von Hippel Paul T, Workman Joseph, Downey Douglas B
University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA.
University of Missouri, Kansas City, MO, USA.
Sociol Educ. 2018 Oct;91(4):323-357. doi: 10.1177/0038040718801760. Epub 2018 Sep 27.
When do children become unequal in reading and math skills? Some research claims that inequality grows mainly before school begins. Some research claims that schools cause inequality to grow. And some research-including the 2004 study "Are Schools the Great Equalizer?"-claims that inequality grows mainly during summer vacations. Unfortunately, the test scores used in the Great Equalizer study suffered from a measurement artifact that exaggerated estimates of inequality growth. In addition, the Great Equalizer study is dated and its participants are no longer school-aged. In this article, we replicate the Great Equalizer study using better test scores in both the original data and a newer cohort of children. When we use the new test scores, we find that variance is substantial at the start of kindergarten and does not grow but actually shrinks over the next two to three years. This finding, which was not evident in the original Great Equalizer study, implicates the years before kindergarten as the primary source of inequality in elementary reading and math. Total score variance grows during most summers and shrinks during most school years, suggesting that schools reduce inequality overall. Changes in inequality are small after kindergarten and do not replicate consistently across grades, subjects, or cohorts. That said, socioeconomic gaps tend to shrink during the school year and grow during the summer, while the black-white gap tends to follow the opposite pattern.
儿童在阅读和数学技能方面何时开始出现差异？一些研究称，差异主要在入学前就开始扩大。一些研究称，学校导致差异扩大。还有一些研究——包括2004年的研究《学校是伟大的平等izer吗？》——称，差异主要在暑假期间扩大。不幸的是，“伟大的平等izer”研究中使用的测试成绩存在测量误差，夸大了对差异增长的估计。此外，“伟大的平等izer”研究年代久远，其参与者已不再处于学龄期。在本文中，我们在原始数据和一组更新的儿童中使用更好的测试成绩来重复“伟大的平等izer”研究。当我们使用新的测试成绩时，我们发现幼儿园入学时差异就很大，在接下来的两到三年里并没有扩大，实际上还缩小了。这一在原始的“伟大的平等izer”研究中并不明显的发现，表明幼儿园之前的几年是小学阅读和数学差异的主要来源。总分差异在大多数暑假期间扩大，在大多数学年期间缩小，这表明学校总体上减少了差异。幼儿园之后差异的变化很小，并且在不同年级、科目或群体中并不能一致地重复出现。也就是说，社会经济差距在学年期间往往会缩小，在暑假期间会扩大，而黑白差距则往往呈现相反的模式。
