Reply to Great NYT column on the achivement gap b/w rich vs middleclass and poor kids

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I imagine that almost all of those who are reading this and thinking of themselves as "middle class" in this analysis are in fact not what he means by middle class.   If you put the top 10% of income or certainly if you include even the top 25% as the high income and everyone else as middle class until you reach the working poor most of DCUM are in that high income group.  If your family makes $150K or more, you are not the middle class families that are being addressed here.[/quote]

20:59. I agree. I'm in the top 10% income-wise, but grew up lower middle class/working class. I feel I got as good an education as did my wealthy classmates. But I did most of my schooling before 1980, as mentioned in the article. Educational opportunities were more equal back then. Now that I have a much higher income, I don't feel I'm doing anything significantly different with my kids.  I do feel I can provide more networking opportunities that enable my kids to have experiences I never could. And they definitely learn from that. But that's now that they are older. Not before kindergarten.

My brother, on the other hand, is solidly middle class, divorced and making $60,000 a year. His kids do pretty much everything mine do, but they are not performing as well in school. This is anecdotal only, of course, but I don't understand why the disparity occurs. Is it peer group? [/quote]

This is interesting PP. According to the article, much of the disparity would relate to how you and your brother parented the kids when they were small. Would you say that all the cousins entered kindergarten at the same level? [/quote]

Yes. I'd say they were all very similar in kindergarten and the disparities became more apparent around 4th grade. All went to high quality day cares in their respective towns. We only live 1/2 hour from each other, so things aren't that much different.[/quote]

Perhaps your kids are simply smarter?[/quote]

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