Academic Achievement and the Lives of Children: Social Determinants of Educational Inequalities Executive Summaries Table of Contents Noncognitive Skills and the Socioeconomic Achievement Gap

In the 1960s, early childhood education programs aimed to boost cognitive ability of economically disadvantaged children in an effort to close achievement gaps prior to school entry. However, researchers have since gained a greater appreciation for the importance of noncognitive skills in accounting for disparities in academic achievement, educational attainment and economic success. Noncognitive skills encompass a wide range of attributes and are broadly and inconsistently defined. Often, the term refers to any skills aside from cognitive ability, which is typically equated with IQ. Attributes that fall into the realm of noncognitive skills include personality traits, such as extraversion, conscientiousness, and neuroticism, and other characteristics including self-concept, locus of control, and self-esteem. In children, the definition of noncognitive skills tends to also include more explicitly behavioral traits, such as the ability to sit still and pay attention. Although socioeconomic disparities in noncognitive skills appear early in life and do not typically close, studies show that these skills are malleable through adolescence. Interventions aimed at enhancing the noncognitive skills of disadvantaged children at a young age provide a promising way to close the socioeconomic achievement gap. Noncognitive skills and the socioeconomic achievement gap Socioeconomic disparities in both cognitive and noncognitive skills surface as early as 4 to 6 years of age and typically persist from there on out. The greatest disparity is seen in math skills, where first graders in the lowest quintile of socioeconomic status (SES) score 1.3 standard deviations below their peers in the top quintile. As for noncognitive skills, teachers rate low-SES children two-thirds of a standard deviation lower than their high-SES peers on attention and engagement. They also rate low-SES children one-fourth of a standard deviation higher than high-SES children on measures of antisocial behavior. These gaps do not tend to close once they have appeared, but early childhood interventions have successfully decreased the size of these disparities before they are established. Because noncognitive skills contribute substantially to both achievement test scores and grades beyond the effects of cognitive skills, equalizing noncognitive skills across socioeconomic groups will, in turn, decrease the achievement gap. Successful interventions Historically, interventions that worked to improve skills early in life focused explicitly on improving cognitive ability. Although enhancing noncognitive ability was not a goal, the greatest effects of these programs were actually their improvement of noncognitive skills. The Perry Preschool Project, implemented in the 1960s, is a prominent early childhood intervention, which …