Socioeconomic Status and Students

Meager research has been done on the impact of a student’s social class on their academic achievement in comparison to factors such as gender and race. From what has been researched, it is apparent that while a student’s socioeconomic status (from now on referred to as SES) may not affect student’s achievement directly, their SES affects factors that influence their social/peer capital, their resources, and their self-efficacy; these things in turn affect student achievement. Throughout this review, I will reference numerous articles and data collections that support these claims and explain how the aforementioned factors influence each other as well as student achievement.
By stating that SES affects a student’s social/peer capital, I am basically stating that what social class you belong to affects who you know. Ream and Rumberger (2008) agree with this when they state that, “… lower-class and working-class students are immersed in low-SES urban school districts where the pool of friends is commonly limited to others who are similarly distressed…” (p. 126) The main argument of their research is that how one socializes and behaves in school directly affects if they will complete school (Ream, 2008, p. 114). For their research, Ream and Rumberger (2008) pulled data from the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988, which was a panel that that studied 25,000 eighth grade students, and focused on the group of students who had dropped out by the twelfth grade (p. 114). The data collected showed that Mexican American students are part of a much lower SES on average that non-Latino white students and that the Mexican American students do not have as great of an availability to friends that value education as their non-Latino w...

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... are from low SES families…” (p. 3071). Their data alone supports that a student’s SES influences their academic achievement. However, much more research needs to be done on this topic. As future teachers, we need to find away to help our low SES students succeed on the same level as their high SES counterparts. Our Title 1 schools are where we can have the most impact on this. I believe, based on the research, these are the schools that need financial support and good teachers the most. High SES students have support from their social/peer capital and resources that their low SES counterparts will never have access too. The students that already have these things do not need more. We should be focusing our attention on the students with the greater need, the students who may only receive a good meal at school, who may only feel encouragement from their teachers.