The Achievement Gap Initiative

June 2006 Conference Papers


Title	A Neo-Darwinian Rational-Choice Theory of Academic Engagement Norms: The Struggle for Popularity and Normative Hegemony in Secondary Schools
Submitted By	Bishop, John
Abstract		view the paper

Title	Can Expanded Housing and Neighborhood Choice Improve School Outcomes for Low-Income Children?: Evidence from the Moving to Opportunity Experiment
Submitted By	Briggs, Xavier
Abstract	Educational failure is one of the most devastating problems associated with ghetto poverty in America, and educational improvement was among the most important effects reported by the Gautreaux housing desegregation. Gautreaux inspired Moving to Opportunity (MTO), a federal experiment in voluntary “assisted mobility.” Yet four to seven years in, the experimental group showed no measurable impacts on school outcomes, and modest differences in school quality, for children whose families had initially moved out of high-poverty public housing and into low-poverty neighborhoods. We use qualitative interviewing and ethnographic fieldwork to find out why. Moving on to poorer neighborhoods and choosing weak schools limited exposure to better ones. Where children did not attend assigned schools, parental choices were typically driven by poor information, an emphasis on safety and order but not academic excellence, and, in some cases, by the desire to make familiar schools an oasis of stability amidst the disruptions of relocation. We outline implications of these findings for policy and practice.	view the paper

Title	Pathways to a Four-Year Degree: Determinants of Transfer and Degree Completion
Submitted By	Cabrera, Alberto
Abstract		view the paper

Title	Latino Students and the Educational Pipeline Part I. (EPI)
Submitted By	Cabrera, Alberto
Abstract		view the paper

Title	The Academic Achievement Gap in Grades 3 to 8
Submitted By	Clotfelter, Charles
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 between low-performing students have tended to shrink as students progress through school, while racial gaps between high-performing students have widened. Racial gaps differ widely across geographic areas within the state; very few of the districts or groups of districts that we examined have managed simultaneously to close the black-white gap and raise the relative test scores of black students.	view the paper

Title	Are We Barking Up the Wrong Tree? Rethinking Oppositional Culture Explanations for the Black/White Achievement Gap
Submitted By	Diamond, John
Abstract	The Black/White achievement gap is a central concern among educational researchers, policy makers, and the general public. One popular explanation for this gap is the oppositional culture argument. For the past 20 years, researchers have attempted to pinpoint the extent to which African American peer groups devalue educational achievement and ridicule their high achieving peers for “acting white” (Fordham and Ogbu 1986). To date, there is no conclusive evidence that such negative peer pressure is prevalent among Black students or unique to their peer groups. At best, we can say that some small segment of the Black student population experiences race-specific negative peer pressure. In light of this research, the author advocates moving beyond traditional cultural explanations for the Black/White achievement gap. Instead, he argues that more attention be given to the structural, institutional, and symbolic disadvantages that shape the racialized educational terrain that Black students navigate.	view the paper

Title	Black Americans reduce the racial IQ gap: Evidence from standardization samples
Submitted By	Dickens, William
Abstract	It is often asserted that blacks have made no IQ gains on whites, despite relative environmental gains, and that this adds credibility to the case that the black/white IQ gap has genetic origins. Until recently, there have been no adequate data to measure black IQ trends. We analyze data from nine standardization samples for four major tests of cognitive ability. These suggest that blacks have gained 5 or 6 IQ points on non-Hispanic whites between 1972 and 2002. Gains have been fairly uniform across the entire range of black cognitive ability.	view the paper

Title	The Role of Family Socioeconomic Resources in the Black-White Test Score Gap Among Young Children
Submitted By	Duncan, Greg
Abstract	This paper reviews evidence on the family origins of racial differences in young children’s test scores and considers how much of the gap is due to differences in the economic and demographic conditions in which black and white children grow up. Our review of the literature finds that the estimated size of the gaps varies considerably across studies. However, a surprisingly consistent result is that a collection of measures related to family socioeconomic resources appears to account for a little less than half a standard deviation of the black-white test score gap, regardless of the assessments used or the populations studied. We discuss the policy implications of these findings and suggest avenues for future research.	view the paper

Title	Excellence with Equity
Submitted By	Ferguson, Ronald
Abstract	Individuals, families, communities and nations have lifestyles: routine ways of allocating time, effort, attention and resources to activities. In ways that the Union City and Council of Great City Schools examples begin to illustrate, progress in a national movement for excellence with equity will require lifestyle changes in the ways that the nation does schooling. Similarly, for most parents of any racial or social class background, it is not difficult to imagine lifestyle changes likely to raise their children’s achievement (for example, required daily leisure reading, discussions in which children explain their homework answers to parents and appropriate bedtimes, firmly enforced).	view the paper

Title	Cultivating New Routines
Submitted By	Ferguson, Ronald
Abstract	Separately as well as in network-based projects, we should expect school districts across the nation to launch a number of important activities over the next few years aimed at narrowing achievement gaps. Research can help by informing, monitoring, documenting and evaluating them. Hopefully, various action-research teams will begin to form in which people from districts come together with professional researchers based on mutual interests and shared commitments. Toward that end, this paper has offered a number of ideas that seem to this author worth considering.	view the paper

Title	What Doesn't Meet the Eye
Submitted By	Ferguson, Ronald
Abstract	There is much that does not meet the teacher’s eye, but that nonetheless affects how ambitiously and effectively students learn. African American and Hispanic students in MSAN districts have fewer family background advantages on average, compared to whites and Asians. In addition, they have lower grade point averages and report less understanding of their lessons. They have lower homework completion rates than white classmates, but report spending virtually the same amount of time doing homework. Skill gaps and differences in home academic supports, not effort or motivation, appear to be the primary explanations for why they complete less homework and get lower grades than whites. Conversely, part of the reason that Asians complete more homework and get higher grades than other nonwhite groups, is that they devote more time to their studies.	view the paper

Title	Testing for Racial Differences in the Mental Ability of Young Children
Submitted By	Fryer, Roland
Abstract	On tests of intelligence, Blacks systematically score worse than Whites, whereas Asians frequently outperform Whites. Some have argued that genetic differences across races account for the gap. Using a newly available nationally representative data set that includes a test of mental function for children aged eight to twelve months, we find only minor racial differences in test outcomes (0.06 standard deviation units in the raw data) between Blacks and Whites that disappear with the inclusion of a limited set of controls. The only statistically significant racial difference is that Asian children score slightly worse than those of other races. To the extent that there are any genetically-driven racial differences in intelligence, these gaps must either emerge after the age of one, or operate along dimensions not captured by this early test of mental cognition. A calibration exercise demonstrates that the observed patterns in the data can be generated by a model in which there are extremely small mean differences in intelligence across races, but where there are large racial differences in environmental factors that grow in importance as children age.	view the paper

Title	An Empirical Analysis of 'Acting White'
Submitted By	Fryer, Roland
Abstract	There is a debate among social scientists regarding the existence of a peer externality commonly referred to as ‘acting white.’ Using a newly available data set (the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health), which allows one to construct an objective measure of a student’s popularity, we demonstrate that there are large racial differences in the relationship between popularity and academic achievement; our (albeit narrow)definition of ‘acting white.’ The effect is intensified among high achievers and in schools with more interracial contact, but non-existent among students in predominantly black schools or private schools. The patterns in the data appear most consistent with a twoaudience signaling model in which investments in education are thought to be indicative of an individual’s opportunity costs of peer group loyalty. Other models we consider, such as self-sabotage among black youth or the presence of an oppositional culture, all contradict the data in important ways. “Go into any inner city neighborhood, and folks will tell you that government alone can’t teach kids to learn. They know that parents have to parent, that children can’t achieve unless we raise their expectations and turn off the television sets and eradicate the slander that says a black youth with a book is acting white.” Senator Barack Obama, 2004 Democratic National Convention Keynote Address	view the paper

Title	Dynamic Inequality I: Using NELS88 To Analyze Schooling Outcomes Over Time
Submitted By	Grubb, W. Norton
Abstract	This paper uses the three years of data in NELS88, from 8th to 10th to 12th grades, to estimate growth functions. The paper begins with an conceptual analysis of dynamic inequality, where initial differences in schooling outcomes are magnified over time — not necessarily in a linear way, but with sudden increases in inequality at particular stages implying non-linear patterns over time. The paper first estimates linear growth functions, relying on the “improved” school finance and its expanded conception of both school and non-school resources. The results, estimated with three-level hierarchical linear models, confirm the divergence of growth trajectories over these 5 years, though including all measures of school and non-school resources sometimes eliminates the divergence (especially among schools). Furthermore, outcomes diverge for different groups defined by gender, race/ethnicity, and class measures, with (for example) black and Latino students, and those with low parental aspirations, diverging from their peers. Finally, experiments with non-linear (quadratic) growth trajectories reveal that on the average they are concave with respect to years in school, as hypothesized by the model of dynamic inequalities, though the dispersion of growth trajectories around the averages are unexpected. The results also reveal that initial black-white and Latino-white differences in outcomes grow wider over time. However, in some cases the parameters reflecting this divergence are reduced by the effects of school resources and measures of student engagement and motivation. One implication is that a reallocation of the most effective school resources, and efforts to restructure schools to improve the motivation and engagement of students, might eliminate more of the growing racial and ethnic gaps.	view the paper

Title	MULTIPLE RESOURCES, MULTIPLE OUTCOMES: TESTING THE “IMPROVED” SCHOOL FINANCE WITH NELS88
Submitted By	Grubb, W. Norton
Abstract	This paper develops an expanded approach to educational production functions based on the “improved” school finance, in which school resources are distinguished as simple, compound, complex, and abstract. Using NELS88 data to estimate these production functions for a variety of outcomes, many different types of school resources affect outcomes, prove to be the most powerful explanatory variables.. As expected, non-school resources — certain dimensions of family background, and variables measuring student ability to benefit from instruction — affect outcomes as well. The specific patterns of these results provide a substantial agenda for reforming high schools, particularly in changing curricula, improving instruction and making it more constructivist, and reforming school climate. The results also provide a number of insights into the magnitude and causes of racial, ethic, and class-related gaps in schooling outcomes. These gaps are larger for test scores than for measures of progress through schooling, clarifying that the emphasis on test scores has focused on those schooling outcomes that are most difficult to change. In addition, a large proportion of overall gaps in test scores, often half or more, is explained by the various measures of school and non-school resources, so that these gaps are really due to differences in school and non-school resources. And when prior tests scores are included, most gaps vanish completely. The implication is that efforts to close these different gaps must concentrate on those complex school resources that influence outcomes powerfully, as well as to those dimensions of students motivation and engagement that should respond to school reforms.	view the paper

Title	Teaching Inequality: How Poor and Minority Students are Shortchanged by Teacher Quality
Submitted By	Hall, Daria
Abstract	In 2004, with support from the Joyce Foundation, the Education Trust collaborated with three states—Ohio, Illinois, and Wisconsin—and their three biggest school systems—Cleveland, Chicago, and Milwaukee—to examine the distribution of teacher quality in those states. In partnership with the Education Trust, teams of stakeholders in each jurisdiction colleced data on teacher distribution and identified patterns. In every case, they found large differences between the qualifications of teachers in the highest-poverty and highest-minority schools and teachers serving in schools with few minority and low-income students. The states and districts and the Education Trust then devised strategies to achieve a more fair distribution to ensure equity in access to quality teachers for low-income and minority students. The report includes the data analysis and findings and recommendations.	view the paper

Title	High Flying Schools, Student Disadvantage and the Logic of NCLB
Submitted By	Harris, Douglas
Abstract	The idea that schools can help address students’ social and economic disadvantages represents an important purpose of universal public education. Some recent reports as well as federal education policy take this one step further, however, by implicitly assuming that schools can completely overcome these disadvantages. The present study considers this argument by re-analyzing the data and interpretations of recent reports by the Education Trust. There are three main flaws in the reports. First,their methods make the number of high-poverty schools reaching high-performance—the “high flyers”—look unrealistically large. The re-analysis here shows that low-poverty schools are 22-89 times as likely as high-poverty schools to be high-performing on achievement tests. Second, contrary to interpretations of the reports, this type of analysis provides little evidence about the role schools play in determining student learning. Third, the idea that schools can completely overcome student disadvantages ignores a vast amount of evidence about the strong role the disadvantages play in affecting student learning. The reports therefore reinforce a false assumption of the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law. While accountability has the potential to facilitate genuine school improvement, requiring schools to completely overcome student disadvantages is just as likely to produce counter-productive responses from educators and therefore hurt the students they are supposed to help.	view the paper

Title	The Black-White-Other test score gap: academic achievement among mixed race adolescents
Submitted By	Herman, Melissa
Abstract	This study tests theories of racial differences in achievement among mono-racial and multi-racial high school students. The theories in question (status attainment, oppositional culture, and educational attitudes) were developed to explain achievement differences among mono-racial groups, but this study tests how the theories apply to a multi-racial sample. Results show that ethnic identity and experiences of racism are not strong factors in explaining achievement among multi-racial or mono-racial students. Instead, the school achievement of multi-racial youth is most clearly related to the racial composition of the contexts they live in such as peer group, family, neighborhood, and school. Additional descriptive statistics compare multi-racial groups, showing that multiracial students who self-identify as black or Latino achieve less in school than those who self-identify as white or Asian. The paper proposes a trans-racial theory of achievement that considers the effects of contexts.	view the paper

Title	Efforts to Narrow the Minority Student Achievement Gap: A Longitudinal Case Study of One School District
Submitted By	Kern, Sarah
Abstract	This paper is a preliminary study of a school district with 3900 pupils in the state of New Jersey and their efforts to close the persistent minority student achievement gap. The district is in the midst of a leadership transition. The superintendent has been in his position for just one year and four of the five schools have experienced administrator turnovers in the past three years. The district, in partnership with The College of New Jersey and Dr. Ronald Ferguson from Harvard University, has implemented a research-based strategic framework known as the Tripod Project. This project, created by Dr. Ferguson, is an outgrowth of the work of the Minority Student Achievement Network. It is Ferguson's theory that teachers' perceptions, expectations, and behaviors can exacerbate and perhaps even widen the Black-White test score gap. The partnership's overarching goal with the district's teachers and administrators is to enhance school-level capacity to address pedagogy and school and community relationships in order to raise student achievement scores for all students in the district and to close the minority student achievement gap.	view the paper

Title	INTERSTATE INEQUALITY IN EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITY
Submitted By	Liu, Goodwin
Abstract	For the past half century, legal and policy efforts to promote greater equality in educational opportunity have primarily focused on two structural problems. The first—the main preoccupation of school desegregation—is inequality between schools within school districts. The second—the principal target of school finance reform—is inequality between school districts within states. This Article addresses a third and bigger problem that has long been ignored: inequality between states across the nation.	view the paper

Title	Tracking Achievement Gaps and Assessing the Impact of NCLB on the Gaps: An In-depth Look into National and State Reading and Math Outcome Trends
Submitted By	Losen, Dan
Abstract		view the paper

Title	Intergenerational Predictors of the Black-White Achievement Gap in Adolescence
Submitted By	Mandara, Jelani
Abstract	Intergenerational predictors of the Black-White achievement gap among 2108 adolescents from the NLSY were examined. The results showed that the gaps in SES and achievement significantly reduced over the past few generations. Moreover, grandparents' education and occupational prestige accounted for 20% of the achievement gap, but were completely mediated by parent and adolescent factors. Parents' SES, achievement, and parenting accounted for almost all of the remaining ethnic differences in math and reading scores. Parental demandingness and adolescent health and motivation had particularly large unique effects on achievement. It was concluded that adjusting for these differences across generations would, theoretically, all but eliminate the Black-White test score gap. The need for culturally specific parenting interventions was also discussed.	view the paper

Title	Performing Well, But Feeling Bad (Nora Broege, Ann Owens, and Barbara Schneider)
Submitted By	Owens, Ann
Abstract	This study examines how adolescents' classroom experiences vary by race or ethnicity using data from a subsample of over 800 adolescents from the Sloan Study of Youth and Social Development. Responses to the Experience Sampling Method (ESM), a time diary method in which respondents report their in-the-moment emotional experiences, indicate that a bimodality trend in subjective experiences in the classroom exists: Asian American and White students perform the best yet feel the worst; and Hispanic and African American students perform the worst, yet feel the best. Results suggest that subjective experiences in the classroom are an important but less explored resource in the development of students' academic goals.	view the paper

Title	Missing the Inner Intent: The Predictable Failures of Implementation
Submitted By	Payne, Charles
Abstract	This chapter describes the continued failure of urban schools to appropriately implement reforms, examines some of the reasons for that and proposes the development of implementation standards as a partial response.	view the paper

Title	Toward Everyday Justice: On Demanding Equal Educational Opportunity In the New Civil Rights Era
Submitted By	Pollock, Mica
Abstract	This Article discusses everyday disputes between ordinary Americans over defining and addressing racial discrimination in education today. These disputes were encountered during the author’s work experience in the Federal Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights circa 2000. (Note: the author is no longer an employee of OCR and does not represent the agency). This Article contends that in what the author calls “the new civil rights era,” the quest for racially equal educational opportunity takes place in a new social context of resistance to equal opportunity claims. The new civil rights era argument against equal opportunity demands is that racially equal opportunity in the abstract is warranted, but that additional opportunities for people of color in particular instances cannot be provided, are not warranted, or are not wanted for particular reasons. The author contends that to meet the challenge of Grutter in the new civil rights era, advocates for racially equal educational opportunity must consider carefully how best to convince fellow Americans to consider how ordinary, everyday moves in K-12 educational settings provide or deny young people of color equal opportunities to succeed and thrive.	view the paper

Title	School Quality and the Black-White Achievement Gap
Submitted By	Rivkin, Steve
Abstract	Substantial uncertainty exists regarding the impact of school quality on the black/achievement gap. In this paper we use data from both the Texas Schools Project (TSP) panel data and the Early Childhood Longitudinal Survey (ECLS) to investigate the contribution of schools to the racial achievement gap in both elementary and middle school. Following a decomposition of changes in the achievement gap into between- and withinschool components, we investigate the effects of specific school variables including teacher experience, student turnover and student racial composition on the black/white differential. One issue that we examine in some detail is the possibility that changes in the racial achievement gap and the effects of specific school characteristics vary by initial achievement and by gender. Our results differ noticeably from the other recent analyses of the black-white achievement gap by providing strong evidence that school quality has a substantial effect on the differential. We find that the majority of the expansion of the achievement gap with age occurs within rather than between schools and the aforementioned school characteristics explains much of the growth in the achievement gap.	view the paper

Title	The Many Dimensions of Racial Inequality
Submitted By	Rothstein, Richard
Abstract	Black-white inequality is consistent across the many institutions of American society, reflecting racial differences in education, health, economic security, and civic and cultural life. This report estimates black-white differences in a variety of domains, using several data sets that are informative about these differences. To compare disparate measures, we adopt some very approximate statistical assumptions that permit us to describe the experiences of the average African-American and the average non-Hispanic white in each domain as their percentile rankings in a national distribution. We conclude: * Academic achievement: The average black student is at the 27th percentile in a national distribution of academic achievement, while the average white student is at the 61st percentile. This estimate is based on an average of all reliable subject matter and grade level tests available for elementary and secondary school students. * Pregnancy, Childbirth, Neonatality, and Infancy: The average black mother and newborn child are at the 37th percentile in a national distribution of characteristics at the beginning of life that promote successful outcomes, while the average white mother and newborn child are at the 54th percentile. * Children\'s access to health care: The average black child is at the 43rd percentile in a national distribution of being able to receive, and actually receiving appropriate medical, dental, and optometric treatment, while the average white child is at the 56th percentile. * Health of preschool children: The average black child is at the 41st percentile in a national distribution of children\'s health outcomes up to the age of 5, while the average white child is at the 52nd percentile. * School readiness: The average black child is at the 40th percentile in a national distribution of entering schoolchildren\'s experiences and characteristics that indicate successful preparation for learning, while the average white child is at the 57th percentile. * The non-school hours: The average black schoolchild is at the 46th percentile in a national distribution of children’s out-of-classroom activities that are likely to predispose children for success, while the average white schoolchild is at the 54th percentile. * Health of school-aged children: The average black schoolchild is at the 48th percentile in a national distribution of schoolchildren’s health outcomes, while the average white schoolchild is at the 55th percentile. * Educational attainment: The average black adult is at the 38th percentile in a national distribution of attainment, including years of school completed and degrees earned, while the average white adult is at the 51st percentile. * Economic security. The typical black adult has employment, earnings and income that are at the 41st percentile in a national distribution of these measures, while the typical white adult is at the 54th percentile. * Adult characteristics: The average black adult is at the 41st percentile in a national distribution of participation in productive and fulfilling non-economic activities, including civic participation and cultural life, while the average white adult is at the 55th percentile.	view the paper

Title	The Academic Cost of Discipline: The Relationship Between Suspension/Expulsion and School Achievement
Submitted By	Skiba, Russ
Abstract	Consistent with the disciplinary philosophy of zero tolerance, use of exclusionary discipline is contingent upon a belief that removing certain children from school is necessary or helpful in order to maintain a school climate conducive to learning. Yet, a potentially paradoxical consequence of school removal is the inherent risk of student opportunity to learn, particularly for student groups with relatively high disciplinary rates (e.g. African American students). This study described rates of school discipline and achievement in one Midwestern state disaggregated by race and controlling for poverty, and examined the relationship between school discipline and achievement while accounting for socio-demographic influences. The findings of this study suggest that school usage of suspension and expulsion is negatively related to academic achievement independent of socio-demographic influences, and argues that exclusionary discipline does not contribute to improved learning outcomes.	view the paper

Title	A Program to Close the Fourth Grade Literacy Black-White Achievement Gap
Submitted By	Smith, Charlene
Abstract	Applied Dissertation, Nova Southeastern University, Fischler School of Education and Human Services. The purpose of this study was to narrow the achievement gap between Black and White students on the state English language arts test in Grade 4. The researcher sought to answer 4 questions: (a) Will the intervention result in a 5 percentage point narrowing of the achievement gap? (b) Will working with a coach improve teacher effectiveness? (c) Will professional development, provided by the literacy coach, impact teacher skill in implementation of balanced literacy strategies? (d) Will teachers', coaches', and principals' awareness of the achievement gap affect school policy and instruction? The researcher posed the hypothesis that coaching and implementation of balanced literacy would increase student achievement and therefore narrow the achievement gap. The researcher conducted an action research study from November 2004 to June 2005 at a school that was selected based on the existence of achievement gaps between the Black and White students. The researcher trained the coach and teachers during focus group meetings to look at data, assess student work, and work collaboratively to improve their practice. The researcher used a text and education journal to conduct a study group on the achievement gap with the study participants. The results of the study indicated that coaching and implementation of balanced literacy did not narrow the achievement gap for 4th graders on the state English Language Arts exam by the expected 5 percentage points. The results also indicated that coaching and collaborative practice among teachers did improve teacher effectiveness in meeting students' individual needs and implementation of balanced literacy; and the study group increased awareness of the achievement gap that affected teacher practice and school leadership decisions for program implementation.	view the paper

Title	Foundations for Success: Case Studies of How Urban School Systems Improve Student Achievement
Submitted By	Snipes, Jason
Abstract		view the paper

Title	Beating the Odds VI
Submitted By	Williams, Adriane
Abstract	The Council of the Great City Schools has prepared this sixth edition of “Beating the Odds” (Beating the Odds VI) to give the nation another look at how inner-city schools are performing on the academic goals and standards set by the states. This analysis examines student achievement in math and reading through spring 2005. It also measures achievement gaps between cities and states, African Americans and Whites, and Hispanics and Whites. It includes new data on language profi ciency, disability, and income. And it looks at both state test results and National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) data. Finally, the report looks at progress. It asks two critical questions: “Are urban schools improving academically?” and “Are urban schools closing achievement gaps?”.	view the paper