States as Sites of Educational (In)Equality: State Contexts and the Socioeconomic Achievement Gradient

Abstract

Socioeconomic achievement gaps have long been a central focus of educational research. However, not much is known about how (and why) between-district gaps vary among states, even though states are a primary organizational level in the decentralized education system in the United States. Using data from the Stanford Education Data Archive (SEDA), this study describes state-level socioeconomic achievement gradients and the growth of these gradients from Grades 3 to 8. We also examine state-level correlates of the gradients and their growth, including school system funding equity, preschool enrollment patterns, the distribution of teachers, income inequality, and segregation. We find that socioeconomic gradients and their growth rates vary considerably among states, and that between-district income segregation is positively associated with the socioeconomic achievement gradient.

What Is the Stanford Education Data Archive Teaching Us About National Educational Achievement?

“…Notably, Jang and Reardon (2019) find interesting patterns in the changes in SES-achievement gradients across grades. For example, the Grade 3 gradient is negatively correlated with the rate of change of the gradient from Grade 3 to Grade 8 ( r ≈ −.19).…”

“…For example, Shores and Steinberg (2019) shows that a $1,000 decline in per pupil spending is associated with a 0.17 standard deviation decline in student achievement. Jang and Reardon (2019) predict that a state with between-district income segregation that is 1 standard deviation higher should have a SES-achievement gradient that is 9% larger than the average gradient. And Kuhfeld et al (2019) show that district achievement correlates .97–.98 across different tests and linking procedures, and growth .82–.90.…”

“…Jang and Reardon (2019) use the district-level SES measures from the American Community Survey that are native in SEDA to explore district-level relationships between SES and achievement by state. Though these relationships are positive in all states, the states with the strongest relationships have gradients three times steeper than states with the weakest relationships.…”

“…Second, all of these articles linked educational data to other variables in other data sets, including the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (Shores & Steinberg, 2019), the Transitional Records Access Clearinghouse (Bellows, 2019; Kirksey et al, 2020), the Civil Rights Data Collection (Pearman et al, 2019), the American Community Survey (Jang & Reardon, 2019), and MAP Growth (Kuhfeld et al, 2019). Whether as outcomes, covariates, or question predictors, these merged variables enable researchers to answer important descriptive and causal questions.…”

The Promise of Private Education: A Case Study of Racialized, Gendered, and Socioeconomic Disparities in Achievement in One Private School

“…Furthermore, analyses have found that a larger proportion of the achievement gap can be attributed to differences within schools as opposed to between schools (Bohrnstedt et al, 2015). Likewise, income or affluence gaps demonstrate that individuals with lower household incomes consistently score below average in reading, writing, and math, while those in households with higher incomes consistently score above average (Hanushek et al, 2019;Jang & Reardon, 2019). In fact, students in families with the highest incomes score significantly better than those with average incomes as well as those with lower incomes.…”