The Academic Achievement Gap in Grades 3 to 8 / Charles T. Clotfelter, Helen F. Ladd, Jacob L. Vigdor.

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Clotfelter, Charles T

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TextSeries: Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) ; no. w12207.Publication details: Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2006.Description: 1 online resource: illustrations (black and white)Subject(s):

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Abstract: Using data for North Carolina public school students in grades 3 to 8, we examine achievement gaps between white students and students from other racial and ethnic groups. We focus on successive cohorts of students who stay in the state's public schools for all six years, and study both differences in means and in quantiles. Our results on achievement gaps between black and white students are consistent with those from other longitudinal studies: the gaps are sizable, are robust to controls for measures of socioeconomic status, and show no monotonic trend between 3rd and 8th grade. In contrast, both Hispanic and Asian students tend to gain on whites as they progress through these grades. Looking beyond simple mean differences, we find that the racial gaps in math between low-performing students have tended to shrink as students progress through school, while racial gaps between high-performing students have widened for black and American Indian students.

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Item type	Home library	Collection	Call number	Status	Date due	Barcode	Item holds
Working Paper	Biblioteca Digital	Colección NBER	nber w12207 (Browse shelf(Opens below))	Not For Loan

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May 2006.

Using data for North Carolina public school students in grades 3 to 8, we examine achievement gaps between white students and students from other racial and ethnic groups. We focus on successive cohorts of students who stay in the state's public schools for all six years, and study both differences in means and in quantiles. Our results on achievement gaps between black and white students are consistent with those from other longitudinal studies: the gaps are sizable, are robust to controls for measures of socioeconomic status, and show no monotonic trend between 3rd and 8th grade. In contrast, both Hispanic and Asian students tend to gain on whites as they progress through these grades. Looking beyond simple mean differences, we find that the racial gaps in math between low-performing students have tended to shrink as students progress through school, while racial gaps between high-performing students have widened for black and American Indian students.