Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, September 18, 1995                   TAG: 9509190006
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

TRUE OR FALSE?

Is it true or false that:

1. Having a working mother hurts a child's academic performance.

2. Being in a single-parent family hurts a child's academic performance.

3. Having parents with little formal education hurts a child's academic performance.

4. Being poor hurts a child's academic performance.

5. Throwing money at public education has done no good; the academic performance of U.S. schoolchildren is worse than ever.

6. Pouring resources into public education helps middle-class white kids, but has done nothing to help poor minority kids.

The answers, according to a study conducted last year by the RAND Institute on Education and Training:

The first two statements are false, at least for teen-age kids. Based on results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress tests, neither working motherhood nor single-family status appears to have a significant effect on how well children do academically. The NAEP tests are administered, though, to children approximately 14 years old. Whether their mothers work outside the home, the authors say, could have an effect on younger children.

Statements three and four are true. The more educated the parents are, the better on average the children do. And the lower is family income, the lower as a rule are children's test scores.

Put another way, children from single-parent families are more likely to fare poorly in school - but mainly because such families tend to have low incomes and single parents tend to have less formal education.

Statement five is false, according to the study. Based on the NAEP test scores, which the researchers say is a more reliable guide for changes over time than SAT scores, American schoolchildren are getting better academically. Some of the improvement can be attributed to changing family characteristics, such as smaller family size (which makes for higher per-capita income even when household income doesn't rise) and an increase in average parental educational levels. But the rest of the improvement in academic proficiency, the researchers suggest, comes from enhanced school quality.

That point, however, does not hold across the board. The final statement is false. Though a gap remains, the test scores of black and Hispanic children have risen faster than the scores of non-Hispanic white children. The smaller rise in the scores of non-Hispanic white children can be attributed entirely to changing family characteristics. The faster-rising scores of black and Hispanic children, the study concludes, can be attributed only partly to changing family characteristics.