What role does schooling play in the development of racial/ethnic inequalities in academic skills? Seasonal learning studies, which allow researchers to compare the growth of achievement gaps when school is in versus out of session, provide important evidence regarding whether schools reduce, reproduce, or exacerbate educational inequalities. Most studies that have compared the growth of achievement gaps when school is in versus out of session have been restricted to the early grades. In this study, we examine seasonal patterns of racial/ethnic achievement gaps using test scores from over 2.5 million kindergarten to eighth-grade students. Following three different cohorts of students from 2015 to 2018, we find that Black-White achievement gaps widen during school periods and shrink during summers, whereas Asian students generally pull ahead of White students at a faster rate during summers. At the same time, we find that disparities observed among older students are largely in place among kindergartners. Our results imply that although schooling does have disparate impacts on the learning trajectories of students, schools play less of a role in widening racial/ethnic achievement gaps than children’s prekindergarten environments.
AtteberryA.McEachinA. (2016). School’s out: Summer learning loss across grade levels and school contexts in the United States today. In AlexanderK.PitcockS.BoulayM. (Eds.), (Eds.), Summer learning and summer learning loss (pp. 35–54). Teachers College Press.
2.
AtteberryA.McEachinA. (2020). School’s out: The role of summers in understanding achievement disparities. American Educational Research Journal. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.3102/0002831220937285
3.
BriggsD. (2013). Measuring growth with vertical scales. Journal of Educational Measurement, 50(2), 204–226. https://doi.org/10.1111/jedm.12011
4.
CondronD. J. (2007). Stratification and educational sorting: Explaining ascriptive inequalities in early childhood reading group placement. Social Problems, 54(1), 139–60. https://doi.org/10.1525/sp.2007.54.1.139
5.
DadeyN.BriggsD. C. (2012). A meta-analysis of growth trends from vertically scaled assessments. Practical Assessment, Research and Evaluation, 17, Article 14. http://pareonline.net/getvn.asp?v=17&n=14
6.
Darling-HammondL. (2010). Recruiting and retaining teachers: Turning around the race to the bottom in high-need schools. Journal of Curriculum and Instruction, 4(1),16–32. https://doi.org/10.3776/joci.2010.v4n1p16-32
7.
DelpitL. D. (2012). “Multiplication is for white people”: Raising expectations for other people’s children. New Press.
DowneyD. B.CondronD. J. (2016). Fifty years since the Coleman Report: Rethinking the relationship between schools and inequality. Sociology of Education, 89(3), 207–220. https://doi.org/10.1177/0038040716651676
10.
DowneyD. B.von HippelP. T.BrohB. A. (2004). Are schools the great equalizer? Cognitive inequality during the summer months and the school year. American Sociological Review, 69(5), 613–635. https://doi.org/10.1177/000312240406900501
11.
EntwisleD. R.AlexanderK. L. (1992). Summer setback: Race, poverty, school composition, and mathematics achievement in the first two years of school. American Sociological Review, 57(1), 72–84. https://doi.org/10.2307/2096145
12.
EntwisleD. R.AlexanderK. L. (1994). Winter setback: The racial composition of schools and learning to read. American Sociological Review, 59(3), 446–60. https://doi.org/10.2307/2095943
13.
FarkasG.BeronK. (2004). The detailed age trajectory of oral vocabulary knowledge: differences by class and race. Social Science Research, 33(3). 464–497. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssresearch.2003.08.001
14.
FryerR. G.Jr.LevittS. D. (2004). Understanding the black-white test score gap in the first two years of school. Review of Economics and Statistics, 86(2), 447–464. https://doi.org/10.1162/003465304323031049
15.
FryerR. G.Jr.LevittS. D. (2006). The black-white test score gap through third grade. American Law and Economics Review, 8(2), 249–281. https://doi.org/10.1093/aler/ahl003
16.
GamoranA. (1992). The variable effects of high school tracking. American Sociological Review, 57(6), 812–828. https://doi.org/10.2307/2096125
HeynsB. L. (1978). Summer learning and the effects of schooling. Academic Press.
20.
HorvatE. M.WeiningerE. B.LareauA. (2003). From social ties to social capital: Class differences in the relations between schools and parent networks. American Educational Research Journal, 40(2), 319–351. https://doi.org/10.3102/00028312040002319
21.
KarabatsosG. (2001). The Rasch model, additive conjoint measurement, and new models of probabilistic measurement theory. Journal of Applied Measurement, 2(4), 389–423.
LareauA. (1989). Home advantage: Social class and parental intervention in elementary education. Palmer.
24.
LlerasC.RangelL. (2009). Ability grouping practices in elementary school and African American/Hispanic achievement. American Journal of Education, 115(2), 279–304. https://doi.org/10.1086/595667
25.
LucasS. R. (1999). Tracking inequality: Stratification and mobility in American high schools. Sociology of education series. Teachers College Press.
26.
LucasS. R.BerendsM. (2007). Race and track location in US public schools. Research in Social Stratification and Mobility, 25(3), 169–187. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rssm.2006.12.002
27.
MerryJ. J. (2015). Schools and inequality [Unpublished dissertation]. Columbus, Ohio.
28.
MorganS. L.WinshipC. (2007). Counterfactuals and causal inference: Methods and principles for social research. Cambridge University Press.
29.
Musu-GilletteL.de BreyC.McFarlandJ.HussarW.SonnenbergW.Wilkinson-FlickerS. (2017). Status and trends in the education of racial and ethnic groups 2017 (NCES 2017-051). U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. https://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2017051
30.
NogueraP.HurtadoA.FergusE. (Eds.). (2013). Invisible no more: Understanding the disenfranchisement of Latino men and boys. Routledge.
31.
PearmanF. A.IICurranF.C.FisherB.GardellaJ. (2019). Are achievement gaps related to discipline gaps? Evidence from national data. AERA Open, 5(4), 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1177/2332858419875440
32.
QuinnD. M.CoocN.McIntyreJ.GomezC. J. (2016). Seasonal dynamics of academic achievement inequality by socioeconomic status and race/ethnicity: Updating and extending past research with new national data. Educational Researcher, 45(8), 443–453. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X16677965
33.
QuinnD. M.McIntyreJ. (2017). Do learning rates differ by race/ethnicity over kindergarten? Reconciling results across gain score, first-difference, and random effects models. Economics of Education Review, 59, 81–86. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econedurev.2017.06.006
34.
RaudenbushS. W.BrykA. S. (2002). Hierarchical linear models: Applications and data analysis methods (Vol. 1). Sage.
35.
RaudenbushS. W.BrykA. S.CongdonR. (2013). HLM 7.01 for Windows [Computer software]. Scientific Software International.
ReardonS. F.KalogridesD.ShoresK. (2019). The geography of racial/ethnic test score gaps. American Journal of Sociology, 124(4), 1164–1221. https://doi.org/10.1086/700678
38.
ReardonS. F.PortillaX. A. (2016). Recent trends in income, racial, and ethnic school readiness gaps at kindergarten entry. AERA Open, 2 (3), 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1177/2332858416657343
39.
RonfeldtM.LoebS.WyckoffJ. (2013). How teacher turnover harms student achievement. American Educational Research Journal, 50(1), 4–36. https://doi.org/10.3102/0002831212463813
40.
ThissenD. (2012). Validity issues involved in cross-grade statements about NAEP results. American Institutes for Research, NAEP Validity Studies Panel.
41.
ThumY. M. (2018, July2–5). The vertical, interval scale assumption of a computerized adaptive test: Evidence from additive conjoint measurement [Paper presentation]. 11th Conference of the International Test Commission, Montreal, Canada.
42.
von HippelP. T.HamrockC. (2019). Do test score gaps grow before, during, or between the school years? Measurement artifacts and what we can know in spite of them. Sociological Science, 6, 43–80. https://doi.org/10.15195/v6.a3
43.
von HippelP. T.WorkmanJ.DowneyD. B. (2018). Inequality in reading and math skills forms mainly before kindergarten: A replication, and partial correction, of “Are Schools the Great Equalizer?”Sociology of Education, 91, 323–357. https://doi.org/10.1177/0038040718801760
44.
YoonA. J.MerryJ. J. (2018). Understanding the role of schools in the Asian-white gap: A seasonal comparison approach. Race Ethnicity and Education, 21(5), 680–700. https://doi.org/10.1080/13613324.2017.1365053
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
