The new report by the Institute for Family Studies (IFS) and the American Enterprise Institute, based on data collected from grade school students by the National Survey of Children's Health, focused on how kids performed in school and what they said about their home life. The report found that "family structure is a more powerful predictor of school problems, academic performance, and depression than are race and poverty."

The Department of Education's Nation's Report Card sorts results by race, sex or income, but it ignores family structures even though it has been collecting data on that factor since 2013, researchers said.

By contrast, the report looked at "whether or not kids are being raised by their own mother and father," IFS Senior Fellow Brad Wilcox said, and they found that family structure was often a more important factor in children's well-being.

"It's pretty clear that the character of the family you grew up in is more important than the color of your skin," Wilcox told The Epoch Times.

The study reported that 74 percent of children from "intact, married-parent families" achieved top grades (As and Bs), compared with 60 percent of children from "other family structures." In addition, the IFS stated that children who were not raised by both biological parents were 47 percent more likely to have disciplinary problems at school and more than twice as likely to be depressed.

"Raising children in a stable married family is incredibly helpful to kids," Wilcox said.

Graduating Without Basic Skills

The IFS's findings come at a time when data increasingly indicates that many American children are struggling in school, and looking at grades may not even show the full picture. Reports and anecdotes suggest that even among students who receive passing grades, many are not learning basic skills.

The National Literacy Institute reports that 64 percent of America's fourth graders do not read proficiently, and more than half of American adults now read below a sixth-grade level. And statewide reports are indicating that grade school children are being passed on to the next grade, or graduating, regardless of whether or not they have basic reading and math skills.

In 2023, Baltimore City schools announced that they would "avoid the punitive approach of failing students," citing effects of school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic. This followed a 2021 report by the state of Maryland, which said that across the state, "approximately half of the students who graduated high school and enrolled in a Maryland college or university in 2013 were assessed to need remediation in math, English, and/or reading."

Studies in Texas, Alabama, and Missouri over the past two decades showed similar findings.

A 2025 report from the University of California-San Diego stated that the math skills of one-in-12 incoming students were below a middle school level. More recently, University of California-Berkeley mathematics professor Zvezdelina Stankova said in an op-ed for the San Francisco Standard that she had to pause her calculus course in order to teach her students middle-school level algebra and fractions.

In many cases, the response from schools has been to accommodate a lack of basic skills by loosening assessment tests, or getting rid of them altogether. Currently, more than 2,000 colleges and universities, including some Ivy League and state universities, do not require standardized tests like the SAT and the ACT as a criterion for admission.