1. What are gaps? What causes them? Tony Moss Researcher / Data Analyst Kansas State Dept. of Education Gap Workgroup Meeting KSDE, 11 August 2014

2. Definition of Gaps: 1.Gaps are measures of the health and success of a society.  Bigger gaps => worse health, crime, more social waste  Smaller gaps => better health, less crime, happier, fairer 2.Gaps are leading indicators of a society’s economic future.  Bigger gaps => more economic and political instability  Smaller => wider prosperity and greater economic stability

3. American gaps show in international comparisons: UNICEF’s rating of child well being places the U.S. near the bottom of developed countries. U.S. spends more but gets less in education & health care; no practical support for single moms.

4. African-AmericanHispanicWhite Mixed, Other, Unknown n% of pop.n n n Child Characteristics males9,3313.511,5364.3100,11137.516,0686.0 females8,9983.410,9644.194,55635.415,3165.7 male/female ratio 1.03701.05221.05871.0491 Kansas Newborns by Ethnicity & Characteristics, from Kansas Birth Records, 1995-2001 meansdmeansdmeansdmeansd birth weights males3,1576663,3865723,4336073,356601 females3,0376373,2775533,3145763,244582 Maternal Characteristics age 246256276266 yrs. of ed. 12.31.99.93.013.62.313.02.4 percentages % unmarried 70.441.921.533.4 % foreign born 3.468.92.524.7

5. Medical and social risk correlates can be comparable in their long-term effects, but we don’t collect the latter.

6. Like language skills, health gradients emerge in early childhood and persist:

7. Nationally, white males live, on average, to age 75, while black males live to 68. In Kansas, the gap is a little larger, with the average white males living to 76, and the average black males living to a little more than 68 years. Earlier gaps have their counterpart at the end of life, in life expectancy.

9. Different poverty environments explain differences in academic gradients.

10. Poverty Trends within Ethnic Groups Kansas public schools only, all grades and preschool, 2006-2013

11. Are these gaps related? Yes—through early child development. Humans are social creatures with critical and sensitive periods in language and brain development that biologically embed social cues and stressors, shaping our health and future capacities, often for life. The life-chances of humans are shaped by social status. The greater the social distance between members of a society, in status, education, wealth, occupation, what we call SES, then the more extreme are the gradients in health, well-being, and academic achievement. See Daniel P. Keating and Clyde Hertzman, editors, 1999, Developmental Health and the Wealth of Nations.

12. Why is the academic gap an issue now? Like equality before the law, equal educational opportunity is an American ideal. In a pluralistic, democratic society, equal access to foundational resources, like education, health care, jobs and economic opportunities, are fundamental to a well- functioning society. Brown vs. Topeka, the Civil Rights, and Women’s Movements have energized this ideal. With American income & wealth inequality worsening over the last 30 years, if educational opportunity isn’t somehow enlarged, democracy and civic stability are threatened (Piketty, 2013). Life expectancy for some groups is already declining.

13. Increasing economic inequality is also increasing academic gaps.

14. As income and wealth gaps have increased over the last 3 decades, the upper classes are investing more in their children, increasing academic gaps by 30 to 60 percent.

15. Nationally, the income gap has eclipsed ethnic gaps, but in cities, some subgroups are segregated by both income and race.

16. What, in particular, causes academic gaps? If we can correctly identify causes, and reduce them, academic gaps should also decline.

17. Epigenetics: genes can be turned on or off by experiences. – Genes that experience has switched off in one generation may be passed to the next generation in the ‘off’ position; traumatic reactions – Imprinting: a contest between paternal and maternal genes. Sometimes competition between mother / father / baby for dominance and resources. Endocrine disruptors, hormonal effects, e.g. vinclozolin, bisphenol A (BPA), an estrogen, disrupting normal fetal & neonatal develop. /93% Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (also called fetal programming, the Barker Hypothesis) – Prolonged early stress, nutritional insults, etc. can impose lifetime costs on health, social and academic skills, and shorten lifespans, Parental Investment Theory stressful, threatening circumstances can foreclose healthy attachment & bonding. Psychology and the Social Brain Low positions in the social hierarchy are stressful and effect longevity. The Whitehall study. Huge advances in genetics, health, and human developmental sciences have put a new emphasis on environmental interactions.

18. Simplified Conceptual Interactive Model:

19. What is child development? A dynamic process between each individual and the environment in which: 1.Experiences, especially early social experiences and family environments, shape genetic expression and biological architecture, especially of the brain; 2.Social, emotional, cognitive, and linguistic competencies are interdependent—optimum growth depends on them all; 3.Skills are mastered hierarchically so that later attainments are built upon previous ones; and 4.Growth is sometimes dependent on the right interactions at the right time (critical and sensitive periods). James Heckman, 2006, Skill Formation and the Economics of Investing in Disadvantaged Children; NICHD Study of Early Child Care & Youth Development, 1991-2007

20. The social brain: our survival, and our resources, depend on our social networks. Humans are both competitors and collaborators We compete for social status; the higher our rank, the more likely we are to be healthy (Adam Smith); being lower- status produces stress, reduces resource access Sapolsky’s baboon status-brain experiment Babies first learn to read faces, & respond to voices Theory of Mind (ToM), the ability to understand another individual’s mental state and take it into account in one’s own behavior Language and group coordination are essential skills for building higher skills and acquiring resources

21. SES is like social rank. Rank strongly influences health and brain development through stress- mechanisms.

22. Social Status, Rank, and Control Over One’s Work Predict How Long We Live: The Whitehall Studies

23. R. Bell, et al, Work Stress and Health: the Whitehall II Study, http://www.ucl.ac.uk/whitehallII/pdf/Whitehallbooklet_1_.pdf

24. Economic and Public Health Studies Conclusions: In general, the flatter and more stable the status hierarchy, the healthier the whole population. The greater the inequality: the greater the health and academic gradients, the poorer the condition of those at the bottom, and the greater competition and social distance between members of the society, especially males.

25. Prenatal chronic stressors, (higher in low SES mothers), impair fetal growth Lower relative social status itself is stressful (e.g. the Whitehall study) and reduces life expectancy, telomere wear Corticotropin-releasing factor (CRF) and glucocorticoids can trigger prematurity and sculpt prenatal brain capacities, increasing later risks of distractibility, externalizing behaviors, lower IQ Higher risk of low birthweight Chronic stress promotes higher stress reactivity / emotional dysregulation that can be transmitted across generations: might be adaptive signal that hyper vigilance will improve survival

26. A famous rat study by Michael Meaney showed how maternal behaviors—licking her pups, or not—could turn certain genes on or off, and pass the genes, in the on or off position, to the next generation, which then repeated the behavior. The payoff: some switches, in traumatic stress for example, may be turned back to the healthier position. Hackman, D.A., et al, (2010). Socioeconomic status and the brain: Mechanistic insights from human and animal research. Neuroscience, vol. 11, Sept., 651-659.

27. Similar mechanisms in humans link prenatal stress to reduced birth weights and later diseases.

28. Low SES prompts poor postnatal responsiveness Low parental SES is associated with parental irritability, depression, anxiety Parents typically invest less in children when the parents’ survival seems threatened (parental investment theory) Parental stress also leads to reduced nurturance (less warmth, less sensitivity, less language play) and higher likelihood of harsh and inconsistent discipline, neglect, and abuse The quality of early parenting can predict children’s emotional and behavior patterns years later, and risks, like dropping out of school

29. We are talking about probabilities, not inevitabilities. Poor parents can moderate the effects of poverty, but the odds are against them.

30. Early stressors interfere with bonding and attachment, the foundation of later social skills. Insecure bonding is biologically embedded in the HPA axis, which predicts more reactive stress responses and future social conflict.

31. Quality of Parenting as Measured by the HOME-Short Form

33. The Damage of Neglect The lack of appropriate responsiveness, can damage the developing brain as well as other systems. Depending on timing, severity and duration, developmental insults can lead to a wide range of physical and mental health impairments later in childhood or adulthood— from heart disease, diabetes, depression, memory loss, hypertension, to substance abuse, disabilities and premature aging and death. This is an extreme example, but day-to-day mild forms of neglect will have proportionate effects.

34. The effects of developmental poverty can emerge later, in adulthood

35. The warmth and language environments of Early Ed. & Child Care are also essential building blocks. Of the 45 percent of 2-year-olds in low-quality day care, the majority are very poor, and African- American or Hispanic. G.M. Mulligan and K.D. Flanagan, Age 2: Findings from the 2-Year-Old Follow-Up of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth Cohort (ECLS-B), U.S. Dept. of Education, NCES, August 2006

36. Take-home lessons about the gap: Early child and brain development can affect physical and mental health, learning, and behavior for life. They can also have intergenerational effects. The quality of early childhood, in language immersion, responsive care, play, bonding and attachment, experience, nutrition, and health, predicts the quality of a country’s future population and to a significant degree, a country’s future health, competence, and prosperity. If we want to reduce health and academic gaps, we need to reduce the stresses of maternal and child poverty and improve the quality of parenting, and of early childcare and education.

37. The 3 most important early factors for a child’s future academic success are: Rich language & intellectual stimulation Warm, positive bonding & attachment Normal, not chronic, stress or neglect The quality of parenting accounts for about one- third of the health and education gaps between rich and poor children. Richard Reeves and Kimberly Howard, 2013, The Parenting Gap.

38. return per $1 invested Investments in early childhood return 3 X as much as school investments, and 8 X as much as adult remediation programs.

39. What topics would you like to cover in future meetings? How do schools contribute to gaps? What are the most promising solutions? Where are the biggest gaps and what solutions might be tested in those schools and districts? How can we measure progress without stigmatizing kids, or increasing the reporting burden?