Black-White Differences In Achievement The Importance Of Wealth Summary

In the article “Black-White Differences in Achievement: The importance of Wealth” it explores how wealth affect academic achievement, as well as explain why there is such a huge gap in test scores between black students and white students. The author argues that wealth is an economic capital that is beneficial to a child doing well in school. This means that wealth can be used as a financial resource and can be converted into cultural, social, and human capital. Social capital is a having a form of acceptance in a particular society, like buying Jordan’s because everyone else has Jordan’s. Cultural Capital mainly focuses on your social mobility with no use of economic resources, like self image, knowledge, and skill. Human Capital is having attributes about yourself that serves
as an advantage to more opportunities. Wealth, as an economic capital, can help parents to purchase many important educational resources, such as books, computers, private schooling and various status symbols (Orr, 2003, pg.282). The different forms of capital can contribute to whether your child academically succeeds or not.
Looking at this theory from a racial perspective, most children of color come from families that have little to no wealth (financial, social, and cultural capital) at all compared to white children who do. Since they have little to no wealth, they‘re not able to receive high quality schooling, educational resources at home, gain social status with other students, and expand their education by going to college. Due to the fact that they have a limited amount of wealth this could lead the child to having no motivation and low self esteem, which will have an effect on their academic achievement. The gap in test scores between black students and white student continues to expand as children progress through school. Research has shown that from grade 1 to grade 12, the gap in mathematics has widened by 0.18 standard deviations and the gap in vocabulary scores has widened by 0.23 standard deviations (Orr, 2003, pg.286).This means that black student who entered school with the same test scores as white students are most likely to have lower test scores than white students when they leave the 12th
grade. Some black student who are seniors are not aspired to go college due to fact that they are aware that they’re family can’t afford college and that they would also have to pick up the slack financially(find work) because the family as a whole is unable make ends meet. This factor alone can lead to having a huge affect on the child’s performance in school, which contributes to why there is such a huge gap in test scores between white students and black students. Based on the research that was done about the theory that “Wealth is beneficial to a child’s academic achievement”, leads you to the reasons as to why there is such a huge gap in test score between black students and white students.