– There were moderate effect sizes (Cohen’s d) each year of the study for the Grade 5 STAAR Mathematics scores, Grade 5 STAAR Science scores, Grade 8 STAAR Science scores, and the 2014-2015 Grade 8 exams STAAR Mathematics scores.
– For all years, Grade 5 students in poverty had an average STAAR Mathematics test score that was 6-7 points lower than their peers who were not economically disadvantaged.
– For all years, Grade 5 students in poverty had an average STAAR Science test score that was about 5 points lower than their peers who were not economically disadvantaged.
– For all years, Grade 8 students in poverty had an average STAAR Math test score that was between 5-8 points lower than their peers who were not economically disadvantaged.
– For all years, Grade 8 students in poverty had an average STAAR Science test score that was 6-7 points lower than their peers who were not economically disadvantaged.
– Students who were economically disadvantaged as well as students who were not poor had improved test performance from the 2011-2012 through the 2013-2014 school years.
Current Selections
ClearLaying the Tracks for Successful Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Education: What Can We Learn from Comparisons of Immigrant-Native Achievement in the USA?
This paper examines the immigrant-native achievement gap in science, technology,
engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields in college in the USA.
Science Achievement Gaps Begin Very Early, Persist, and Are Largely Explained by Modifiable Factors
- How large are general knowledge gaps occurring in kindergarten, and to what extent do these continue to occur by the end of first grade?
- As children move from third to eighth grade, what is their typical initial level (i.e., intercept) and rate of achievement growth (i.e., slope) in science?
- Are these gaps consistent with stable, cumulative (i.e., gap increasing), or compensatory (i.e., gap decreasing) achievement growth trajectories? How do these initial third-grade science achievement levels and third- to eighth-grade growth trajectories vary by children’s race, ethnicity, language, and family SES status? How are a more general set of child- and family-level characteristics, including parenting quality, related to typical levels of third-grade science achievement in the United States as well as to achievement growth from third to eighth grade?
- To what extent are the third-grade science achievement gaps, as well as third- to eighth-grade science achievement growth, explained by such modifiable factors as general knowledge, reading and mathematics achievement, and behavioral self-regulation? How much of children’s later science achievement can be predicted by their first-grade achievement-related knowledge, skills, and behaviors?
- With the aforementioned first-grade predictive factors accounted for, how important are the modifiable factors of children’s subsequent reading and mathematics achievement, and behavioral self-regulation at each of third, fifth, and eighth grades to their science achievement during these grades?
- To what extent does a school’s academic climate and racial, ethnic, and economic composition explain children’s science achievement, over and above the afore- mentioned child- and family-level factors?
Teacher Characteristics, Student Beliefs and the Gender Gap in STEM Fields
To examine the impact of teachers’ gender, beliefs and behaviors on students’ beliefs about boys’ and girls’ abilities in math and science.
School Composition and the Black-White Achievement Gap
What is the average gap at different ranges of Black student density, with and without accounting for student and school characteristics?
Classroom-Based Inequalities and Achievement Gaps in the First Grade: The Role of Classroom Context and Access to Qualified and Effective Teachers
1) What are the magnitudes of URM (underrepresented minorities) achievement gaps in reading and math at the beginning of first grade, and to what degree do they change during first grade?
2) Do student inputs vary across classrooms and schools? What are the magnitudes of school based achievement gaps that develop in the first grade? Do URM have equitable access to classrooms with contextual characteristics conducive to learning? Highly qualified teachers and effective teachers?
3) And if not what degree does each contribute to the achievement gaps that accumulate during the first grade?
Kindergarten Black-White Test Score Gaps: Re-examining the Roles of Socioeconomic Status and School Quality with New Data
1. What are the Black-White gaps in math, reading, and working memory?
2. Do these gaps change over kindergarten?
3. To what extent does SES explain black-white gaps at kindergarten entry?
4. What role does SES play in the development of black-white gaps over kindergarten?
5. What role do schools play in the development of black-white gaps over kindergarten?
What Matters in College for Retaining Aspiring Scientists and Engineers from Underrepresented Racial Groups
Among students who started college with an interest in majoring in a STEM field, does a student’s race contribute significantly to the chances that he or she will follow through on these intentions? If so, are the effects of race moderated by high school academic preparation and/or key college experiences? If there are racial disparities in persistence rates after controlling for pre-college student characteristics, what are the college factors that contribute to the persistence of under represented racial minority (URM) students? What college experiences and institutional characteristics significantly predict the likelihood that a URM student will follow through on his or her intentions to pursue a degree in STEM?
Threat in Context: School Moderation of the Impact of Social Identity Threat on Racial/ Ethnic Achievement Gaps
1. Are the benefits of self-affirmation for black and Hispanic middle school students greater in potentially more threatening school contexts, characterized by the group presence and relative academic position of racially marginalized students?
2. What are the prospects of these interventions to close racial achievement gaps in more and less threatening school environments?
Racial Segregation and the Black/White Achievement Gap, 1992 to 2009
H1:As black/white school dissimilarity increase, the black/white achievement gap increases H2:As exposure of black students to white students increases, the black/white achievement gap decreases H3: As exposure of black students to other minority students increases, the black/white achievement gap increases or remains stable H4: As black students become increasingly isolated by themselves, the black/white achievement gap increases.
Comparing Composition Effects in Two Education Systems: The Case of the Belgian Communities
What factors explain the achievement gap between Belgiums two major linguistic communities : French and Dutch ?
The Enduring Impact of Race: Understanding Disparities in Student Disciplinary Infractions and Achievement
To what extent do persistent race gaps in educational outcomes stem from differences in the level of advantage that students bring to school or from differences in opportunities to succeed offered by the schools they attend?
Classroom Composition and Racial Differences in Opportunities to Learn
How much variation is there in topic coverage and use of instructional tasks among advanced mathematical courses with the same title? To what extent is there classroom level variation and conditioning on classroom level minority composition for courses of the same title?
The Geography of Inequality: Why Separate Means Unequal in American Public Schools
Examines what kinds of schools children of different races and ethnicities are attending and how various school characteristic are associated with overall school performance.
Ethnic Matching, School Placement, and Mathematics Achievement of African American Students from Kindergarten Through Fifth Grade
1) Do African American students perform better on mathematics achievement test when taught by an African American teacher? 2) What is the effect of African American teachers on the mathematics outcomes of African American students by gender, school poverty, percentage of minorities in school, and type of community?
Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Collegiate Cognitive Gains: A Multilevel Analysis of Institutional Influences on Learning and its Equitable Distribution
Addresses whether racial/ethnic inequalities in academic performance that are present at college entry are moderated, exacerbated, or maintained during college and whether institutional attributes are associated with student learning.
Accuracy and Inaccuracy in Teachers' Perceptions of Young Children's Cognitive Abilities: The Role of Child Background and Classroom Context
1. Are teachers more or less accurate in predicting the cognitive skills of students with particular sociodemographic backgrounds? One would expect a certain amount of inaccuracy in teacher perceptions of their students’ skills. But is this error in teacher estimates randomly distributed, or is it systematically related to children’s socio-demographic characteristics?
2. To what extent do teacher characteristics and classroom and school contexts explain teacher perceptual accuracy? For example, are experienced teachers’ better judges of their students’ skills? Are teacher perceptions more accurate in racially, socioeconomically, or academically homogeneous classrooms? In smaller versus larger classrooms? In public versus private schools?
3. How is teacher accuracy influenced by the interplay between student and teacher or classroom characteristics? For instance, are teachers more accurate in estimating the skills of students with whom they share a racial-ethnic back ground? Are teacher assessments of low-SES children less biased in smaller classrooms?
Brown in Baltimore: School Desegregation and the Limits of Liberalism
1) What was the trajectory of integration in Baltimore schools? 2) What structures and ideologies fueled rampant school resegregation?
Teacher Credentials and Student Achievement in High School. A Cross-Subject Analysis with Student Fixed Effects
Examining the relationship between teacher credentials and student achievement in high schools, especially in the core courses taken early in a student’s high school career.
International Evidence on Ability Grouping with Curriculum Differentiation and the Achievement Gap in Secondary Schools
Review what research from other developed countries says regarding: ability grouping and achievement, achievement gap, etc.
Social Class, School and Non-School Environments, and Black/White Inequalitites in Children's Learning
How might schools exacerbate black/white disparities in learning while simultaneously slowing the growth of social class gaps?
The Black-White Gap in Mathematics Course Taking
Analyze differences in the mathematics course taking of white and black students. Examine determinants of enrollment in math courses of Blacks in 10th
Ability Grouping Practices in Elementary School and African American/Hispanic Achievement
Examines the impact of ability grouping practices on the achievement gains among African Americans and Hispanics during elementary school.
Changes in Families, Schools, and the Test Score Gap
Examination of several family and schol-based explanations for test score differences between African American and White students in mathematics over thirty years.
How Changes in Families and Schools are Related to Trends in Black-White Test Scores
Identify the relative contributions of changing family and school characteristics to the narrowing of the gap in black-white test scores over decades.
The Role of Inequality in Teacher Quality
Examining how the exposure of White and Black students to higher quality teachers has changed over fifteen years.
Composition Matters: The Relationship Between Race and School Composition in Explaining the Black-White Gap
Uses the institutional perspective to explore Black-White differences in high school course taking.
What We've Learned About Stalled Progress in Closing the Black-White Achievement Gap
Examines a number of phenomena that might plausibly fit the cited criteria for contributing to the narrowing or expansion of the Black-White test score gap.
Can Gaps in the Quality of Early Environments and Noncognitive Skills Help Explain Persisting Black-White Achievement Gaps?
Examination of whether or not early childhood environments and cognitive development/achievement skills influence the Black-White achievement gaps.
Harming the Best: How Schools Affect the Black-White Achievement Gap
Study the impact of school quality on the B-W achievement gap & particularly its evolution across different parts of the achievement distribution.
School Policies and the Test Score Gap
Explores the potential effectiveness of school policies and strategies that have been proposed or justified–at least in part–on the basis of their potential for reducing black-white test score gaps.
Inequality and Black-White Achievement Trends in the NAEP
Examining how recent changes in economic inequality and related social dimensions of inequality relate to trends in Black-White test score gaps. Links between inequality and black-white achievement trends for nine-years-olds are analyzed.
Trends in the Black-White Achievement Gap: Clarifying the Meaning of Within-and Between-School Achievement Gaps
Decompose black-white achievement gap trends between 1971 and 2004 into trends in within-and between-school differences.
Culture and Stalled Progress in Narrowing the Black-White Test Score Gap
Investigates whether changes in school-related behaviors, or changes in home environments, may have contributed to black students’ stalled progress.
Segregation and the Test Score Gap
Consider the role of school and neighborhood segregation in explaining trends in the black-white schooling gap.
More Than One Gap: Dropout Rate Gaps Between and Among Black, Hispanic, and White Students
Examine variables associated with dropout behavior as a measure of achievement gaps.
Can Reducing School Segregation Close the Achievement Gap?
How do racially diverse schools affect student achievement?
Closing the Achievement Gap: The Association of Racial Climate with Achievement and Behavioral Outcomes
Does racial climate mediate or moderate the relationships between race and academic and behavioral outcomes?
Explaining Race Differences in Student Behavior and Academic Achievement: The Relative Contribution of Student, Peer, and School Characteristics
Explore a wide range of variation in individual and contextual influences on the behavior and academic achievement of black and white students.
Lessons Learned from School Desegregation
Theories about why desegregation should improve black achievement.
School Choice, Racial Segregation, and Test-Score Gaps: Evidence from North Carolina's Charter School Program
Examine the effects of charter schools in NC on racial segregation and black-white test score gaps.
The Race Gap in High School Reading Achievement: Why School Racial Composition Still Matters
How is school racial composition related to reading achievement?
Racial Segregation and the Black-White Test Score Gap
Relate the achievement gap between Black and White students in a city to differences in their exposure to black peers in neighborhoods and schools.
Gap or Gaps- Challenging the Singular Definition of the Achievement Gap
Examine within-group differences and compares those across Latino, African American, and White populations.
Desegregation and the Achievement Gap: Do Diverse Peers Help?
Deeper understanding of peer effects is critical to assessing the impact of desegregating peer group on the achievement of white and nonwhite students
Separate But Not Yet Equal: The Relation Between School Finance Adequacy Litigation and African American Student Achievement
Extent to which adequacy litigations functions as a means of narrowing the achievement gap.