IQ VOCABULARY GAP IN PLACE BY AGE 3 <a
href="../99/14/preiq.txt">preiq.txt</a> From: "Gregory M. Cochran"
<74771.3230@compuserve.com> * U. CAL BERK-145.10) Christopher Jencks
& Meredith Phillips, THE AMERICAN PROSPECT, September -October 1998,
pp. 44-53, Online, INFOTRAC, When three- and four-year-olds take
vocabulary tests, for example, the typical black child's vocabulary
score falls below the twentieth percentile of the national
distribution. The black-white gap in IQ is in place by age three or
four*.  


         The black-white gap in IQ is in place by age three or four*.  This
has interesting implications.  It shows that  differences in schooling are
not the cause of the gap, and that all the talk about poor  inner city
schools is off target.  The idea that lower black academic achievement
derives from an ethos that  looks upon academic success as a 'white' thing
surely cannot  explain smaller vocabularies and lower IQ scores  in three
year. olds.  Or are we going to hear a story about  some three-year old's
posse dissing white talk? We know that adolescent children of high-income
blacks (> $70,000) have lower SAT scores than the  children of low-income
whites (<$10,000).  I do not know whether the smaller vocabularies and
lower  IQ scores at age three shows up in prosperous black families, but I
expect that it does -  that it is all part of the same phenomenon. I would
like to see more  studies designed to exclude various hypotheses.
Concentrating on first few years  ought to be the way to go, because we
know that the phenomenon must originate before then.. On the other hand,
the fact that it does start so early  has to make intervention much more
difficult. 


          It would be interesting to see the average verbal performance and
IQ scores of hearing children raised by deaf white parents.   Most
congenital deafness (today) is caused by a large number of different
recessive genetic defects, and when deaf people marry other deaf people, as
often happens, 90% of their kids can hear, since their parents usually
carry _different_ recessive genetic defects.  Somehow those kids all  learn
to talk anyhow, even though their deaf parents usually speak poorly or not
at all.  I think it would be interesting to see how those hearing children
of deaf parents do: in particular, what their vocabulary score is. 




              Gregory Cochran 










   * U. CAL BERK-145.10) Christopher Jencks & Meredith Phillips, THE
AMERICAN PROSPECT, September
-October 1998, pp. 44-53, Online, INFOTRAC, Expanded Academic ASAP. 
Even if resources were not a constraint, the cognitive disparities between
black and white 
preschool children are currently so large that it is hard to imagine how
schools alone
could completely eliminate them. When three- and four-year-olds take
vocabulary tests,
for example, the typical black child's vocabulary score falls below the
twentieth 
percentile of the national distribution. Relying entirely on educational
reform to move 
such a child up to the fiftieth percentile does not strike us as realistic.
If we want
equal outcomes among twelfth graders, we will also have to narrow the skill
gap between 
black and white children before they enter school.
 


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