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

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Clotfelter, Charles T.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Ladd, Helen F.

Vigdor, Jacob L.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w12207.

NBER working paper series no. w12207

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2006.

Summary:

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.

Notes:

Print version record

May 2006.