Notes on Trends in the U.S. Income-Achievement Gap

Author/s
Eric A. Hanushek
Jacob Light
Paul E. Peterson
Laura M. Talpey
Ludger Woessmann
Published Date
Jun-22
Publication
(web publication)
Topics

Reardon (2011b) reports rapidly growing SES gaps when SES is measured by current parental income indicators. This differs dramatically from our analysis of trends in the SES-achievement gap (Hanushek et al. (2022)). We reconcile our findings with his by showing that the difference in results is due to systematic measurement errors in his analysis. When a trend line is estimated from the studies in his analysis less prone to measurement error, no upward trend in the SES-achievement gap is detected.