[2] In their study of 42 Midwestern families, Hart and Risley physically recorded an hour's worth of language in each home once a month over 2½ years.
[3] Prior to the 30-million-word-gap study, extensive research had noted strong institutional variation in student success on standardized tests.
The publication begins the onset of achievement gap by acknowledging that there is a great disparity within educational outcomes as a result of inequitable institutions, especially those that were not seen as part of the purview of schools such as cultural, socioeconomic, and linguistic realities of students at home.
The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) had further been used to census information that various studies used to show achievement gaps across a number of demographics.
Hart and Risley (2003) spent 2½ years observing 42 families for an hour each month to learn what typical home life was like for 1- and 2-year-old children.
Hart and Risley argue this is an indispensable societal concern because it sets the child at a disadvantage for not being exposed to more vocabulary skills at a young age.
The authors express the importance of vocabulary knowledge because it sets a foundation for later literacy and language proficiency in preschool and that is predictive of academic success.
[5] Garcia and Otheguy (2016) were interested in the origins and validity of the Language Gap, and how the preconceptions of it impact bilingual and bidialectical children, specifically from Latino and Black backgrounds.
[7] They continue to give historical context on the Achievement Gap in that it was a result of the No Child Left Behind Act (2001), despite its good intentions, it compared every race and background on a standardized test written in a White monolingual way.
[6] Given the educational system functions on the dominant groups of society (i.e. white, Standardized English, middle-upper class), it ignores the linguistic and cultural practices of minorities.
He drew from a previous linguistic anthropologist Hymes (1972) term of "communicative competence" in that social expectations within a speech community shape the member's use of language.
Other critics theorize that the language and achievement gaps are not a result of the amount of words a child is exposed to, but rather alternative theories suggest it could derive from the disconnect of linguistic practices between home and school.
The first possible implication is that this Language Gap is affecting youth's success because they are not exposed to the same amount of vocabulary and literary skill as other kids from middle-upper classes.
[2] Hart and Risely suggest that possible solutions include interventions on how to improve vocabulary and literary skills for low SES caregivers.
In stating other backgrounds cannot be as successful as the dominant groups in society, It reinstates the homogeneity of language by proposing one "true" way of speaking.
[6] Garcia and Otheguy (2016) implies the Language and Achievement Gap derive from racist ideals that reinforce the idea that some cultures are seen as "disadvantaged".
Thus, to not consider the responsibility of the schooling system is to promote the homogeneity of Standardized English and this notion that anyone who does not speak or understand it is inferior and prone to future failure.
[5] In addition, Georgia has a policy "Talk with Me Baby" that is a public action strategy aimed at increasing the number of words children are exposed to in early childhood.
[14] The University of Chicago, School of Medicine's Thirty Million Words Initiative provides intervention for caregivers and teaches to show them how to optimize their talk with their kids.
The Discourse can also be seen as a turning away from traditional explanations of performance in school as individualistic, to the creation of cultural framework understanding to help explain what conventions hinder and produce successful students.
Under performing, adequate yearly progress (AYP), highly qualified, below basic, and proficient are some terms used to mark good and bad aspects of schools, their teachers, and their students which in turn reifies the Achievement Gap theory.
Among these studies, Hart and Risley stumbled upon the idea of word gap when working with youth who used cochlear implants, to form their idea: they hypothesized exposure to the spoken word might explain an achievement gap in standardized test scores, then used standardized testing data on language as well as an in depth study to conclude their 30-million-word-gap publication.
A great number of states have paid attention to Achievement Gap across hundreds of criteria including demographics, access to language and economic resources and race around the world: notably in the United Kingdom, France, South Africa as named in one comparative analysis.
[20] Europe also has its own varied standards on the ideas of multilingual competence per state, which stress the apprehension and exposure to secondary language vocabulary in students of all ages.