Is Family Socioeconomic Status Really Important in Student Achievement?

Unfortunately, today the answer is YES.

Before we begin, let us examine a couple of key definitions...

School is defined as "the institutional environment that sets the parameters of a students’ learning experience." 

Student role performance (SRP) is defined as "the ability of a student to fulfill their role in the classroom."

Both of these components are important in either encouraging a student to achieve, or it can be the reason they fall behind. In many cases, students that come from low SES communities do not receive any encouragement that promotes education. Not only does the classroom affect SRP, socialization factors do as well. According to research by Master's student Jennifer Barry, the peer groups a student is involved in effects their SRP by 14 percent.

Another factor that influences education and future aspirations is the role a child's peers have on them.  While peers can be beneficial, in many cases with low SES students peer groups can create effect SRP negatively due to "peer pressure and peer conformity." 

Family effects SRP by 10 percent whether is it due to their education level or the background they came from. In many cases, low SES children come from single parent households, which has shown to impact test scores negatively.  

However, this issues really boils down to socioeconomic status. It has been shown that SES affects SRP by a landslide of 52 percent. This is because "SES dictates the quality of home life for children." 

Socioeconomic status combines family and money issues, with which many low SES children have to endure. These children are not able to have an adequate SRP because they are set back by their family’s economic hardships.

This figure analyzes all the components discussed in this post. It shows a dramatic low percentage of student achievement when income is between 10K to 20K. As income increases so does student achievement, however, at a significantly lesser rate. 

Source: Berry, Jennifer. The Effect of Socio-economic Status on Academic Achievement. MA thesis. Wichita State  University , 2006. privately published, Web. http://soar.wichita.edu/dspace/bitstream/handle/10057/616/barry_jennifer.pdf?sequence=1