Kindergarten Reading Help

Summarize and evaluate passage using the appropriate criteria for evaluation – theory or argument?
1. In the late 1990s, the U.S. Department of Education undertook a monumental project called the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study. The ECLS sought to measure the academic progress of more than twenty thousand children from kindergarten through the fifth grade. The subjects were chosen from across the country to represent an accurate cross section of American schoolchildren.
The ECLS measured the students’ academic performance and
gathered typical survey information about each child: his race,
gender, family structure, socioeconomic status, the level of his
parents’ education, and so on. But the study went well beyond
these basics. It also included interviews with the students’ parents
(and teachers and school administrators), posing a long list of
questions … : whether the parents spanked their children, and how
often; whether they took them to libraries or museums; how much
television the children watched …
So what does all this [datal. have to say about the importance of
parents [to children's success in school]? Consider … the eight
factors that are correlated with school test scores [i.e., test scores vary
with these factors l:
• The child has highly educated parents.
• The child's parents have high socioeconomic status.
• The child's mother was thirty or older at the time of her first
child's birth.
The child had low birth eight.
The child's parents speak English in the home.
The child is adopted.
The child's parents are involved in the PTA [Parent Teacher
Association].
The child has many books in his home.
And the eight factors that are not [i.e., the factors bear no relation to
test scores]:
• The child’s family is intact.
• The child’s parents recently moved into a better neighborhood.
• The child’s mother didn’t work between birth and kindergarten.
• The child attended Head Start.
• The child’s parents regularly take him to museums.
• The child is regularly spanked.
• The child frequently watches television.
• The child’s parents read to him nearly every day.
To overgeneralize a bit, the first list describes things that parents are;
the second list describes things that parents do. Parents who are well
educated, successful, and healthy tend to have children who test well
in school; but it doesn’t seem to much matter whether a child is
trotted off to museums or spanked or sent to Head Start or frequently
read to or plopped in front of the television.
For parents-and parenting experts-who are obsessed with
child-rearing technique, this may be soberi9g news. The reality is that
technique looks to be highly overrated. ,/
But this is not to say that parents don’t matter. Plainly they matter a
great deal. Here is the conundrum~by the time most people pick up a
parenting book, it is fartoo late. Most of the things that matter were
decided long ago-who you are, whom you married, what kind of life
you lead. If you are smart, hardworking, well educated, well paid, and
married to someone equally fortunate, then your children are more
likely to succeed. (Nor does it hurt, in all likelihood, to be honest,
thoughtful, loving, and curious about the world.) But it isn’t so much a
matter of what you do as a parent; it’s who you are. In this respect, an
\
overbearing parent is a lot like a political candidate who believes th:Ja
money wins elections, whereas in truth, all the money in the world
can’t get a candidate elected if the voters don’t like him to start with.

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