Trends in the Black-White Achievement Gap: Clarifying the Meaning of Within- and Between-School Achievement Gaps / Lindsay C. Page, Richard J. Murnane, John B. Willett.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Page, Lindsay C.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Murnane, Richard J.

Willett, John B.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w14213.

NBER working paper series no. w14213

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Other Title:

Trends in the Black-White Achievement Gap

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2008.

Summary:

We decompose black-white achievement gap trends between 1971 and 2004 into trends in within- and between-school differences. We show that the previous finding that narrowing within-school inequality explains most of the decline in the black-white achievement gap between 1971 and 1988 is sensitive to methodology. Employing a more detailed partition of achievement differences, we estimate that 40 percent of the narrowing of the gap through the 1970s and 1980s is attributable to the narrowing of within-school differences between black and white students. Further, the consequences for achievement of attending a high minority school became increasingly deleterious between 1971 and 1999.

Notes:

Print version record

August 2008.