The Relationship Between Socio-Economic Status and Academic Achievement

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The Relationship Between Socio-Economic Status and Academic Achievement : A Review of Existing Literature

Introduction

The purpose of this literature review is to examine the relation between students’ socioeconomic status and their academic achievement. To be more specific, the goals are to determine (a) what defines low income; (b) review identified student characteristics (e.g. parental involvement, ethnicity, and school location) that have an effect on student achievement; and (c) what current research is saying about the best practices are for addressing the needs of low income students within the school setting. This literature review is not intended to provide a comprehensive review of the available literature, but to serve as a starting point for future directions for research and policy.

Defining factors

In the Southern Education Foundation’s (SEF) October 2013 report, A New Majority Low Income Students in the South and Nation, it is shared that a majority of public school children in 17 states, one-third of the 50 states across the nation, were low income students as of 2011. Thirteen of the 17 states were in the South, and the remaining four were in the West. Since 2005, half or more of the South’s children in public schools have been from low income households. During the school years 2010 and 2011, for the first time in modern history, the western United States had a majority of low income students attending P-12 public schools.

Research prior to SEF’s 2013 findings, such as Brook-Dunn’s 1997 work, found that one in five American children were either currently living in families, or had lived in families in which cash income failed to exceed official poverty thresholds. For a small minority of children, 4....

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Sirin, Selcuk R. (2005). Socioeconomic Status and Academic Achievement: A Meta-Analytic Review of Research. Review of Educational Research, (3), 417-453. Retrieved at: http://rer.sagepub.com.ezproxy.nu.edu/content/75/3/417

Southern Education Foundation. (2013). A new majority low income students in the south and nation. Retrieved from: http://www.southerneducation.org/getattachment/ 0bc70ce1- d375-4ff6-8340-f9b3452ee088/A-New-Majority-Low-Income-Students-in-the-South- an.aspx

Strange, M. (March 01, 2011). Finding Fairness for Rural Students. Phi Delta Kappan,92, 6, 8- 15. Retrieved from: http://www.kappanmagazine.org/content/92/6/8.pdf/

Stephens, N. M., Markus, H. R., & Phillips, L. T. (2014). Social class culture cycles: how three gateway contexts shape selves and fuel inequality. Annual Review of Psychology, 65, 611-34.

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