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…

The "achievement gap" has long dominated mainstream conversations about race and education. Some scholars warn that the discourse around racial gaps perpetuates stereotypes and promotes the adoption of deficit-based explanations that fail to appreciate the role of structural inequities. I investigate through three randomized experiments.…

The term "achievement gap" is regularly used to describe between-group differences in educational outcomes. However, critics of the term argue that it implies the problem is merely one of student performance and may depress support for policies aimed at structural solutions. We hypothesized that the phrase "racial achievement…

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…

Scholars have argued that schools are "equalizers" because inequalities in test scores by race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status (SES) grow faster over summer vacation than over the school year. In this study, we use nationally representative data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study--Kindergarten Classes of 1998-1999 and…

What is schools' role in the stratification system? One view is that schools are an important mechanism for perpetuating inequality because children from advantaged backgrounds (white and high socioeconomic) enjoy better school learning environments than their disadvantaged peers. But it is difficult to know this with confidence because children's…

Theory suggests that teachers' implicit racial attitudes affect their students, but large-scale evidence on U.S. teachers' implicit biases and their correlates is lacking. Using nationwide data from Project Implicit, we found that teachers' implicit White/Black biases (as measured by the implicit association test) vary by teacher gender and race.…

Early studies examining seasonal variation in academic achievement inequality generally concluded that socioeconomic test score gaps grew more over the summer than the school year, suggesting schools served as "equalizers." In this study, we analyze seasonal trends in socioeconomic status (SES) and racial/ethnic test score gaps using…

The estimation of racial test score gap trends plays an important role in monitoring educational equality. Documenting gap trends is complex, however, and estimates can differ depending on the metric, modeling strategy, and psychometric assumptions. The sensitivity of summer learning gap estimates to these factors has been under-examined. Using…

Black-white test score gaps form in early childhood and widen over elementary school. Sociologists have debated the roles that socioeconomic status (SES) and school quality play in explaining these patterns. In this study, I replicate and extend past research using new nationally representative data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal…

Research on science achievement disparities by gender and race/ethnicity often neglects the beginning of the pipeline in the early grades. We address this limitation using nationally representative data following students from Grades 3 to 8. We find that the Black-White science test score gap (-1.07 SD in Grade 3) remains stable over these years,…