The Student's Household

According to research by the RAND Corporation, a student's family background,

including family income and his parents' occupational and educational status,
correlate to his achievement on standardized testing. Consequently, an increase in
parent education or income accounted for increased test scores in minority students.
However, improvement in the scores reported by the National Center for Education
Statistics, or NCES, have matched the gains of white students, leaving a steady
achievement gap.

Socioeconomic Conditions

Income and parental education levels influence the student's learning environment at
home. Education Next of the Harvard Kennedy School points to the number of books
in the household, low birth weight and use of supplemental food assistance programs
as income markers that correlate to lower test scores. The study by the RAND
Corporation includes a "human capital" perspective that looks at the resources a
family gives to a student. These resources include parental time and parental views on
education. Students of black, Hispanic or American Indian or Alaskan descent
routinely fall at the bottom of the socioeconomic spectrum, which both Education
Next and the Rand Corporation correlate to lower achievement.

School Community

In studies of the school community, characteristics of the entire school organization,

including socioeconomics and race, were part of the focus of the RAND Corporation.
Schools in lower socioeconomic neighborhoods and those with higher percentages of
racial minority groups suffered from lower achievement scores. Tracking of students
through the curriculum was determined to be another factor in the achievement gap.

School Opportunities

According to Robert Balfanz and Vaughan Byrnes of the Center for Social
Organization of Schools, schools with lower socioeconomic markers often contain
weaker curricula, fewer well-trained math teachers and less opportunity for
higher-level math courses. Additionally, the 2011 Nation's Report Card published by
NCES showed that black, Hispanic and American Indian or Alaskan native students
took less rigorous courses throughout their high school careers.

Race and Language

According to the study by Education Next, discounting race and focusing only on
socioeconomic factors revealed that students started at equal achievement levels in
kindergarten. From that point, the achievement gap begins to appear between races,
even with similar economic backgrounds. Additional evidence points to English
language skills as a contributor to the achievement gap. Primarily affecting Hispanic
students, language barriers slow the understanding of mathematical concepts.

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