An influential 1995 study concluded that by age 4 the children of highly educated professional parents typically had heard 32 million more words than poorer children. This difference, encapsulated in the catchy phrase “the word gap,” supposedly accounts for an insurmountable difference in scholastic achievement. Educators and teacher organizations, including the American Federation of Teachers, have promoted this conclusion, which explains that the underperformance of poor children (for which read predominantly “black and brown”) was assured long before they went to school. If these children didn’t do well, that was on their family and their culture, not on the school system.
