The racial achievement gap in the United States are disparities in educational achievement between differing ethnic/racial groups. It manifests itself in a variety of ways: African-American and Hispanic students are more likely to earn lower grades, score lower on standardized tests, drop out of high school, and they are less likely to enter and complete college than whites, while whites score lower than Asian Americans.
There is disagreement among scholars regarding the causes of the racial achievement gap. Some focus on the home life of individual students, and others focus more on unequal access to resources between certain ethnic groups. Additionally, political histories, such as anti-literacy laws, and current policies, such as those related to school funding, have resulted in an education debt between districts, schools, and students.
The achievement gap affects economic disparities, political participation, and political representation. Solutions have ranged from national policies such as No Child Left Behind and the Every Student Succeeds Act, to private industry closing this gap, and even local efforts.
Overview
Over the past 45 years, students in the United States have made notable gains in academic achievement. However, racial achievement gaps remain because not all groups of students are advancing at the same rates. Evidence of the racial achievement gaps have been manifested through standardized test scores, high school dropout rates, high school completion rates, college acceptance and retention rates, as well as through longitudinal trends. While efforts to close racial achievement gaps have increased over the years with varying degrees of success, studies have shown that disparities still exist between achievement levels of different ethnic groups.
Early schooling years Racial achievement gaps have been found to exist before students enter kindergarten for their first year of schooling, as a "school readiness" gap."School Readiness: Closing Racial and Ethnic Gaps" Cecilia Rouse, Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, & Sara McLanahan, 2005 One study claims that about half the test score gap between black and white high school students is already evident when children start school.Meredith Phillips, James Crouse, and John Ralph, "Does the Black-White Test Score Gap Widen after Children Enter School?" in The Black-White Test Score Gap, edited by Jencks and Phillips (Brookings, 1998) Children of Latino, Native, and African American heritage arrive to kindergarten and first grade with lower levels of oral language, reading, and mathematics skills than Caucasian and Asian American children. While results differ depending on the instrument, estimates of the black-white gap range from slightly less than half a standard deviation to slightly more than 1 standard deviation."Assessment Issues in the Testing of Children at School Entry" Donald A. Rock and A. Jackson Stenner, 2005 Reardon and Galindo (2009), using data from the ECLS-K, discovered that on average, Hispanic and black students start kindergarten with math scores three-quarters of a standard deviation lower than white students, and reading scores half a standard deviation lower than white students. After six years, Hispanic-white gaps decrease by approximately a third, while black-white gaps increase by about a third. Specifically, by the end of fifth grade, the Hispanic-white gap is half a standard deviation in math and three-eighths in reading. The trends in Hispanic-white gaps are particularly intriguing due to the rapid narrowing observed between kindergarten and first grade. During this period, the estimated math gap decreases from 0.77 to 0.56 standard deviations, and the estimated reading gap decreases from 0.52 to 0.29 over roughly 18 months from the fall of kindergarten to the spring of first grade. From the spring of first grade to the spring of fifth grade, the Hispanic-white gaps show a slight narrowing to 0.50 standard deviations in math and a slight widening to 0.38 deviations in reading.
In a 2009 study, Clotfelter et al. examine test scores of North Carolina public school students by race. They found that while black-white gaps are substantial, both Hispanic and Asian students tend to gain on whites as they progress in school. The white-black achievement gap in both math and reading scores is around half a standard deviation. By fifth grade, Hispanic and white students have roughly the same math and reading scores. By eighth grade, scores for Hispanic students in North Carolina surpassed those of observationally equivalent whites by roughly a tenth of a standard deviation. Asian students surpass whites on math and reading tests in all years except third and fourth grade reading. In both fourth-grade reading and eighth-grade math, African American students are about two and a half times as likely as white students to lack basic skills and only about one-third as likely to be proficient or advanced.
In a 2006 study, LoGerfo, Nichols, and Reardon (2006) found that, starting in the eighth grade, white students have an initial advantage in reading achievement over black and Hispanic students but not Asian students.Logerfo, Laura, Austin Nichols, and Sean Reardon. 2006. "Achievement Gains in Elementary and High School." Washington, DC: The Urban Institute. Using nationally representative data from by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES)—the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (ECLS-K) and the National Education Longitudinal Study (NELS:88), LoGerfo, Nichols, and Reardon (2006) find that black students score 5.49 points lower than white students and Hispanic students score 4.83 points lower than white students on reading tests. These differences in initial status are compounded by differences in reading gains made during high school. Specifically, between ninth and tenth grades, white students gain slightly more than black students and Hispanic students, but white students gain less than Asian students. Between tenth and twelfth grades, white students gain at a slightly faster rate than black students, but white students gain at a slower rate than Hispanic students and Asian students.
In eighth grade, white students also have an initial advantage over black and Hispanic students in math tests. However, Asian students have an initial 2.71 point advantage over white students and keep pace with white students throughout high school. Between eighth and tenth grade, black students and Hispanic students make slower gains in math than white students, and black students fall farthest behind. Asian students gain 2.71 points more than white students between eight and tenth grade. Some of these differences in gains persist later in high school. For example, between tenth and twelfth grades, white students gain more than black students, and Asian students gain more than white students. There are no significant differences in math gains between white students and Hispanic students. By the end of high school, gaps between groups increase slightly. Specifically, the initial 9-point advantage of white students over black students increases by about a point, and the initial advantage of Asian students over white students also increases by about a point. Essentially, by the end of high school, Asian students are beginning to learn intermediate-level math concepts, whereas black and Hispanic students are far behind, learning fractions and decimals, which are math concepts that the white and Asian students learned in the eighth grade. Black and Hispanic students end twelfth grade with scores 11 and 7 points behind those of white students, while the male-female difference in math scores is only around 2 points.
Standardized test scores
The racial group differences across admissions tests, such as the SAT, ACT, GRE, GMAT, MCAT, LSAT, Advanced Placement Program examinations and other measures of educational achievement, have been fairly consistent. Since the 1960s, the population of students taking these assessments has become increasingly diverse. Consequently, the examination of ethnic score differences has been more rigorous.Camara, W.J., & Schmidt, A.E. (1999). Group differences in standardized testing and social stratification (College Board Report No. 99-5). New York: The College Board. Specifically, from six large surveys conducted between 1965 and 1992, the largest gap exists between white and African American students. On average, they score about .82 to 1.18 standard deviations lower than white students in composite test scores.Hedges, L.V., & Nowell, A. (1998). Black-white test score convergence since 1965. In C. Jencks & M. Phillips (Eds.), The black-white test score gap. (149–81). Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution Following closely behind is the gap between white and Hispanic students. The overall performance of Asian American students was higher than that of white students, except Asian American students performed one quarter standard deviation unit lower on the SAT verbal section, and about one half a standard deviation unit higher in the GRE Quantitative test. In the current version of the SAT, Asian-American students of Taiwanese, Korean, Japanese, Indian and Han Chinese descent have scored higher on both the verbal and math sections of the new SAT test than whites and all other student racial groups.
The National Assessment of Educational Progress reports the national Black-White gap and the Hispanic-White Gap in math and reading assessments, measured at the 4th and 8th grade level. The trends show that both gaps widen in mathematics as students grow older, but tend to stay the same in reading. Furthermore, the NAEP measures the widening and narrowing of achievement gaps on a state level. From 2007 to 2009, the achievement gaps for the majority of states stayed the same, although more fluctuations were seen at the 8th grade level than the 4th grade level.Alan Vanneman, Linda Hamilton, Janet Baldwin Anderson, Taslima Rahman (2009). Achievement Gaps: How Black and White Students in Public Schools Perform in Mathematics and Reading on the National Assessment of Educational Progress. NCESHemphill, F., Vanneman, A., Rahman, T. (2011). How Hispanic and White Students in Public Schools Perform in Mathematics and Reading on the National Assessment of Educational Progress. NCES.
The Black-White gap demonstrates: In mathematics, a 26-point difference at the 4th grade level and a 31-point difference at the 8th grade level. In reading, a 27-point difference at the 4th grade level and a 26-point difference at the 8th grade level.
The Hispanic-White gap demonstrates: In mathematics, a 21-point difference at the 4th grade level and a 26-point difference at the 8th grade level. In reading, there is a 25-point difference at the 4th grade level and a 24-point difference at the 8th grade level (NAEP, 2011).
The National Educational Longitudinal Survey (NELS, 1988) demonstrates similar findings in their evaluation of assessments administered to 12th graders in reading and math.Scott, Leslie A.; and Ingels, Steven J. (2007). Interpreting 12th-Graders' NAEP-Scaled Mathematics Performance Using High School Predictors and Postsecondary Outcomes From the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS:88)
Mathematics
Results of the mathematics achievement test:
White-African American gap
Non Hispanic White-Hispanic gap
Reading
Results of the reading achievement test:
White-African American gap
Non Hispanic White-Hispanic gap
SAT scores