Standardized test scores continue to the ultimate measure of school success. With $14 billion in annual federal funds directed towards low SES or Title I schools, the stakes are high. Policy-makers are dangling grants, takeover, closure, and everything in between for schools, all based on test scores. For non-Title I schools, a different story is being plays out. Student demographics - the greatest predictor of academic achievement - plays in their favor. Judged by the test scores from all socioeconomic areas, non-Title I high schools appear to be consistently successful. On the surface, there appears to be no impetus to improve student learning. Yet, disaggregation of achievement data found minimal improvement in academic achievement during the last 12 years in non-Title I high schools. Furthermore, the relationship between student demographics and academic achievement leaves no quick fixes for non-Title I high schools. This study was designed to examine the nature of potential relationships between a set of academic variables - rigor, connectedness, and climate - and academic achievement in non-Title I high schools. Data that represents these three academic variables were selected from an analysis of past literature. A factor analysis was utilized to establish valid and representative scores for academic rigor, school connectedness, and school climate. A regression analysis was then run between the independent variables and API score, while controlling for a set of student demographics, to determine what significant influence each variable had on student achievement. This study recommends seven resiliency skill development strategies for non-Title I high schools to improve academic achievement. Resiliency theory has been well-documented in schools and students that overcame social and economic challenges. This study suggests that even in high schools with fewer economic and demographic challenges, resiliency and connectedness was still important, and might be one of the few factors educators in these schools can influence to improve student achievement.

On average, children who grow up in less highly resourced homes (lower- socioeconomic status, SES) have worse educational outcomes than their higher-SES peers. The prevailing theories to explain this in developmental psychology and developmental cognitive neuroscience focus on deficits: they point to presumed deficits of lower-SES caregivers and children. This dissertation recontextualizes the prevailing deficit narrative to highlight the role of the structure of society itself in creating and maintaining social inequity.

First, Chapter 1 points to how larger societal structures influence parenting. I find that caregivers are affected by their context in systematic ways, and on a day-to-day to timescale. Paper 1 suggests that the same caregivers talk less with their children at times when they are experiencing the most financial strain. Paper 2 suggests that caregivers’ day-to-day affect is affected by factors at the individual (e.g., worries, sleep), household (e.g., receipt of financial assistance), and national (e.g., COVID-19 cases and political protests) levels.

Next, Chapter 2 highlights the ways children’s brains adapt in contexts of inequity. I examine neural development among high-performing children in poverty—those who succeed academically even in the face of structural barriers to success. I find that the neural correlates of high cognitive performance are different for children in poverty than their peers above poverty, suggesting that “optimal” brain development is context- dependent. Paper 1 finds that while high-performing higher-SES children show a pattern of brain development considered to be more adaptive in the literature, high-performing children in poverty show the opposite pattern of brain development. Paper 2 extends this finding to show that this dissociation is still present for children’s grades in school and their attentional problems, is longitudinally predictive, and is not indicative of SES differences in the overall rate of brain development.

Finally, Chapter 3 brings together work on SES differences in parenting and brain development and suggests the school environment itself might undermine the performance of lower-SES children, independent of their competence. I review evidence linking children’s early language environments to their brain development and ultimately to their performance in school, and suggest three mechanisms through which this link may occur that are independent of children’s cognitive and linguistic competence. Importantly, these mechanisms highlight the biases of the educational systems and the adaptive nature of children’s development across contexts.

Taken together, these studies span multiple levels of analysis, highlight the role of the structure of society in creating and maintaining social inequity, and help to build out a broader, more balanced view of human development. Implications for our understanding of basic science (e.g., sensitive periods in brain development) and application (e.g., the structure of educational institutions) are discussed.