ABSTRACT
Poverty limits cognitive growth mainly by denying young children the resources they need to grow outside school, especially in summer. So young poor children and their better-off counterparts differ in how much they learn when school is closed, and the single factor associated most strongly with how much children learn over the summer is family socioeconomic status. The sawtooth pattern of seasonal test gains for low socioeconomic status children--moving smartly ahead in winter but stopping or retrogressing in summers--is thus far different from the pattern seen when data are pooled over winter and summer seasons. The poor children do as well or better than their wealthier classmates when school is open, the conclusion that home resources facilitate school learning is not warranted. The socioeconomic status of the family does not matter when school is open, and the conclusion instead is that the process of achievement changes from winter to summer.
