Panel Paper:
Summer Learning and Educational Inequality in 1999 and 2011
*Names in bold indicate Presenter
I hypothesize that a widening summer ‘activity gap’ between high- and low-SES children may in part drive this trend, as in recent years high-SES parents have substantially increased their investments in resources to advance their children’s cognitive skills (Kornich & Furstenberg, 2013). Yet to date, we have virtually no evidence on how the distribution of children’s summer activities has changed in recent decades. Using new, nationally representative data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 2010-11 (ECLS-K 10-11) along with data from the original ECLS-K 1998-99 study, I explore how contemporary kindergarten children’s summer learning and activity participation differ from those of children beginning kindergarten approximately fifteen years ago.
I compare the summer activities and learning of U.S. kindergarteners in 2011 to those of U.S. kindergarteners in 1999. I ask the following research questions:
(1) Are SES-related gaps in summer learning larger for children in the later ECLS-K cohort (2010-11) than they were for children in the earlier cohort (1998-99)?
(2) Are SES-related gaps in summer activity participation larger for children in the later ECLS-K cohort than they were for children in the earlier cohort?
(3) To what extent do SES-related gaps in summer activities account for SES-related gaps in summer learning? Are the associations between summer activity participation, children’s socioeconomic status, and summer learning larger for children in the later ECLS-K cohort than they were for children in the earlier cohort?
I utilize two main datasets: the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998-99 (ECLS-K) and ECLS-K 2010-11. ECLS-K 2010-11 is following a nationally representative sample of U.S. kindergarteners (N=18,200) beginning in 2010. ECLS-K 98-99 followed a similar sample beginning in 1998. I also utilize the U.S. Census 2000 and 2010 small area files for exploratory analyses.
I make two kinds of comparisons. First, I describe the differences in summer learning and summer activity participation between high- and low-SES children within each cohort, presenting descriptive statistics for summer activity participation and learning gains for children in each SES quintile. Second, I conduct tests to evaluate whether SES-related gaps in summer activity participation and learning are larger for the later ECLS-K cohort than for the earlier cohort. Next, I utilize regression analysis to examine the extent to which differential participation in summer activities accounts for SES-related gaps in summer learning.
An examination of whether and how the SES-related summer ‘activity gap’ and summer learning gap are widening provides insight into a key hypothesized mechanism for how the SES-related achievement gap is forming and widening.
