The Role of Social and Behavioral Skills in Mediating Achievement Gaps in Elementary School.

Social and behavioral skills are important predictors of a variety of adult outcomes, including income, educational attainment, and risky behaviors (Heckman, Stixrud, and Urzua 2006). Social and behavioral skills have also been found to predict the development of cognitive skills as students with greater ability to focus, stay organized, control their anger, and work well with others actually learn more in school (Jennings and DiPrete 2010). In this study we use data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study kindergarten and birth cohorts to examine race/ethnic and socioeconomic gaps in social and behavioral skills as students enter and progress through elementary school, the mechanisms that explain these gaps, and the extent to which gaps in these skills mediate achievement gaps. We find that there are significant differences in social and behavioral skills at school entry by student race/ethnicity and income-level. The majority of the race/ethnic differences at school entry are accounted for by socioeconomic background. Social and behavioral skills are consistently related to achievement in math and reading and explain 10 to 30 percent of the black-white gap and the gap between high and low income students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]