The minority achievement gap in a suburban school district

Abstract

For many decades, the American educational system has yielded significant differences in achievement among students in different racial groups, a phenomenon commonly known as the "Achievement Gap". Despite the volume of research devoted to studying achievement gaps, school administrators faced with the challenge of reducing these gaps have had limited success. There are a number of factors, regarding the individual, the school, and the setting, which can contribute to achievement gaps, but in a particular community, the prevalence of such factors, and their individual contribution to the gap, is unclear. In this dissertation, we employ a variety of statistical methods that provide a bridge between large-scale studies of achievement gaps and the analyses necessary to address the needs of a single community. First, we establish a collection of metrics designed to measure relative and absolute differences in achievement, for groups of arbitrary size and distribution. Using data from a middle-class, racially integrated school district, we employ these metrics to measure the magnitude of the achievement gap for individual students from grades three through eight. We also assess the potential role of previously-identified correlates of low achievement, such as poverty and student mobility. Last, we evaluate the potential impact of strategies for narrowing the gap.