The Hard Work Hypothesis: Is Doing Your Homework Enough to Overcome the Effects of Poverty?
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Stephen Krashen
Multicultural Education 12 (4): 16-19, 2005
It is well-established that the effects of poverty are devastating for children in school. More generally, scholars have documented that low "socio-economic status" (SES), whether measured by family income, parent education, or parent occupation, is usually the most powerful predictor of achievement and test score performance, sometimes swamping all other factors (White, 1982). This advantage translates to life success; children of the wealthy are far more likely to become wealthy, become professionals, and attain positions of power than children of the poor. (Simonton, 1994). Simonton, in fact, concludes that "the log cabin myth is just that, pure myth" (p. 157).
There have been some recent challenges to this generalization, however, claims that some children, especially Asian immigrant children and the children of Asian immigrants, do very well even though they come from high-poverty backgrounds. Two such cas are the "Boat People" of Vietnam, who arrived in the US in 1978, and the Hmong.
The Boat People and the Hard Work Hypothesis
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The Boat People, according to Caplan, Choy and Whitmore (1992) came only with "the clothes on their backs." Nevertheless, their children did well in American schools. Caplan et. al., (1989, 1992) examined a subt of the children (n = 355) in grades K through 12 and reported that their overall gradepoint average was 3.02, nearly exactly a B, and they did especially well in math: A group of high school students from their sample (n = 97) scored at the 72nd percentile on the math CAT. How did they do it? Hard work and family values, according to Caplan et. al., with lots of homework (a specific time t aside for homework every evening, with older children helping the younger ones. Caplan et. al. document this: Tho in high school averaged three hours and ten minutes homework per evening, tho in junior high two and a half hours. The US average for junior high and high school is 1.5 hours.
ukThe Hmong and the Hard Work Hypothesis
The Hmong, immigrants from Laos, also appear to support the Hard Work hypothesis, the hypothesis that hard work (homework) can overcome the disadvantages associated with poverty. As a group, the Hmong are among the poorest of immigrant groups and are among the least educated. For the 14,000 Hmong in California in 1990, median houhold income was $16,000 per year, compared to the then national average of $36,000 (University of Wisconsin, 2000). Only 3% of the H
mong in California had graduated college (University of Wisconsin, 2000); compare this to the finding that 42% of the Chine/other Asian group studied by Portes and Rumbaut (2001) had graduated college.
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Yet the Hmong do well in school, and it is undeniable that they are very hard workers. Table 1, from Portes and Rumbaut, reveals, in fact, that the Hmong are the champion homework students of their entire sample, with nearly half reporting two or more hours of homework per day.
Table 1: Background and Homework
school engagement homework Mexico52%14% Nicaragua57%21% Vietnam59%45% Hmong62%48% Chine/other61%38%
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All data from Portes and Rumbaut, tables 4,1, 8.4
School engagement: percent who feel grades are very important
视频 英文Homework: percent who report doing two or more hours per day of homework Their homework time appears to pay off in terms of better grades: Rumbaut (1997) reported that from the sample of children of immigrants in US high schools studied by Portes and Rumbaut (2001), more time spent i
n homework resulted in better grades (table 2).
Table 2: Homework and GPA
Hours GPA: 1992GPA: 1996
less than 1 2.3 2.3
constantly
1 hr to
2 hrs 2.6 2.6
2 to
3 hrs 2.9 2.8
zootopia 下载4 or more3 3.1
From: Rumbaut (1997)
More Evidence for the Hard Work Hypothesis: Background Counts When SES is Controlled
Table 3 prents a multiple regression analysis from Portes and Rumbaut (2001), examining predictors of grades and standardized test results for children of immigrants in high school.
Multiple regression is a very uful statistical tool that allows us to examine the impact of different predictors, holding the others constant. For example, table 3 tells us that high school students who have higher socio-economic status (SES) score higher on a test of reading. The "regression coefficient" for SES is 6.88. SES was measured on a five-point scale (-2 to +2); for each point higher in SES, students scored 6.88 higher on the reading test. Thus, students from the highest SES group scored about 34 points higher in reading than students from the lowest group.. The regression coefficient reprents the impact of SES without influence of other factors, that is, when interpreting the impact of SES, we can pretend students were identical in all other ways.
In table 3, SES is a strong predictor of all three measures, reading, math and grades. Note, however, even after controlling for SES, as well as for other predictors, such as the SES of one's friends, background is still a significant predictor. Being Mexican, for example, predicts lower test scores (15 percentiles lower in reading) as well as a quarter of a grade lower grade point average. Being Chine/Korean predicts 3/4 of a grade higher GPA, 13 percentiles higher in reading, and a spectacular 23 percentiles higher in math.
Table 3: Multiple Regression: from Portes and Rumbaut (2001).
Predictor READING MATH GRADES Age (range 12-18)-3.24***-4.10***-.10*** Sex (1 = female) 2.63* 1.62*.33*** Region (1 = CA, 0 = FL) 3.85*-8.46**0.27
Parental SES (range -2 to +2) 6.88** 5.8***.18*** Intact Family (1 = both parents)0.9 3.45**.18*** US Born 6.06***0.56-.16*** Long Term Resident* 6.23***0.02-.12* Fluent Bilingual (1 = fluent bi.) 2.3* 1.93*.06* Limited Bilingual-12.14***-7.14***
Parent-Child conflict (1-4)-2.15**-3.12***-.16*** Second-generation friends (1-3) 1.88* 3.84*-.06** Inner City (1 = inner city, 2 = not inner city)-2.07*-6.21**0 Average Student SES (free/reduced lunch).2***.10**-0.06 Chine/Korean12.97**23.22***.76*** Columbian0.07-0.45-0.05 Cuban, private school7.14* 5.6.25** Cuban, public school-1.64-3.48*-.14* Filipino-1.69 3.39.17* Haitian-8.29**-7.18*0 Laotian/Cambodian-12.41** 2.1.47*** Mexican-14.7***-11.52***-.25** Nicaraguan-3.71-2.62-0.1 Vietname-3.2115.79***.50*** West Indian 1.07-4.94-0.01
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* = moderate effect, ** = strong effect, *** = very strong effect
尺子的英语
Length of residence in US: 1 = less than 5 years; 2 = 5-9, 3 = 10 or more, 4 = native born.
Range of grades = 0 to 5, mean = 2.52
A look back at table 2 gives a plausible explanation: Chine/other Asian background students do a lot more homework than Mexican background students, and are more engaged in school. This ems to say that homework counts, that social class is not everything, and suggests that homework can at least make up for some of the disadvantages poor children have.
The Counterevidence: Another look at the Boat People. How well did they really do?
A clor look at rearch on the Boat People reveals that they did well, but were not spectacular. As noted above, their overall GPA was 3.02, but much of this was due to high performance in math: Without math, their average drops to 2.64 (Caplan et. al., 1989, p. 67).
For the 96 high school students studied, CAT math scores were very high, but their CAT scores for language and reading were a more ordinary 46th percentile. This is very good for students who have only been in the US for three and a half years, but not spectacular. (It should be noted that Caplan et. al. reported the results for CAT reading and language tests combined. They are parate tests, and the reading test is considered more demanding and a better test of academic language.)
No comparison group was included; there was no comparison with students of similar SES, with similar length of residence, from the same or other countries. In addition, we have no idea how much education the children had before arriving in the US, and what the quality of their education was. Quality of education in the first language is a strong predictor of success (Krashen, 1996).
The Boat People: Were they really low SES?
Caplan and colleagues provide somewhat conflicting information. It is very clear that the Boat People suffered from considerable poverty when they arrived in the US, but it is not clear what SES they had in Vietnam. In one place, we are told that "the vast majority of the parents ... came from low SES backgrounds, the poorer and less educated gments of their society (Caplan, Whitmore and Choy, 1989, p. 212), but elwhere we are told that they "... are much more urban, more highly educated, and skilled in jobs more related to urban environments that the majority in the society they left behind" (p. 27). Walker-Moffet (1995) in fact, concludes that the Boat People study "really tells us is that students from well-educated backgrounds succeed academically regardless of their status as refugees" (p. 12).
There is some concrete data: Whitmore, Trautman and Caplan (1989) inform us that 26% of the pare
nts in their sample had completed high school. This is considerably higher that the 9% reported for the Hmong living in California in 1990 (University of Wisconsin, 2000) but considerably less than the US average of 78% for 1990
