Over the last 40 YEARS, lower income families have increased spending on day care and other enrichment by $480 PER YEAR, whereas upper income parents have increased their spending nearly $5300 . Across racial lines, childhoods of those from the top-third and the bottom-third of the economic hierarchy have sharply diverged since the 1990s on out-of-school factors that support the development of cognitive and non-cognitive skills and the cultural and social capital critical for life success (Putnam 2012). For example, increased spending by upper income families on enrichment and learning opportunities in comparison to their less wealthy counterparts contributes to the growing achievement gap. Although lower income families have increased spending on structured learning opportunities and enrichment for their children by an average of $480 per year, upper income parents have increased their spending by nearly $5300 (Reardon, 2011). (2012 . Similarly, the amount of time parents spend with their children has grown twice as fast since 1975 among college-educated parents as it has among less-educated parents. Children from high-income families will spend as many as 1,300 more hours , between birth and age six , than children from low-income families on enrichment activities such as music lessons , travel, and summer camp. While less affluent families are also increasing the time and money they invest in their children, they cannot keep up .

Headline: More and better learning time becomes the “normal” way of doing business in terms of practice and policy for kids living in communities of concentrated poverty.