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School Quality and the Black-White Achievement Gap

School Quality and the Black-White Achievement Gap. Eric Hanushek Steven Rivkin January 2006 (Revised June 2006). Examine changes in the black/white Math achievement gap from K-8. Use Texas administrative data and ECLS

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School Quality and the Black-White Achievement Gap

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  1. School Quality and the Black-White Achievement Gap Eric Hanushek Steven Rivkin January 2006 (Revised June 2006)

  2. Examine changes in the black/white Math achievement gap from K-8 • Use Texas administrative data and ECLS • Describe changes in gap and decompose into within and between school components • Investigate differences by initial position in the achievement distribution and gender • Do initially high achieving blacks suffer the largest drop-off? • Identify contributions of specific school and peer factors to changes in achievement gap

  3. Data • UTD Texas Schools Project (TSP) • Administrative panel data set • Early Childhood Longitudinal Survey (ECLS) • NCES survey

  4. Possibility of variation in gap changes across distribution • Examine differences by initial achievement • Examine differences by gender • Sources • Actual difference in evolution of knowledge differential • test instrument driven pattern

  5. Decomposition into within and between school components • Coefficient on black dummy variable in school fixed effect achievement regression captures student weighted average within school difference • However, it does not capture within school contribution to overall gap because of uneven distribution of blacks and whites among schools

  6. Implications of Uneven Distribution • The more uneven the distribution the smaller is the within school contribution given actual differences within schools • Schools contribute more to the within school component the more balanced the distribution and the higher the enrollment

  7. Black/White Achievement Gap

  8. Examine changes across initial achievement distribution • Comparisons of blacks and whites with same initial scores problematic because of measurement error induced regression to the mean • Mean regression tends to raise achievement gap for blacks and whites with same initial scores

  9. Our Approach • Classify students according to 3rd grade reading score • Assumes positive correlation between true reading and math achievement and no correlation in test measurement error • Divide 3rd grade reading distribution into 20 intervals of equal length • In TSP, most students in top categories

  10. Patterns of achievement gap changes by initial Achievement • ECLS • Higher growth in early grades • little systematic difference except for top category • Most between schools

  11. Patterns of achievement gap changes by initial Achievement • TSP • Higher growth in early grades without strong pattern • Between grades 5 and 8 gap increased only in higher categories • Between school gap declines in each of the bottom 7 categories but did not decline in any of the remaining groups

  12. Gender Differences • Tables reveal little systematic pattern by gender in either the ECLS or TSP data • However, low test taking rates for blacks and to a lesser extent whites in ECLS raises concerns, and low test taking rates of black boys in TSP likely conceals academic difficulties

  13. Black-White difference in test taking status distribution for boys

  14. Examine contribution of schools • Sizeable between school contribution consistent with important role for schools but not evidence of causal effect due to extensive sorting of families • We focus on 3 factors • Teacher experience; student racial composition; student turnover

  15. Empirical approach • Use full panel of TSP data for 4 cohorts • Regress achievement in grade g on • Proportions of teachers with 0, 1, and 2 yrs experience; • Proportion of students new to the school; and • Proportion of students who are black • Controls • Fixed effects • Fully interact variables by race

  16. Black/White Differences in Texas Elementary School Characteristics • % students black much higher for blacks • 28 point mean difference in TSP • Large difference in ECLS • % teachers in 1st or 2nd year much higher for blacks • 4 points in TSP; 2 points in ECLS • Student turnover much higher for blacks • 4 points in both TSP anc ECLS

  17. Contributions of Teacher and Peer Variables to gap in TSP (exponential depreciation of 0.3 per year)

  18. Do peer and teacher variables explain different pattern by initial achievement? • Is there variation by initial achievement in • Characteristic differences by race? • Little or none • Characteristic effects? • Some evidence of this

  19. Policy Implications are complicated • Desegregation limited by legal rulings and may alter relationship between achievement and racial composition • Student turnover difficult to control • Teacher preferences regarding working conditions must be considered in efforts to raise teacher quality

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