Speech - unlike books or housing or health care - is free.

Not only was it big, it seemed actionable. Something about that figure, 30 million words, held people's attention. 'It's had enormous policy implications,' says Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, a developmental psychologist at Temple University and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. There is a national research network of over 150 scholars aligned with Hart and Risley and focusing on young children's home environment.Īnd the impact of this work spread far beyond the ivory tower. The book remains one of its publisher's bestsellers more than 20 years later. These findings have been cited more than 8,000 times, according to Google Scholar. Hart and Risley's study wasn't published until 1992, while their book, Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American Children, came out in 1995.įrom there, it really caught fire. Transcribing and checking each moment, with their elaborate system of coding, took 16 hours for every hour of tape, Dale Walker explains. The study has been cited over 8,000 times.Īfter 1,200 hours of recordings were collected, the real work began. The original study had just 42 families.ĭuring the War on Poverty in the 1960s, Betty Hart, a former preschool teacher, entered graduate school in child psychology at the University of Kansas, working with Todd Risley as her adviser.Ģ.

With all that in mind, here are six things to know about the 30 million word gap.ġ. All of them say they share the goal of helping poor kids achieve their highest potential in school.īut on the issue of how to define either the problem, or the solution, there are, well, very big gaps. NPR talked to eight researchers to explore this controversy. Since 1992, this finding has, with unusual power, shaped the way educators, parents and policymakers think about educating poor children.īut did you know that the number comes from just one study, begun almost 40 years ago, with just 42 families? That some people argue it contained a built-in racial bias? Or that others, including the authors of a new study that calls itself a 'failed replication,' say it's just wrong? The findings discussed in Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American Children have been cited more than 8,000 times, according to Google Scholar.ĭid you know that kids growing up in poverty hear 30 million fewer words by age 3? Chances are, if you're the type of person who reads a newspaper or listens to NPR, you've heard that statistic before.

Dana suskind 30 million words