- Controlling for child’s characteristic and average characteristics of families from same race group in that child’s state does help explain a portion of Black-White test score gap in math and reading.
- Parental education particularly important
- When state income inequality rises, the test score gap decreases but it is not contained to Black and White students.
- In 1978, Black students scored 30.7 points lower (0.85 standard deviations) than White students on math tests
- In 1990, Black students sharply gained in math scores which continued for the decade, with another sharp gain in 2004
- In 1975, Black students scored 30.5 points (0.74 standard deviations) less than White students on reading test
- No significant gain on reading test scores for Blacks except in 2004.
- For both Blacks and Whites, income inequality is associated with lower math and reading scores
- This inequality is slightly larger for Whites than for Blacks
- Rising economic inequality negatively affects the achievement of Whites and Blacks but has little bearing on the Black-White test score gap