In discussions of family and life histories in the West SGV, high school frequently emerged as a key period during which social relations were solidifi ed and established, and achievement in academics and extracurricular activities oft en became a marker of one’s perceived abil-ity to succeed and prosper. Students’ ways of making sense of the social order were tied intimately with the particular regional context in which

The study first assessed the children shortly after they began kinder-garten, providing a picture of their skills at the starting line of their for-mal schooling. It shows that children from families in the top 20 percent of the income distribution already outscore children from the bottom 20 percent by 106 points in early literacy. This difference is nearly twice the size of the gap between the average reading skills of white and both black and Hispanic children at that age, and nearly equal to the amount that the typical child learns during kindergarten. Moreover, the reading gap was even larger when the same children were tested in fifth grade. Gaps in mathematics achievement are also substantial. 2 Children are more successful in school when they are able to pay at-tention, when they get along with peers and teachers, and when they are not preoccupied or depressed because of troubles at home. Using the same SAT-type metric as for reading scores, figure 3.1 shows that, according to teachers, children from more affluent families are more engaged than their low-income peers. Also, children from low-income families are more likely to engage in antisocial behavior and to have mental health problems. These differences are smaller than the differences in reading skills. None of these advantages for high-income children shrinks over the course of elementary school, nor do they decline as children move to high school. Indeed, another national data set focusing on eighth graders in 1988 shows that 95 percent of students from families in the top quarter of the income distribution graduated from high school, as compared with only 64 percent of those from the bottom quarter.3 As we saw in chapter 2, the income-based gap in college graduation rates is even larger and has grown sharply over the last three decades. Why might growing gaps in family income cause an increasing gap between the school success of low-income and higher-income children? According to economic theory, families with higher incomes are better able to purchase or produce important "inputs" into their young chil-dren's development-for example, nutritious meals, enriched home learn-ing environments and child-care settings outside the home, and safe and stimulating neighborhood environments.4 Alternatively, psychologists and sociologists focus on how economic disadvantage impairs the quality of family relationships. 5 We consider each of these explanations in turn.