Born to Win, Schooled to Lose: Why Equally Talented Students Don’t Get Equal Chances to Be All They Can Be
1. By: Anthony P. Carnevale, Megan L. Fasules,
Michael C. Quinn, & Kathryn Peltier Campbell
MAY 15, 2019
2. In America, it’s often better
to be rich than smart
• The most talented young people are sorted into haves
and have-nots long before college.
• An affluent kindergartner with bottom-half test scores
still has a 7 in 10 chance of reaching high
socioeconomic status (SES) as a young adult.
• Meanwhile, a disadvantaged kindergartener with top-
half test scores only has a 3 in 10 chance.
• Additional disparities are apparent by race and
ethnicity: Black and Latino tenth graders with top-half
math scores are less likely to earn a college degree
than their White and Asian peers.
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3. Advantaged children benefit from
their parents’ habits and education
• The highest-SES families spend almost five times as much on
enrichment activities as the lowest-SES families.
• Almost all children from the highest-SES families have at least one
parent with some postsecondary education, compared to less than
one third of children from the lowest-SES families.
3 Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce
4. By the first year of school, academic
gaps are already large by SES
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• The skills children begin developing at birth lay the groundwork for
the math skills they are expected to possess in kindergarten.
• Kindergartners from high-SES families are more likely than their low-
SES peers to score in the top half on math assessments.
5. • Advantaged students have resources that help keep them on track in school,
while their peers who don’t are more likely to fall behind and stay behind.
• Kindergartners in higher SES quartiles with bottom-half math scores are much
more likely to move into the top half of all students by eighth grade.
• By contrast, low-SES students who start off with top-half math scores are less
likely to maintain those high scores throughout K-12.
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Affluence affords a complex safety net
Source: Georgetown University Center
on Education and the Workforce analysis
of Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-
Kindergarten (public use data), 2006.
Note: Columns may not add to 100
percent due to rounding.
6. • Black kindergartners with
bottom-half math scores
are much less likely than
their White, Asian, and
Latino peers to have top-
half math scores by
eighth grade.
• These racial and ethnic
gaps in test scores
continue and are
cemented as students
move through high school.
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Relative affluence has a more protective
effect for White than for Black students
7. Achievement patterns are largely set
in high school
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• Most tenth-graders who score in the bottom math quartile maintain their low
grades through twelfth grade.
• Improving scores in high school is uncommon, but highest-SES students are
twice as likely as lowest-SES students to move into a higher math quartile.
Source: Georgetown University Center on
Education and the Workforce analysis of
the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002
(public use data), 2012.
8. • Lowest-SES tenth graders with top math scores are less likely to immediately
enroll in a college than highest-SES tenth graders with bottom math scores.
• Lowest-SES tenth graders are less likely than highest-SES students to
complete college 10 years later—regardless of their high school math scores.
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Highest-SES students are more likely
to attend and complete college
9. • White and Asian tenth
graders are more likely
than Black and Latino
tenth graders to earn a
college degree in 10
years, no matter their
high school math scores.
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Chances of completing college also
vary by race and ethnicity
10. • With policy changes,
education can be the
great equalizer.
• Students with similar
scores across class and
race and ethnicity would
have similar outcomes if
education were the lever
we need it to be.
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Policy Recommendations