The Achievement Gap Fails to Close: Half Century of testing shows persistent divide between haves and have-nots

Author/s
Eric A. Hanushek
Paul E. Peterson
Laura M. Talpey
Ludger Woessmann
Published Date
Summer 2019
Publication
Education Next
Details
19(3)
Pages
pp. 8-17
Topics
Despite the topic’s importance, surprisingly little scholarship has focused on long-term changes in the size of the achievement gap between students from higher and lower socio-economic backgrounds. Our new research, presented here, attempts to fill this void, using data from four national assessments of student performance administered to representative samples of U.S. students over nearly five decades.