By the time poor children are 3, researchers believe they have heard on average about 30 million fewerwords than children the same age from better-off families, setting back their vocabulary, cognitive development, and future reading skills before the first day of school. This disadvantage is "already almost irreversible," says Kenneth Wong, a professor of education policy at Brown University.
In Providence, many of these children fill up the public-school system: 87 percent of students district-wide here are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch. Come January, the city plans to launch an unconventional intervention with a few dozen low-income children—then hundreds more—in a bid to alter their life prospects by changing how their parents talk to them.
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/jobs-and-economy/2013/12/one-citys-plan-change-how-poor-parents-talk-their-kids/7897/
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