Racial achievement gap in the United States

The racial achievement gap in the United States refers to the educational disparities between various ethnic groups. It manifests itself in a variety of ways: among students, blacks, Hispanics and Koreans are more likely to receive lower grades, score lower on standardized tests, drop out of high school, and they are less likely to enter and complete college than whites, who similarly score lower than Asians(excluding Koreans). The evidence, antecedents, implications, and successes of the achievement gap are discussed below.

Over the past 45 years, students in the United States have made notable gains in academic achievement. However, the racial achievement gap remains because not all groups of students are advancing at the same rates. Evidence of the racial achievement gap has been manifested through standardized test scores, high school dropout rates, high school completion rates, college acceptance and retention rates, as well as through longitudinal trends. While efforts to close the racial achievement gap have increased over the years with varying success, studies have shown that disparities still exist between achievement levels of minorities compared to White counterparts.

The racial achievement gap has been found to exist before students enter kindergarten for their first year of schooling. At the start of kindergarten, Hispanic and black students have math and reading scores substantially lower than those of white students. While both Hispanics and blacks scores have significantly lower test scores than their white counterparts, Hispanic and black have scores that are roughly equal to each other. In a study published in 2009, Reardon and Galindo (2009) specifically examine test scores by race and ethnicity. The data Reardon and Galindo (2009) use comes from the ECLS-K, sponsored by the National Center for Education Statistics. The ECLS-K contains data on a nationally representative sample of approximately 21,400 students from the kindergarten class of 1998–1999. Students in the sample were assessed in reading and mathematics skills six times from 1998 to 2004. The content areas of the tests are based on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) fourth-grade content areas, adapted to be age appropriate at each grade level. The assessments were scored using a three-parameter Item Response Theory (IRT) model. Reardon and Galindo (2009) found that average Hispanic and black students begin kindergarten with math scores three quarters of a standard deviation lower than those of white students and with reading scores a half standard deviation lower than those of white students. Six years later, Hispanic-white gaps narrow by roughly a third, whereas black-white gaps widen by about a third. More specifically, the Hispanic-white gap is a half standard deviation in math, and three-eighths in reading at the end of fifth grade. The trends in the Hispanic-white gaps are especially interesting because of the rapid narrowing that occurs between kindergarten and first grade. Specifically, the estimated math gap declines from 0.77 to 0.56 standard deviations, and the estimated reading gap from 0.52 to 0.29 in the roughly 18 months between the fall of kindergarten and the spring of first grade. In the four years from the spring of first grade through the spring of fifth grade, the Hispanic-white gaps narrow slightly to 0.50 standard deviations in math and widening slightly to 0.38 deviations in reading.

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