Achievement inequality across K--12 schooling.

Abstract

In three separate but related studies, I examine the determinants and trajectory of achievement inequality across K-12 schooling. The first essay uses survey data from three national data sets containing White and Black students to evaluate whether test score inequality widens or diminishes between school entry and the end of high school. Evaluations are made in reading and mathematics. An additional attempt is made to clarify observed patterns by assessing changes in the score distributions of White and Black students. Here, three measures of dispersion were employed: (1) the coefficient of variation; (2) the McLoone index; (3) the Verstegen index. Thee use of these measures provide a more nuanced assessment of divergence that has escaped previous studies. In the second essay, I use a multi-level approach to assess factors shaping achievement growth in early schooling. Data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study of Kindergartners was used to investigate how socioeconomic status impacts students' cognitive growth from kindergarten to first grade, and the extent to which this growth is moderated by teacher characteristics. Hierarchical linear modeling was performed on 9,400 White and Black students distributed among 1818 teachers. In models tested in this report, students at or above mean socioeconomic status displayed higher achievement at the start of kindergarten, and experienced larger growth between kindergarten and first grade. Findings reported in this study provide new insights into the role of teachers in moderating socioeconomic disparities in achievement from kindergarten to first grade. The final essay explores factors that lead Asian Americans to have higher achievement than Whites. Perhaps the most dominant explanation for the higher academic achievement of Asian Americans relative to Whites is that Asians' parents and peers place greater emphasis on school success. Using data from the National Education Longitudinal Survey (NELS), we assess the degree to which White and Asian American adolescents differ in the types of achievement-oriented influences they receive from their parents and peers, and determine whether these influences explain Asian American-White differences in reading and math achievement. Although we employ a more comprehensive set of parental and peer influence measures than found in most previous research, we find little evidence Asian American students experience greater achievement because they are exposed to more achievement-oriented influences from their parents and peers than Whites.