Should I Get My Child a DNA Test That Predicts School Performance?

In 2022, a research team published a DNA study of schooling built from about three million people. In their own plain-language FAQ, they were asked if the score accurately predicts one person’s education. They answered “No” in one word.

If you are weighing a test like this for your child, that pull makes sense, because wanting a look at the road ahead is love. And the people who spend the most hours watching your child learn are not the ones running the lab.

What a DNA school score is built to do

A DNA test that promises to forecast school performance rests on something called a polygenic score. It is one number built from many small DNA differences. The score for school was built to match one thing: how many years of schooling adults finished. It was never built on a child’s grades, reading or math. So a kit that forecasts school performance reaches further than the research did. The study team, Okbay and colleagues (2022, Nature Genetics), is plain about the limits. Their score “fails to predict the vast majority” of the differences between people, they write. It was built almost entirely from people of European ancestry, and it works far less well for people with African ancestry. It also describes patterns across big groups, not one child. “Many of those with low polygenic indexes go on to achieve high levels of education,” the authors note. And a large share of those with high scores do not finish college. In 2020, a UK team led by Morris, Davies and Davey Smith tested DNA scores against children’s school exams. The scores did a worse job than the children’s own earlier test results. Morris called it “perhaps irresolvably difficult” to predict how one pupil will do from their DNA. So if the real worry is how school is going, look at the skills in front of you. Our free learning difficulties analysis asks what you see at home across reading, writing, math and attention. It is a starting point, not a diagnosis. Does your child need formal supports like an IEP or 504 plan? Or do you suspect a vision, hearing or medical cause? Then a professional evaluation is the route to those.

The myth: a child’s school future is written at birth

Behind these kits sits a familiar idea. You are born with what you have got, and school only reveals it. The same FAQ takes that idea on directly. Asked if a person’s education is “determined, or fixed, at conception,” the authors reply “No and no” to both parts. “Social and other environmental factors account for most variation among people,” they add. They also use eyeglasses as a comparison. Better tools in education, they write, might help children with lower scores reach as much education, on average. Then comes the line every parent deserves to hear. Asked if people in education should use these results to make decisions, they answer “No” again. Doing so would be “extremely premature and unsupported by the science,” they write. Genes are one influence among several, and a score is not a sentence. There is a quieter reason to keep the number out of the house, too. Jussim and Harber (2005) reviewed the research on teacher expectations. They found the effects are real but modest, and that they work through how adults treat a child. Our view is simple: a number from a lab has no place in that loop.

What to do this week

Three small moves. One: skip the kit. If a result is already in your inbox, leave it there. Do not share it with your child or the school. It is not a diagnosis, and it is not a ceiling. Two: write down what you see now. Pick three moments this week from reading, writing or math homework. Note what went well, where your child got stuck, and what helped. Three: send the teacher one question. “What is my child doing well right now, and what is the next skill to build?” That answer gives you something to work on before the weekend. Now the part that matters most. You value a child who gets to find out what they are capable of, without a number deciding first. The villain is any system that hands a child a score and calls it a future. Nobody will advocate for your child as hard as you will, and that starts with what you see at your own table. When reading is hard, we look at more than reading. The sounds, the page, holding words in mind. Our assessment asks about all of them. When you want a plan built on today instead of on DNA, start with the All Access assessment and a roadmap built for your child.