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Identifying Progress Toward Ethnoracial Achievement Equity Across U.S. School Districts: A New Approach
Abstract
We draw on novel district-level test score data to describe novel approaches for measuring ethnoracial achievement gaps and assessing trends toward achievement equity from 2009 to 2016. Using SEDA data, we estimate gap trends for each grade over time in each district. We measure trends in both within-district gaps—comparing Black or Hispanic to White students in the same district—and national gaps—comparing a district’s Black or Hispanic students to White students nationally. Withindistrict ethnoracial gaps shrunk in one-third to two-thirds of districts, depending on subject and ethnoracial dyad. Across subjects and ethnoracial dyads, national gaps shrunk in more than half of districts, indicating that non-White students gained on White students nationally, but not in their own districts. Our findings add complexity to the achievement gap literature by (1) estimating gaps at the district level; (2) noting considerable variation in the magnitude of gap shrinkage across districts; (3) pointing to the importance of comparison group and imperfect correspondence of within-district and national gap trends in districts; and (4) identifying variation in gap trends across grades and subjects.
... These findings are consistent with the observation in the education literature that socioeconomic resources are key factors in educational achievement [32,42,43]. Although segregation across districts and communities continues [44][45][46], it also has become clear that economic and other resources of individual schools within a single school district can be just as unbalanced and segregated as across districts [47][48][49]. Without future research to learn more about the SEF students' socioeconomic situation, we cannot generalize the findings regarding SEF experience in relationship to school location. ...
The findings reported in this paper are based on surveys of U.S. high school students who registered and managed their science and engineering fair (SEF) projects through the online Scienteer website over the three years 2019/20, 2020/21, and 2021/22. Almost 2500 students completed surveys after finishing all their SEF competitions. We added a new question in 2019/20 to our on-going surveys asking the students whether their high school location was urban, suburban, or rural. We learned that overall, 74% of students participating in SEFs indicated that they were from suburban schools. Unexpectedly, very few SEF participants, less than 4%, indicated that they were from rural schools, even though national data show that more than 20% of high school students attend rural schools. Consistent with previous findings, Asian and Hispanic students indicated more successful SEF outcomes than Black and White students. However, whereas Asian students had the highest percentage of SEF participants from suburban vs. urban schools– 81% vs. 18%, Hispanic students had the most balanced representation of participants from suburban vs. urban schools– 55% vs. 39%. Differences in students’ SEF experiences based on gender and ethnicity showed the same patterns regardless of school location. In the few items where we observed statistically significant (probability < .05) differences based on school location, students from suburban schools were marginally favored by only a few percentage points compared to students from urban schools. In conclusion, based on our surveys results most students participating in SEFs come from suburban schools, but students participating in SEFs and coming from urban schools have equivalent SEF experiences, and very few students participating in SEFs come from rural schools.
... Finally, by explicating the case of Tennessee, this study identifies features of state policy contexts that may facilitate achievement growth while narrowing achievement disparities. Identifying places with these achievement patterns is an important area for future work (see Atteberry et al., 2021;Matheny et al., 2023). Although this analysis may offer lessons for education policy implementation broadly, it may be particularly meaningful in the present moment; over the last few years, decades of national achievement gains have come to a grinding halt (U.S. ...
This study complements literature on state policymaking by exploring one state’s achievement trends and policymaking during a period of remarkable achievement gains. I use mixed methods, drawing on hierarchical linear modeling and semi-structured interviews with policy actors, to explore the case of Tennessee in the post-recession period. Results indicate that Tennessee’s school districts improved faster than districts in other states during this period without doing so at the expense of historically disadvantaged student groups. I argue that Tennessee’s trends are a result of strong policies and a robust approach to the policymaking process.
In response to the COVID‐19 pandemic, most schools across the United States abruptly transitioned to remote, virtual learning in the spring of 2020. For the 2020–2021 school year, however, public school districts' instructional mode decisions (in‐person, hybrid, and remote) varied across districts and throughout the school year. This study focuses on factors that informed school districts' instructional mode decisions and how student access to in‐person instruction, in turn, distributed across districts and students (and their families). Levering the leading nationwide data set gathered by the COVID‐19 School Data Hub (“CSDH”), supplemented by district per‐pupil spending information as well as various state‐level data, this study analyzes the percentage of in‐person instruction for the 2020–2021 school year offered by 11,063 regular public school districts from 42 states. Core findings underscore that school districts with Republican governors and in rural areas provided comparably more in‐person schooling. Conversely, school districts with higher enrollments and higher percentages of underrepresented minority students provided less. Furthermore, COVID‐19‐related death rates and the likelihood of in‐person schooling were positively related. These findings, while mixed, nonetheless raise troubling equal educational opportunity doctrine questions.
We use data from the Stanford Education Data Archive to describe district-level trends in average academic achievement between 2009 and 2019. Although on average school districts’ test scores improved very modestly (by about 0.001 standard deviations per year), there is significant variation among districts. Moreover, we find that average test score disparities between nonpoor and poor students and between White and Black students are growing; those between White and Hispanic students are shrinking. We find no evidence of achievement-equity synergies or trade-offs: Improvements in overall achievement are uncorrelated with trends in achievement disparities. Finally, we find that the strongest predictors of achievement disparity trends are the levels and trends in within-district racial and socioeconomic segregation and changes in differential access to certified teachers.
I use standardized test scores from roughly forty-five million students to describe the temporal structure of educational opportunity in more than eleven thousand school districts in the United States. Variation among school districts is considerable in both average third-grade scores and test score growth rates. The two measures are uncorrelated, indicating that the characteristics of communities that provide high levels of early childhood educational opportunity are not the same as those that provide high opportunities for growth from third to eighth grade. This suggests that the role of schools in shaping educational opportunity varies across school districts. Variation among districts in the two temporal opportunity dimensions implies that strategies to improve educational opportunity may need to target different age groups in different places.
Do test score gaps between advantaged and disadvantaged children originate inside or outside schools? One approach to this classic question is to ask (1) How large are gaps when children enter school? (2) How much do gaps grow later on? (3) Do gaps grow faster during school or during summer? Confusingly, past research has given discrepant answers to these basic questions.
We show that many results about gap growth have been distorted by measurement artifacts. One artifact relates to scaling: Gaps appear to grow faster if measurement scales spread with age. Another artifact relates to changes in test form: Summer gap growth is hard to estimate if children take different tests in spring than in fall.
Net of artifacts, the most replicable finding is that gaps form mainly in early childhood, before schooling begins. After school begins, most gaps grow little, and some gaps shrink. Evidence is inconsistent regarding whether gaps grow faster during school or during summer. We substantiate these conclusions using new data from the Growth Research Database and two data sets used in previous studies of gap growth: the Beginning School Study and the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Cohort of 1998–1999.
The question of whether students’ school-year learning rates differ by race/ethnicity is important for monitoring educational inequality. Researchers applying different modeling strategies to the same data (the ECLS-K:99) have reached contrasting conclusions on this question. We outline the similarities and differences across three common approaches to estimating gains and heterogeneity in gains: 1) a gain score model (with intercept), 2) a first-difference (FD) model (in some cases equivalent to regression-through-the-origin [RTO] and student fixed effects models), and 3) a student random effects (RE) model. We show via simulation that FD/RTO and RE models produce estimates of learning rates – and group differences in learning rates – with more favorable RMSD compared to the gain score model with intercept. Using data from the ECLS-K:99, we demonstrate that these precision differences lead to contrasting inferences regarding learning rate heterogeneity, and likely explain the inconsistencies across previous studies.
This study focuses on an instance in which the mean grade-to-grade scale scores on a vertical scale showed evidence of common test items that do not get easier from one grade to the next. The issue was examined as part of a 2-day workshop in which participants were asked to predict the growth on all linking items used in the construction of vertical scales in math and reading. It was found that these predictions were only weakly correlated to the empirical changes overall. The participants seldom found legitimate rationales for excluding reversal items. Results indicate that a reversal will almost never be sufficient as a rationale for the exclusion of a linking item from the calibration of a vertical scale. Greater attention needs to be given to definition of the construct over which growth is to be interpreted and how this influences the selection of linking items.
The estimation of racial test score gap trends plays an important role in monitoring educational equality. Documenting gap trends is complex, however, and estimates can differ depending on the metric, modeling strategy, and psychometric assumptions. The sensitivity of summer learning gap estimates to these factors has been under-examined. Using national data, I find Black-White summer gap trends ranging from a significant relative disadvantage for Black students to a significant relative advantage. Preferred models show no overall gap change the summer after kindergarten, but Black students may make less summer math growth than White students with similar true spring scores. In estimating gap trends, researchers must recognize that different statistical models not only carry unique assumptions but also answer distinct descriptive questions.
It is often assumed that a vertical scale is necessary when value-added models depend upon the gain scores of students across two or more points in time. This article examines the conditions under which the scale transformations associated with the vertical scaling process would be expected to have a significant impact on normative interpretations using gain scores. It is shown that this will depend upon the extent to which adopting a particular vertical scaling approach leads to a large degree of scale shrinkage (decreases in score variability over time). Empirical data are used to compare school-level gain scores computed as a function of different vertical scales transformed to represent increasing, decreasing, and constant trends in score variability across grades. A pragmatic approach is also presented to assess the departure of a given vertical scale from a scale with ideal equal-interval properties. Finally, longitudinal data are used to illustrate a case when the availability of a vertical scale will be most important: when questions are being posed about the magnitudes of student-level growth trajectories.
For two decades the acting white hypothesis - the premise that black students are driven toward low school performance because of racialized peer pressure - has served as an explanation for the black-white achievement gap. Fordham and Ogbu proposed that black youths sabotage their own school careers by taking an oppositional stance toward academic achievement. Using interviews and existing data from eight North Carolina secondary public schools, this article shows that black adolescents are generally achievement oriented and that racialized peer pressure against high academic achievement is not prevalent in all schools. The analysis also shows important similarities in the experiences of black and white high-achieving students, indicating that dilemmas of high achievement are generalizable beyond a specific group. Typically, high-achieving students, regardless of race, are to some degree stigmatized as "nerds" or "geeks." The data suggest that school structures, rather than culture, may help explain when this stigma becomes racialized, producing a burden of acting white for black adolescents, and when it becomes class-based, producing a burden of "acting high and mighty" for low-income whites. Recognizing the similarities in these processes can help us refocus and refine understandings of the black-white achievement gap.
U.S. public schools are racially and economically segregated. Prior research shows that the desegregation of Southern schools beginning in the 1960s led to significant benefits for Black students. Less clear, however, is whether segregation today has the same harmful effects as it did 50 years ago and through what mechanisms segregation continues to affect achievement. We estimate the effects of current-day school segregation on racial achievement gaps using 11 years of data from all U.S. public school districts. We find that racial segregation is strongly associated with the magnitude of achievement gaps in 3rd grade and the rate at which gaps grow from 3rd to 8th grade. The association of racial segregation with achievement-gap growth is completely accounted for by racial differences in school poverty. Thus, racial segregation is harmful because it concentrates minority students in high-poverty schools, which are, on average, less effective than lower-poverty schools. Exploratory analyses show that segregation-related between-school differences in teacher characteristics are associated with unequal learning rates and account for roughly 20 percent of the effect of Black–White racial differences in exposure to poverty. Further research is needed to identify mechanisms linking school segregation to achievement-gap growth.
The authors estimate racial/ethnic achievement gaps in several hundred metropolitan areas and several thousand school districts in the United States using the results of roughly 200 million standardized math and English language arts (ELA) tests administered to public school students from 2009 to 2013. They show that achievement gaps vary substantially, ranging from nearly zero in some places to larger than 1.5 standard deviations in others. Economic, demographic, segregation, and schooling characteristics explain 43%–72% of the geographic variation in these gaps. The strongest correlates of achievement gaps are local racial/ethnic differences in parental income and educational attainment, local average parental education levels, and patterns of racial/ethnic segregation, consistent with a theoretical model in which family socioeconomic factors affect educational opportunity partly through residential and school segregation patterns.
Two questions of scholarly and public policy interest concerning the well-documented racial difference in scores on achievement tests are How much of the racial difference ("gap") can be attributed to social-class differences between blacks and whites? and How much has the racial gap changed over the past 30 years? To address these questions, the authors analyzed evidence from seven probability samples of national populations of adolescents from 1965 to 1996 and found that black-white differences in achievement are large and are decreasing slowly over time. About a third of the gap in test scores is accounted for by racial differences in social class, and although this gap appears to have narrowed since 1965, the rate at which it is narrowing seems to have decreased since 1972. The two groups are becoming more equal at the bottom of the test-score distribution, but at the top, blacks are hugely underrepresented and are approaching parity with whites slowly, if at all.
Are teachers' impacts on students' test scores (value-added) a good measure of their quality? This question has sparked debate partly because of a lack of evidence on whether high value-added (VA) teachers improve students' long-term outcomes. Using school district and tax records for more than one million children, we find that students assigned to high-VA teachers are more likely to attend college, earn higher salaries, and are less likely to have children as teenagers. Replacing a teacher whose VA is in the bottom 5 percent with an average teacher would increase the present value of students' lifetime income by approximately $250,000 per classroom.
A vertical score scale is needed to measure growth across multiple tests in terms of absolute changes in magnitude. Since the warrant for subsequent growth interpretations depends upon the assumption that the scale has interval properties, the validation of a vertical scale would seem to require methods for distinguishing interval scales from ordinal scales. In taking up this issue, two different perspectives on educational measurement are contrasted: a metaphorical perspective and a classical perspective. Although the metaphorical perspective is more predominant, at present it provides no objective methods whereby the properties of a vertical scale can be validated. In contrast, when taking a classical perspective, the axioms of additive conjoint measurement can be used to test the hypothesis that the latent variable underlying a vertical scale is quantitative (supporting ratio or interval properties) rather than merely qualitative (supporting ordinal or nominal properties). The application of such an approach is illustrated with both a hypothetical example and by drawing upon recent research that has been conducted on the Lexile scale for reading comprehension.
Integrated schools may still be substantively segregated if friendships fall within race. Drawing on contact theory, this study tests whether school organization affects friendship segregation in a national sample of adolescent friendship networks. The results show that friendship segregation peaks in moderately heterogeneous schools but declines at the highest heterogeneity levels. As suggested by contact theory, in schools where extracurricular activities are integrated, grades tightly bound friendship, and races mix within tracks, friendship segregation is less pronounced. The generally positive relation between heterogeneity and friendship segregation suggests that integration strategies built on concentrating minorities in large schools may accentuate friendship segregation.
This study uses data from the British National Child Development Survey (NCDS) to examine interactions between socio-economic status (SES), children's test scores, and future wages and employment. We find that children of lower SES have both lower age 16 test scores and higher returns to these test scores in terms of age 33 wages and employment probabilities than high-SES children. We then examine determinants of age 16 scores. Conditional on having had the same age 7 mathematics scores, high-SES children go on to achieve higher age 16 mathematics scores than children of low or middle-SES. They are also much more likely to pass O-levels in English and Mathematics. These differences are either eliminated or greatly reduced when observable measures of school quality are added to the model, suggesting that high-SES children get better age 16 test scores at least in part because they attended better schools. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1011 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 2011 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 3011 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40
Most growth models implicitly assume that test scores have been vertically scaled. What may not be widely appreciated are the different choices that must be made when creating a vertical score scale. In this paper empirical patterns of growth in student achievement are compared as a function of different approaches to creating a vertical scale. Longitudinal item-level data from a standardized reading test are analyzed for two cohorts of students between Grades 3 and 6 and Grades 4 and 7 for the entire state of Colorado from 2003 to 2006. Eight different vertical scales were established on the basis of choices made for three key variables: Item Response Theory modeling approach, linking approach, and ability estimation approach. It is shown that interpretations of empirical growth patterns appear to depend upon the extent to which a vertical scale has been effectively “stretched” or “compressed” by the psychometric decisions made to establish it. While all of the vertical scales considered show patterns of decelerating growth across grade levels, there is little evidence of scale shrinkage.
All data sources indicate that black–white skill gaps diminished over most of the 20th century, but black–white skill gaps as measured by test scores among youth and educational attainment among young adults have remained constant or increased in absolute value since the late 1980s. I examine the potential importance of discrimination against skilled black workers, changes in black family structures, changes in black household incomes, black–white differences in parenting norms, and education policy as factors that may contribute to the recent stability of black–white skill gaps. Absent changes in public policy or the economy that facilitate investment in black children, best case scenarios suggest that even approximate black–white skill parity is not possible before 2050, and equally plausible scenarios imply that the black–white skill gap will remain quite significant throughout the 21st century.
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