One of the most controversial small points in Freakonomics was the claim that early childhood test scores are not correlated to the amount a child is read to at home.
If you read Carl Bialik‘s “Numbers Guy” column in today’s Wall Street Journal, you’ll learn why so many people have thought otherwise. Here’s an excerpt:
Children from low-income households average just 25 hours of shared reading time with their parents before starting school, compared with 1,000 to 1,700 hours for their counterparts from middle-income homes.
These oft-repeated numbers originate in a 1990 book by Marilyn Jager Adams titled, “Beginning to Read: Thinking And Learning About Print.” Ms. Adams got the 25-hours estimate from a study of 24 children in 22 low-income families. For the middle-income figures, she extrapolated from the experience of a single child: her then-4-year-old son, John …
These numbers have since been applied to all middle-income children. That’s akin to predicting that all young children from middle-income families will graduate college with a degree in psychology and statistics, as John, now 23, has done.
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Poor John. As a statistician he must be awfully ashamed of his mother. But wait, he’s got a degree in psychology too, so maybe not.
Poor John. As a statistician he must be awfully ashamed of his mother. But wait, he’s got a degree in psychology too, so maybe not.
Growing up, my parents had an expression: “The t-value for a sample size of 1 is infinite” which I didn’t understand precisely at the time but I knew enough as a 7-year old or so to know that it meant that you can’t tell anything from one data point.
Growing up, my parents had an expression: “The t-value for a sample size of 1 is infinite” which I didn’t understand precisely at the time but I knew enough as a 7-year old or so to know that it meant that you can’t tell anything from one data point.
I am curious as to how you view the medical research surrounding the Reach Out and Read program. The program involves pediatricians distributing books to low-income families and pediatricians encuraging at-home reading during routine visits. It is pretty extensive and over 4.6 million books per year are distribute by pediatricians.
Obviously the program involves more than having more books at home, but the research seems persuasive. A 2001 study found higher expressive and receptive language skills for children in a Reach Out and Read clinic vs. a non-ROR clinic. That study and more research on ROR can be found here:
http://www.reachoutandread.org/about_summary.html
I am curious as to how you view the medical research surrounding the Reach Out and Read program. The program involves pediatricians distributing books to low-income families and pediatricians encuraging at-home reading during routine visits. It is pretty extensive and over 4.6 million books per year are distribute by pediatricians.
Obviously the program involves more than having more books at home, but the research seems persuasive. A 2001 study found higher expressive and receptive language skills for children in a Reach Out and Read clinic vs. a non-ROR clinic. That study and more research on ROR can be found here:
http://www.reachoutandread.org/about_summary.html
The idea that children who are read to generally outperform those children who are not fails to resonate with me. I am the youngest of 5 children born to Pakistani immigrants. They moved to this country about 30 years ago and essentially labored their way to achieve the American dream. That said, they didn’t have much time- if any at all- to read to us. In fact, I cannot remember one time that my parents read to us. Also, it’s important to note that they themselves could not read the English language at the time so it was impossible for them to do so.
Although we were never read to, we all turned out fine. We turned out the same, if not better than our peers who were read to as children. I firmly believe that a parent’s support and motivation and in turn the child’s own determination to succeed has more to do than whether or not a child was read to.
The idea that children who are read to generally outperform those children who are not fails to resonate with me. I am the youngest of 5 children born to Pakistani immigrants. They moved to this country about 30 years ago and essentially labored their way to achieve the American dream. That said, they didn’t have much time- if any at all- to read to us. In fact, I cannot remember one time that my parents read to us. Also, it’s important to note that they themselves could not read the English language at the time so it was impossible for them to do so.
Although we were never read to, we all turned out fine. We turned out the same, if not better than our peers who were read to as children. I firmly believe that a parent’s support and motivation and in turn the child’s own determination to succeed has more to do than whether or not a child was read to.