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based on ethnic and cultural differences are prominent features of the educational
system. Surveys conducted by the NCES indicated that, on average, minority stu-
dents (primarily Latino and African American) lagged behind their White peers
in terms of academic achievement (US Department of Education, 2000). While
early work tended to focus on presumed cultural deficits as a primary cause of eth-
nic/racial/cultural achievement gaps, this view has been widely discredited (Graham
& Hudley, 2005; Gutierrez & Rogoff, 2003). More recently, other factors have been
suggested, including the effects of living in low-income households or in single-
parent families, low parental education levels, and schools with lower resources.
All of these factors are components of SES and linked to academic achievement
(National Commission on Children, 1991). We consider some of these factors below.
Socioeconomic status
. SES is one of the most widely used contextual variables
in education research and is often looked at in relation to academic achievement
(Bornstein & Bradley, 2003; Brooks-Gunn & Duncan, 1997; Coleman, 1988). There
seems to be relatively widespread agreement that SES is comprised of three com-
ponents: parental income, parental education, and parental occupation (Gottfried,
1985; Hauser, 1994). While these variables are often moderately correlated, there is
evidence that the components are unique and that each one measures a substantially
different aspect of SES that should be considered to be separate from the others
(Bollen, Glanville, & Stecklov, 2001; Hauser & Huang, 1997). In this study, we
used a combination of mother's education and parental income.
An early, comprehensive meta-analysis of SES and academic achievement
(White, 1982) showed that the relation varies significantly with a number of factors
such as the types of SES and academic achievement measures, and later studies have
reported inconsistent findings. Correlations have ranged from strong (e.g., Lamdin,
1996; Sutton & Soderstrom, 1999) to no significant correlation at all (e.g., Ripple &
Luthar, 2000; Seyfried, 1998). A more recent analysis (Sirin, 2005) examined jour-
nal articles published between 1990 and 2000 and included 101,157 students, 6,871
schools, and 128 school districts gathered from 74 independent samples. The results
showed a medium to strong SES-achievement relation. However, the relation was
moderated by the unit (e.g., the individual student vs. an aggregated unit), the source
(e.g., secondary sources vs. self-report), the range of SES variable, and the type
of SES-achievement measure. The relation was also contingent upon school level,
minority status, and school location. In terms of grade level, the mean effect size
(ES) was 0.19 for the kindergarten students, 0.27 for the elementary school students,
0.31 for middle-school students, and 0.26 for high-school students. In addition, the
mean ES for White student samples (0.27) was significantly larger than the mean
ES for minority student samples (0.17). Unfortunately, the review did not consider
information on college-level effects.
Overall, the average correlation in Sirin's (2005) review was 0.30, as compared
with White's (1982) average correlation of 0.34. In sum, the best evidence indicates
that using Cohen's (1977) ES guidelines, the overall ES of Sirin's analysis suggests
a medium level of association between SES and academic achievement at the stu-
dent level and a larger degree of association at the school level. Importantly, the
review also suggests that parents' location in the overall SES hierarchy has a strong
