Sawhill & Haskins, 2008). Efforts to improve the economic prospects of children from low-income families have often focused on the educational system, but often with disappointing results (Jacob & Ludwig, 2009). Disparities in academic skills and other areas of development are apparent well before children enter school, suggesting that efforts targeted early in the life course may be effective in preventing the disparities that schools seek to remediate. If we could identify strategies for improving the school readiness of disadvantaged children before they enter kindergarten, we might be able to improve their opportunities for achieving the American Dream.

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