More recent studies confirm this, and some have even found the original study “naïve, racist, classist and ineffective.” A 2017 Harvard Education Review study noted that following the widespread influence of the original study and based on cultural and racial stereotyping, many teachers have employed “less sophisticated instruction methods’ with these supposedly linguistically disadvantaged children,” a provocative conclusion that suggests the fault may lie less with the parents than with the school system.
A child from a wealthy family enjoys several education advantages over a child from a poor family. First of all, as is widely known, K-12 funding comes substantially from tax revenues within a particular school district — the average is more than a third, but in some districts about 60% of all funding comes from property taxes. This affects classroom size, teacher salaries, the quality of the physical plant, and available support for both the physical plant and the teachers themselves. In consequence, children in poorer districts not only learn in crowded and often substandard classrooms, their teachers are often there because they didn’t qualify to teach in a better school district. Dropout rates for these teachers are about 50% higher than in better funded schools.
