Black-White Test Score Gap Research Articles

Collective Racial Bias and the Black-White Test Score Gap

Collective Racial Bias and the Black-White Test Score Gap

Paying for Whose Performance? Teacher Incentive Pay and the Black–White Test Score Gap

Teacher performance pay is often introduced with the goal of reducing gaps in test scores across groups, yet little is known about how well they achieve this aim. We ask, “Do test score-based teacher incentives impact the Black–White test score gap?” Using student–teacher matched data and a difference-in-differences approach in which the performance of a teacher’s students before and after the policy is compared, we find that performance pay increases the conditional Black–White gap. The effect is particularly evident when bonuses are large, consistent with a causal response to performance pay.

How Much Does the Cardinal Treatment of Ordinal Variables Matter? An Empirical Investigation

AbstractMany researchers use an ordinal scale to quantitatively measure and analyze concepts. Theoretically valid empirical estimates are robust in sign to any monotonic increasing transformation of the ordinal scale. This presents challenges for the point-identification of important parameters of interest. I develop a partial identification method for testing the robustness of empirical estimates to a range of plausible monotonic increasing transformations of the ordinal scale. This method allows for the calculation of plausible bounds around effect estimates. I illustrate this method by revisiting analysis by Nunn and Wantchekon (2011, American Economic Review, 101, 3221–3252) on the slave trade and trust in sub-Saharan Africa. Supplemental illustrations examine results from (i) Aghion et al. (2016, American Economic Review, 106, 3869–3897) on creative destruction and subjective well-being and (ii) Bond and Lang (2013, The Review of Economics and Statistics, 95, 1468–1479) on the fragility of the black–white test score gap.

A Quantitative Framework for Analyzing the Distributional Effects of Incentive Schemes

This paper develops the first quantitative framework for analyzing distributional effects of incentive schemes in public education. The analysis is built around a hump-shaped effort function, estimated semi-parametrically using exogenous incentive variation and rich administrative data. We identify key primitives that rationalize this effort function by estimating a flexible teacher effort-choice model. Both the model and parameter estimates are necessary components in our counterfactual framework for tracing the effects of alternative accountability systems on the entire test score distribution, with effort adjusting endogenously. We find widespread schemes that set a fixed target for all students give rise to a steep performance-inequality tradeoff. Further, counterfactual incentive policies can outperform existing schemes for the same cost — reducing the black-white test score gap by 7% (via student-specific bonuses), and lowering test-score inequality across students by 90% (via student-specific targets). Our quantitative approach opens up new possibilities for incentive design in practice.

The Black–White Education Scaled Test-Score Gap in Grades K-7

We address the ordinality of test scores by rescaling them by the average eventual educational attainment of students with a given test score in a given grade. We show that measurement error in test scores causes this approach to underestimate the black-white test score gap and use an instrumental variables procedure to adjust the gap. While the unadjusted gap grows rapidly in the early school years, particularly in reading, after correction for measurement error, the education-scaled gap is large, exceeds the actual black-white education gap and is roughly constant. Strikingly, the gap in all grades is largely explained by a small number of measures of socioeconomic background. We discuss the interpretation of scales tied to adult outcomes.

Test Score Measurement and the Black-White Test Score Gap

Research as to the size of the black-white test score gap often comes to contradictory conclusions. Recent literature has affirmed that the source of these contradictions and other controversies in education economics may be due to the fact that test scores contain only ordinal information. In this paper, I propose a normalization of test scores that is invariant to monotonic transformations. Under fairly weak assumptions, this metric has interval properties and thus solves the ordinality problem. The measure can serve as a valuable robustness check to ensure that any results are not simply statistical artifacts from the choice of scale.

Racial Interaction Effects and Student Achievement

Previous research has found that students who are of the same race as their teacher tend to perform better academically. This paper examines the possibility that both dosage and timing matter for these racial complementarities. Using a model of education production that explicitly accounts for past observable inputs, a conditional differences-in-differences estimation procedure is used to nonparametrically identify dynamic treatment effects of various sequences of interventions. Applying the methodology to Tennessee's Project STAR class size experiment, I find that racial complementarities may vary considerably according to the treatment path. Early exposures to same-race teachers yield benefits that persist in the medium run. This same-race matching effect may explain a nontrivial portion of the black–white test score gap.

Can Class-Based Substitute for Race-Based Student Assignment Plans? Evidence From Wake County, North Carolina

This study uses a North Carolina administrative data set to analyze racial segregation and student achievement in Wake County during race-based and income-based school assignment plans. We find a modest increase in the level of racial segregation in Wake schools during the income-based plan, but compared with other large districts in the state, Wake County remained relatively desegregated. We also find a small increase in reading and math test scores and a narrowing of the Black-White test score gap. Our analysis indicates that the improvement in math scores may be partially due to school composition changes attributable to the income-based assignment plan.

Beyond the Black–White Test Score Gap: Latinos’ Early School Experiences and Literacy Outcomes

Data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Survey–Birth Cohort are used to analyze the factors that lead to the reading readiness of children who participate in nonparental care the year prior to kindergarten (N = 4,550), with a specific focus on Latino children (N = 800). Stepwise multiple linear regression analysis demonstrates that reading scores are significantly influenced by the type of care provided the year prior to kindergarten, the caregiver’s education and beliefs about kindergarten readiness, as well as access to books and a computer in the home. Furthermore, mother’s level of education and marital status are important predictors of reading aptitude.

Dynamics of the black–white gap in academic achievement

The black–white test score gap remains a measurable phenomenon in the United States. Up to this point the literature has primarily focused on the black–white achievement gap without taking into account the underlying mobility patterns of individual students as they progress from one grade to the next. However, the degree to which policy makers and educators should be concerned about the black–white test score gap should be tied to how mobile the two groups of students are through the distribution of test scores from one grade to the next. In this paper I apply two nonparametric estimators of distributional mobility to data on test scores and track black–white differences in mobility across the entire distribution of achievement. When compared to whites, blacks tend to be less upwardly mobile and more downwardly mobile for both math and reading. This pattern is particularly prominent for reading in the very early years of schooling.

Kindergarten Black–White Test Score Gaps

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 Study–Kindergarten Class of 2010–2011. I find black–white test score gaps at kindergarten entry in 2010 in reading ( SD = .32), math ( SD = .54), and working memory ( SD = .52 among children with valid scores). Math and reading gaps widened by approximately .06 standard deviations over kindergarten, but the working memory gap was constant. Multivariate regressions show that student SES explained the reading gap at school entry, but gap decompositions suggest that school quality differences were responsible for the widening of the reading gap over kindergarten. SES explained much of the math gap at school entry, but the widening of the math gap could not be explained by SES, school quality, or other hypotheses.

The Evolution of the Black-White Test Score Gap in Grades K–3: The Fragility of Results

Abstract Although both economists and psychometricians typically treat them as interval scales, test scores are reported using ordinal scales. Using the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (ECLS-K) and the Children of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (CNLSY), we examine how order-preserving scale transformations affect the evolution of the black-white reading test score gap from kindergarten entry through third grade. Plausible transformations reverse the growth of the gap in the CNLSY and greatly reduce it in the ECLS-K during the early school years. All growth from entry through first grade and a nontrivial proportion from first to third grade probably reflects scaling decisions.

School accountability and the black–white test score gap

Since at least the 1960s, researchers have closely examined the respective roles of families, neighborhoods, and schools in producing the black–white achievement gap. Although many researchers minimize the ability of schools to eliminate achievement gaps, the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) increased pressure on schools to do so by 2014. In this study, we examine the effects of NCLB’s subgroup-specific accountability pressure on changes in black–white math and reading test score gaps using a school-level panel dataset on all North Carolina public elementary and middle schools between 2001 and 2009. Using difference-in-difference models with school fixed effects, we find that accountability pressure reduces black–white achievement gaps by raising mean black achievement without harming mean white achievement. We find no differential effects of accountability pressure based on the racial composition of schools, but schools with more affluent populations are the most successful at reducing the black–white math achievement gap. Thus, our findings suggest that school-based interventions have the potential to close test score gaps, but differences in school composition and resources play a significant role in the ability of schools to reduce racial inequality.

Permanent Income and the Black-White Test Score Gap

Analysts often examine the black-white test score gap conditional on family income. Typically only a current income measure is available. We argue that the gap conditional on permanent income is of greater interest, and we describe a method for identifying this gap using an auxiliary data set to estimate the relationship between current and permanent income. Current income explains only about half as much of the black-white test score gap as does permanent income, and the remaining gap in math achievement among families with the same permanent income is only 0.2 to 0.3 standard deviations in the CNLSY and ECLS samples. When we add permanent income to the controls used by Fryer and Levitt (2006), the unexplained gap in 3rd grade shrinks below 0.15 SDs, less than half of what is found with their controls.

Permanent Income and the Black-White Test Score Gap

Abstract Analysts often examine the black-white test score gap conditional on current family income. We describe a method for identifying the gap conditional on the family’s permanent income. Current income explains only about half as much of the black-white test gap as does permanent income, and the gap among families with the same permanent income is only 0.2 to 0.3 standard deviations in two commonly used samples. When we add permanent income to the controls used by Fryer and Levitt (2006), the unexplained gap in third grade shrinks below 0.15 SDs, less than half of what is found with their controls.

Early to rise? The effect of daily start times on academic performance

Local school districts often stagger daily start times for their schools in order to reduce busing costs. This paper uses data on all middle school students in Wake County, NC from 1999 to 2006 to identify the causal effect of daily start times on academic performance. Using variation in start times within schools over time, the effect is a two percentile point gain in math test scores – roughly fourteen percent of the black–white test score gap. I find similar results for reading scores and using variation in start times across schools. The effect is stronger for students in the lower end of the distribution of test scores. I find evidence supporting increased sleep as a mechanism through which start times affect test scores. Later start times compare favorably on cost grounds to other education interventions which result in similar test score gains.

The dynamics of the evolution of the Black–White test score gap

We apply a quantile version of the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition to estimate the counterfactual distribution of the test scores of Black students. In the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998–1999 (ECLS-K), we find that the gap initially appears only at the top of the distribution of test scores. As children age, however, the gap at the top shrinks whereas the gap in the middle part of the distribution grows. Moreover, the gap due to differences in the effect, rather than amount, of characteristics becomes important.

Permanent Income and the Black-White Test Score Gap

Analysts often examine the black-white test score gap conditional on family income. Typically only a current income measure is available. We argue that the gap conditional on permanent income is of greater interest, and we describe a method for identifying this gap using an auxiliary data set to estimate the relationship between current and permanent income. Current income explains only about half as much of the black-white test score gap as does permanent income, and the remaining gap in math achievement among families with the same permanent income is only 0.2 to 0.3 standard deviations in the CNLSY and ECLS samples. When we add permanent income to the controls used by Fryer and Levitt (2006), the unexplained gap in 3rd grade shrinks below 0.15 SDs, less than half of what is found with their controls.

Commentaries: Racial Differences in Test Preparation Strategies: A commentary on Shadow Education, American Style: Test Preparation, the SAT and College Enrollment

Claudia Buchmann, Dennis Condron and Vincent Roscigno s study, titled Shadow Education, American Style: Test Preparation, the SAT and College Enrollment, demonstrates that vigorous use of expensive test preparation tools, such as private classes and tutors, significantly boosts scores on standardized exams such as the SAT or ACT. This preparation, in turn, promotes access to more selective institutions. Because access to preparation varies according to social class, it turned out to be a key lever in the social transmission of privilege. One of the noteworthy findings in the BCR study is the racial and ethnic differences in the use of test preparation: blacks and Hispanics are more likely than whites from comparable backgrounds to utilize test preparation. The black-white gap is especially pronounced in the use of high school courses, private courses and private tutors. The Hispanic-white gap is more modest, and is limited to the use of private tutors. The black-white gap in test prep is surprising given blacks' lower levels of social and financial capital and the well-documented test score gap. In 2006, for example, the black-white test score gap was about 200 points, a decline from a gap of 250 points three decades ago (The College Board 2006). Consequently, in this comment, I wish to delve into the black-white variation in test preparation strategies in order to better understand its patterns and consider its relation to the edge black applicants receive in admissions at selective colleges and universities with affirmative action policies. My main objective is to outline a theoretical framework that will shed light on the racial and ethnic disparity in test preparation. In the interest of parsimony, I focus here on the pronounced black-white differences, yet the data indicates that the patterns for Hispanics and Asians are similar to those for blacks and whites, respectively, which strengthens the generalizability and relevance of the proposed framework. The analytical strategy I use conforms to the BCR study in terms of the dataset, multiple imputation, analytical weight and sample.1 Like BCR I use an indicator of highest-level test preparation but also constructed a variable that counts multiple test preparation activities. Unlike BCR, a distinction is made between private (private courses and tutors) and public (books, videos, software and high school courses) types of test preparation. This distinction is theoretically important because private preparation is not only more effective in raising

Early to Rise: The Effect of Daily Start Times on Academic Performance

Local school districts often stagger daily start times for their schools in order to reduce busing costs. This paper uses data on all middle school students in Wake County, NC from 1999-2006 to identify the causal effect of daily start times on academic performance. Using variation in start times within schools over time, the effect is a two percentile point gain in math test scores - roughly fourteen percent of the black-white test score gap. I find similar results for reading scores and using variation in start times across schools. The effect is stronger for students in the lower end of the distribution of test scores. I find evidence supporting increased sleep as a mechanism through which start times affect test scores. Later start times compare favorably on cost grounds to other education interventions which result in similar test score gains.