“For decades, as wealthy parents invested more and more time and money on enrichment for their young children, students in poverty fell further and further behind.
New research, however, suggests that the trend is changing: The children starting their first days of kindergarten may arrive better prepared than prior generations—and students in poverty will arrive at less of a disadvantage compared with their wealthier peers.
Income and racial gaps in school readiness closed significantly between 1998 and 2010, according to studies in a special issue of AERA Open, a journal of the American Educational Research Association. …
The closing academic gaps … are ‘not because schools are getting more equal, but because something in early childhood is becoming more equal,’ Reardon said. ‘It would be great if you could have both, but we do have one.'”
Education Week: https://go.edc.org/u1i6