I have always seen socioeconomic status as the best predictor of a student's success in education. You do have a point about differing cultural approaches, but after a generation or two, it seems like culture and socioeconomic status would correlate. Success in education improves socioeconomic status, which further improves success in education for the next generation, even if cultural norms drove the parents' success.
I haven't seen any compelling evidence for genetic effects; "race" is much more of a social construction than a genetic one. There are some genetic markers and traits that vary more between races than individuals, but overall genetic variation within a specific population is much greater than the variation between races.
You do have a point about differing cultural approaches, but after a generation or two, it seems like culture and socioeconomic status would correlate.
Right, but they would need to be identical, not just correlate, for a model that only includes one to be as good as a model that includes both.
I want to learn what's well-understood about education. I expect to launch myself into some endeavors in teaching the first few levels of epistemic and instrumental rationality - ie., critical thinking and problem solving. I'm a little suspicious, though, of the scattered educational texts that I've so far read. In particular, education seems like a field where it's easy to have motivated thoughts, and hard to gather good data.
With my background (Math and CS) I'm a little at sea in educational literature. Does anyone know of good, reductionist-grade or evidential-grade, introductory texts in education?