Friday, November 24, 2017

Socioeconomic status makes no difference to your academic performance.

From Socioeconomic status and genetic influences on cognitive development by David N. Figlioa, Jeremy Freeseb, Krzysztof Karbownikc, and Jeffrey Roth. Abstract:
Accurate understanding of environmental moderation of genetic influences is vital to advancing the science of cognitive development as well as for designing interventions. One widely reported idea is increasing genetic influence on cognition for children raised in higher socioeconomic status (SES) families, including recent proposals that the pattern is a particularly US phenomenon. We used matched birth and school records from Florida siblings and twins born in 1994–2002 to provide the largest, most population diverse consideration of this hypothesis to date. We found no evidence of SES moderation of genetic influence on test scores, suggesting that articulating gene-environment interactions for cognition is more complex and elusive than previously supposed.
I believe that a vernacular translation of this cautious statement would be:
It is widely believed that students of higher socioeconomic families do better in school owing to the privileges of wealth, i.e. tutors, enriching experiences, more parental attention and assistance with homework, etc. We looked at the data for 24,640 twins from birth through school. Academic performance was predicted by inherited IQ. Socioeconomic status did not affect academic outcomes.
If that reading is correct, I can see why they wanted to be careful with their language. There are a lot of financial, ideological, and social interests in believing that outcomes are due to systemic oppression rather than inherited IQ.

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