backgrounds

Education Michael Kurtz, Lycoming College The Research Brief is a short take about interesting academic work. The big idea When food banks work with schools to send children home with a backpack full of food over the weekend, they do better on reading and math tests, I found in a recent study. These effects are strongest for younger and low-performing students. In the peer-reviewed study published in December 2020, my co-authors – Karen Conway and Robert Mohr – and I explored how weekend feeding programs, also known as “backpack” programs, affected end-of-grade tests in reading and math for third, fourth and fifth graders in North Carolina. These types of programs began independently in 1995 in a single school in Little Rock, Arkansas. Since then, Feeding America – a national network of...

Friendships that bridge across social class – “cross-class friendships” – can minimize middle school academic achievement differences that are based on the level of parents’ education, according to research from the UCLA School Diversity Project. As scholars of adolescent development, we examined academic achievement differences among 4,288 middle school students in California based on their parents’ education level. Seventeen percent of parents or guardians of students in our sample did not receive a high school diploma, 12% had a high school diploma or equivalent, 28% attended some college, 23% had a four-year college degree and 20% had a graduate degree. Students’ academic achievement was assessed using GPAs, scores from the state standardized test, and academic engagement as reporte...

Tag: backgrounds

Study Finds – Students From Struggling Economic Backgrounds Sent Home With Food For The Weekend Have Improved Test Scores

It’s Good For Kids To Have Friends From Different Socioeconomic Backgrounds – Here’s Why