The estimation of test score "gaps" and gap trends plays an important role in monitoring educational inequality. Researchers decompose gaps and gap changes into within- and between-school portions to generate evidence on the role schools play in shaping these inequalities. However, existing decomposition methods assume an equal-interval…

Studies examining seasonal variation in academic skills for children have focused on learning loss or stagnation during the summer, particularly for students from low-income or minoritized racial and ethnic backgrounds. In this study, we expand the literature to focus on another student population that may be susceptible to summer learning loss:…

Scholars argue that the "racial achievement gap" frame perpetuates deficit mindsets. Previously, we found that teachers gave lower priority to racial equity when disparities were framed as "achievement gaps" (AGs) versus "inequality in educational outcomes." In this brief, we analyze data from two survey experiments…

There are large gaps in reading skills by family income among school-aged children in the United States. Correlational evidence suggests that reading skills are strongly related to the amount of reading students do outside of school. Experimental evidence testing whether this relationship is causal is lacking. We report the results from a…