AGI Topics

The Facts on the Gap

Place your mouse on the pie chart
to see the population shift forecasted for 2050.

Scores at Age 9 Months

State Test Scores

National Test Scores

International Test Scores

High School Completion Rates

College Enrollment

College Completion

Employment and Earnings

Population

Video Presentations

Title	Presenter(s)	Date	Realplayer format	PowerPoint
Black Americans Reduce the IQ Gap: Evidence from Standardization Samples	William Dickens	June 2006	Click for video	Click for powerpoint
Huge Progress Stalled: Racial Gaps at 12th Grade are Smaller than in the 1970s, but Remain Large	Ronald Ferguson	June 2006	Click for video	Click for powerpoint
School Quality and the Black-White Achievement Gap	Steven Rivkin	June 2006	Click for video	Click for powerpoint
Test Score Gaps	Roland Fryer	June 2006	Click for video	Click for powerpoint
Testing for Racial Differences in the Mental Ability of Young Children	Roland Fryer	June 2006	Click for video	Click for powerpoint
The Academic Achievement Gap in Grades 3 to 8 (in North Carolina)	Charles Clotfelter	June 2006	Click for video	Click for powerpoint
The Black-White Test Score Differential	Kevin Lang	June 2007	Click for video	Click for powerpoint
Understanding Trends in Racial/Ethnic Achievement Gaps During The First Years of School	Richard Murnane	June 2006	Click for video	Click for powerpoint
Yes We Can! A Panel on Closing the Achievement Gaps	Jane Waldfogel, Richard Nisbett, Ron Ferguson	March 2009	Click for video	Click for powerpoint

Papers

Title	Abstract	Author(s)	Date
Beating the Odds VI	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?”.	Michael Casserly, Amanda Petteruti, Adriane Williams	March 2006	Click for the paper
Efforts to Narrow the Minority Student Achievement Gap: A Longitudinal Case Study of One School District	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.	Sarah M. Kern	May 2006	Click for the paper
Testing for Racial Differences in the Mental Ability of Young Children	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.	Roland G. Fryer, Steven D. Levitt	March 2006	Click for the paper
The Black-White-Other test score gap: academic achievement among mixed race adolescents	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.	Melissa R. Herman	February 2005	Click for the paper