ERIC Number: ED502511
Record Type: Non-Journal
Publication Date: 2008-Aug
Pages: N/A
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
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Trends in the Black-White Achievement Gap: Clarifying the Meaning of Within- and Between-School Achievement Gaps. NBER Working Paper No. 14213
Page, Lindsay C.; Murnane, Richard J.; Willett, John B.
National Bureau of Economic Research
We decompose black-white achievement gap trends between 1971 and 2004 into trends in within- and between-school differences. We show that the previous finding that narrowing within-school inequality explains most of the decline in the black-white achievement gap between 1971 and 1988 is sensitive to methodology. Employing a more detailed partition of achievement differences, we estimate that 40 percent of the narrowing of the gap through the 1970s and 1980s is attributable to the narrowing of within-school differences between black and white students. Further, the consequences for achievement of attending a high minority school became increasingly deleterious between 1971 and 1999.
Descriptors: Academic Achievement, White Students, African American Students, Racial Differences, Evaluation Methods, Measurement Techniques, Racial Composition, Trend Analysis, Equal Education, Low Achievement, Achievement Gains, Educational Environment, Environmental Influences
National Bureau of Economic Research. 1050 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138-5398. Tel: 617-588-0343; Web site: http://www.nber.org/cgi-bin/get_bars.pl?bar=pub
Publication Type: Reports - Descriptive
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Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: National Bureau of Economic Research
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
IES Cited: ED560724