Dive Brief:
- Two new studies released in the last month found that differences in how students of different races or economic backgrounds perform within the same school may contribute more to the achievement gap than differences between schools.
- One study, which looked at students’ performance in eighth grade math on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, found that the biggest chunk (over 50%) of the 31-point achievement gap between black and white students came from differences in performance at the same school.
- The second study looked at 15-year-olds’ performance in math on the Program for International Student Assessment, finding similar results for the income-related achievement gap in addition to less access to rigorous math content for poor students compared to their more affluent peers in the same school.
Dive Insight:
For schools focused on closing the achievement gap, the studies offer a new blueprint for how to do so.
"The policy implications are if you are trying to reduce the [black-white achievement] gap, something needs to be done about what's happening within schools—making sure the students who have been having the biggest problems in performance have the best teachers, or that extra professional development is available to those teachers who are working with the kids who are struggling the most—as opposed to simply moving resources between schools,” George Bohrnstedt, an American Institutes for Research fellow who co-authored the NAEP study, told Education Week.
The NAEP study also found that as the number of black students in a school increased, the achievement gap widened — particularly for male students.