Working Paper: NBER ID: w14213
Authors: Lindsay C. Page; Richard J. Murnane; John B. Willett
Abstract: We decompose black-white achievement gap trends between 1971 and 2004 into trends in within- and between-school differences. We show that the previous finding that narrowing within-school inequality explains most of the decline in the black-white achievement gap between 1971 and 1988 is sensitive to methodology. Employing a more detailed partition of achievement differences, we estimate that 40 percent of the narrowing of the gap through the 1970s and 1980s is attributable to the narrowing of within-school differences between black and white students. Further, the consequences for achievement of attending a high minority school became increasingly deleterious between 1971 and 1999.
Keywords: Black-White Achievement Gap; Educational Attainment; NAEP; Oaxaca Decomposition
JEL Codes: I21
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Reduction in within-school differences (I24) | Narrowing of black-white achievement gap (I24) |
| School composition (I24) | Student achievement (I24) |
| Changes in parental educational attainment (I24) | Changes in achievement gap (I24) |
| Changes in school quality (I21) | Changes in achievement gap (I24) |
| Changes in test scores of black and white students (I24) | Changes in achievement gap (I24) |
| Trends in educational attainments of students (I21) | Achievement gap (I24) |