The development of racial/ethnic and socioeconomic achievement gaps during the school years

2018 ◽  
Vol 57 ◽  
pp. 62-73 ◽  
Author(s):  
Megan Kuhfeld ◽  
Elizabeth Gershoff ◽  
Katherine Paschall
Keyword(s):  
Achievement Gaps ◽  
Socioeconomic Achievement ◽  
Racial Ethnic

When Does Inequality Grow? A Seasonal Analysis of Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Learning From Kindergarten Through Eighth Grade

2020 ◽  
pp. 0013189X2097785
Author(s):  
Megan Kuhfeld ◽  
Dennis J. Condron ◽  
Doug B. Downey
Keyword(s):  
White Students ◽  
Ethnic Disparities ◽  
Achievement Gaps ◽  
Asian Students ◽  
Eighth Grade ◽  
Older Students ◽  
Eighth Grade Students ◽  
Seasonal Analysis ◽  
Racial Ethnic ◽  
Important Evidence

What role does schooling play in the development of racial/ethnic inequalities in academic skills? Seasonal learning studies, which allow researchers to compare the growth of achievement gaps when school is in versus out of session, provide important evidence regarding whether schools reduce, reproduce, or exacerbate educational inequalities. Most studies that have compared the growth of achievement gaps when school is in versus out of session have been restricted to the early grades. In this study, we examine seasonal patterns of racial/ethnic achievement gaps using test scores from over 2.5 million kindergarten to eighth-grade students. Following three different cohorts of students from 2015 to 2018, we find that Black-White achievement gaps widen during school periods and shrink during summers, whereas Asian students generally pull ahead of White students at a faster rate during summers. At the same time, we find that disparities observed among older students are largely in place among kindergartners. Our results imply that although schooling does have disparate impacts on the learning trajectories of students, schools play less of a role in widening racial/ethnic achievement gaps than children’s prekindergarten environments.

scholarly journals The Global Increase in the Socioeconomic Achievement Gap, 1964 to 2015

2019 ◽  
Vol 84 (3) ◽  
pp. 517-544 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna K. Chmielewski
Keyword(s):  
Achievement Gap ◽  
Low Socioeconomic Status ◽  
Cognitive Skills ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Educational Inequality ◽  
Achievement Gaps ◽  
Low Socioeconomic ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Socioeconomic Achievement ◽  
Global Increase

The “socioeconomic achievement gap”—the disparity in academic achievement between students from high- and low-socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds—is well-known in the sociology of education. The SES achievement gap has been documented across a wide range of countries. Yet in most countries, we do not know whether the SES achievement gap has been changing over time. This study combines 30 international large-scale assessments over 50 years, representing 100 countries and about 5.8 million students. SES achievement gaps are computed between the 90th and 10th percentiles of three available measures of family SES: parents’ education, parents’ occupation, and the number of books in the home. Results indicate that, for each of the three SES variables examined, achievement gaps increased in a majority of sample countries. Yet there is substantial cross-national variation in the size of increases in SES achievement gaps. The largest increases are observed in countries with rapidly increasing school enrollments, implying that expanding access reveals educational inequality that was previously hidden outside the school system. However, gaps also increased in many countries with consistently high enrollments, suggesting that cognitive skills are an increasingly important dimension of educational stratification worldwide.

scholarly journals Understanding the linkages between racial/ethnic discipline gaps and racial/ethnic achievement gaps in the United States

2019 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
pp. 154
Author(s):  
Maithreyi Gopalan
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Positive Association ◽  
The United States ◽  
Achievement Gaps ◽  
Significant Positive Association ◽  
Education Data ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Racial Achievement ◽  
Racial Ethnic

This study estimates racial/ethnic discipline gaps, using multiple measures of school discipline outcomes, in nearly all school districts in the United States with data collected by the Office of Civil Rights between 2013 and 2014. Just like racial/ethnic achievement gaps, discipline gaps also vary substantially, ranging from negative to greater than two standard deviations, across districts. However, unlike the correlates of racial achievement gaps, the extensive set of district-level characteristics available in the Stanford Education Data Archive (SEDA) including economic, demographic, segregation, and school characteristics, explain roughly just one-fifth of the geographic variation in Black-white discipline gaps and one-third of the variation in Hispanic-white discipline gaps. This study also finds a modest, statistically significant, positive association between discipline gaps and achievement gaps, even after extensive covariate adjustment. The results of this analysis provide an important step forward in determining the relationship between two forms of persistent inequality that have long plagued the U.S. education system. 

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