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Inequality And Extracurricular Activities
Think about this all for a second:
- More extracurricular activities = more positive outcomes for children, generally speaking.
- From activities like “Debate” or “Varsity Baseball,” (not sure why I put either of those in quotes) they learn teamwork, overcoming adversity, etc. We all know this narrative. Star athletes and academics talk about it all the time; it’s probably one of the only times they appear to be speaking the same language.
- More extracurricular activities can be linked to higher graduation rates even after you control for socioeconomic status and other factors.
- Here’s a new study on extracurricular activity as broken down by socioeconomic level; here’s a summary of that study.
- What did we learn?
What the researchers found is, as they note in the article, “alarming.” Income-based differences in extracurricular participation are on the rise, and these differences greatly affect later outcomes. This disparity exacerbates the already-growing income achievement gap that has kept…
