This study updates the "Parsing the Achievement Gap" research that ETS reported on in 2003. The authors describe one of their key findings as follows:

            "The analysis provided here uses four family/home factors that previous research has shown to be linked to student achievement. To some degree, each is likely to be related to the others: single-parent families, parents reading to young children every day, hours spent watching television, and the frequency of school absences.  Together, these four factors account for about two-thirds of the large differences among states in National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) eighth-grade reading scores.”