Fordham’s latest study finds that fewer Black and Hispanic students from the highest-SES group are achieving at NAEP’s Advanced level than we would expect, given their socioeconomic status. That disparity clearly commands our attention. But so do the findings on Asian American high achievers—who deserve our attention for a different reason.
Besides suffocating heat, humidity, and wildfires, the summer of 2023 also brought a seismic shift to higher education: the Supreme Court’s striking down of affirmative action in college admissions.
Putting aside the rancorous debates about the rationale and implications of the decision, at the heart of the Harvard case was clear evidence that the university was discriminating against Asian students.
A revealing 2022 study of Harvard admissions found a “substantial penalty against Asian American applicants relative to their white counterparts.” Scholars estimated that, given that the overall admissions rate for Asian American applicants at Harvard was around 5 percent, removing what amounted to a handicap would increase their admissions chances by at least 19 percent.
What’s more, the researchers took on a surprisingly candid tone when noting the differences between the Asian and White applicant pool:
While it is widely understood that Asian American applicants are academically stronger than whites, it is startling just how much stronger they are. During the period we analyze, there were 42 percent more white applicants than Asian American applicants overall. Yet, among those who were in the top 10 percent of applicants based on grades and test scores, Asian American applicants outnumbered white applicants by more than 45 percent.
Startling indeed.
Findings from Fordham’s new study, Excellence Gaps by Race and Socioeconomic Status, reminded us of this eye-popping imbalance. Authored by Fordham’s Meredith Coffey and Adam Tyner, the report digs into how race and socioeconomic status (SES) interact to shape academic “excellence gaps”—disparities in performance among groups of students achieving at the highest levels.
Their analysis utilizes nearly twenty years of eighth-grade reading and math assessment data (2003 to 2022) to document the progress of America’s highest-performing students, meaning those who earned “Advanced” scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a.k.a., “The Nation’s Report Card.” Among other things, it finds that fewer Black and Hispanic students from the highest-SES group (those with college-educated mothers) are achieving at Advanced levels than we would expect given their socioeconomic status. That’s a disparity clearly worth our attention.
But so are the study’s findings on Asian American high achievers—who deserve our attention for a different reason. Two decades ago, Asian American and Pacific Islander students (AAPI) were already disproportionately reaching the Advanced level of performance, and they’ve only made more progress since then (Tables FW-1–2). Part of that progress is due to raising the floor: Coffey and Tyner find that, among students in the lower-SES ranks (those whose mothers have a high school diploma or less), there’s been a substantial increase over time in the proportion of AAPI students who are Advanced.
Add it up and we can see that the AAPI advantage has only grown.
Table FW-1. Percentage of students scoring at the Advanced level in math in 2003 and 2022
Table FW-2. Percentage of students scoring at the Advanced level in reading in 2003 and 2022
Now let’s put these numbers into a context that is familiar to admissions officers at highly-selective colleges. If we consider both the percentage of students in each racial subgroup achieving at the Advanced level and their share of the student population, what does the racial composition of students scoring Advanced look like? Here are the pie charts for our top students in 2003 and again in 2022.
Figure FW-1. Racial composition of eighth grade students at the Advanced level in math in 2003 and in 2022
It’s clear that the proportion of Advanced students who are White dropped significantly, from 82 to 61 percent (Figure FW-1). Yet most of the diversity gains came from Asian students (who went from 10 to 22 percent) and, to a lesser degree, Hispanic students (from 3 to 8 percent). Unfortunately, the proportion of Advanced students who are Black decreased over that time, from a tragically low 3 to 2 percent.
Now let’s see how it looks for reading in 2003 and then in 2022:
Figure FW-2. Racial composition of eighth grade students at the Advanced level in reading in 2003 and in 2022
The pattern in Figure FW-2 is largely the same: big declines in the proportion of White students, with large gains for Asian and Hispanic students. The Black proportion is again down, from 5 to 3 percent.
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What can we take from all of this, particularly when it comes to Asian high achievers?
First, they are making solid gains and their success deserves to be recognized.
Second, although high-achieving students in eighth grade in the United States are a more diverse group than twenty years ago, most of this growing diversity is driven by gains by Asian and Hispanic students. For Hispanic students, that largely tracks the growth of their population as a whole, which has nearly doubled over the past two decades. That’s part of the story for Asian students, too (their numbers are up by a third), but it’s also due to their improved performance. Case in point: Our study finds that Asian students are so high achieving that even those in the lowest-socioeconomic-status group often equal or outperform higher-SES students of other racial and ethnic groups.
Third, we need to learn from the success of AAPI students and their families—not be threatened by it or seek to depress their chances of gaining admission to prestigious institutions. At the national, state, and local levels, policymakers and educators should ask: Are there observable practices among Asian students that could apply more broadly? For instance, are they more likely to participate in extracurricular activities, sign up for more challenging classes, or take part in academic tutoring, clubs, or competitions? Are these behaviors helping AAPI students to reach the highest level of academic achievement? If so, how could smart policies expand those opportunities to students from other communities?
Education reformers spend an inordinate amount of time, energy, and resources (rightly so) on supporting low-performing students. But high performers are often left to fend for themselves. Let’s just say this: It’s not right. We can do better. And we should start doing better today.
Getting advanced learners (a.k.a. “gifted” students) the education they need, and ensuring that this works equitably for youngsters from every sort of background, is substantially the responsibility of state leaders.
Districts and individual schools, charters included, do the heavy lifting, but states create the policy structures (and funding flows) within which this happens. They create guidelines for which students are eligible, how they should be identified, what services must be provided for them, how to track their progress and the performance of their schools, what qualifications must their teachers possess, and how to ensure fairness across the board.
Today, sadly, America’s high-flying students—and those with the potential to soar—face a dizzying array of inconsistent and incomplete state policies and practices. This is meticulously—and depressingly—documented in the National Association for Gifted Children’s “State of the States” report. Working through its tables and analyses yields much insight into what a jumble is this policy domain between states—and how inconsistent many states are within their own policies.
In Fordham’s home state of Ohio, for example, statutes supply a reasonably clear definition of who’s eligible for “gifted and talented” education, a mandate for their identification, and guidance as to what methods should be used to identify them. The Buckeye State also does a credible job of tracking the achievement growth (on state assessments) at the school level of those who do get identified, and it reports how many within that population actually receive some sort of extra services from their districts. Good start, sure.
Yet Ohio has absolutely no requirement for serving those kids, i.e., nothing that obligates Buckeye schools to do anything different for their advanced learners at any level—not elementary, not middle, not high school—let alone any mechanism for ensuring equitable participation. As a result, just 5.2 percent of those identified as “gifted” in Ohio are Black and 21.4 percent come from low-SES families (these data are from 2020–21), though the state’s public-school population that year contained approximately 16.8 percent Black youngsters and 48.4 percent from lower-SES households. Unsurprisingly, Ohio loses large quantities of high-potential human capital—and does far less well than it might on upward mobility—by virtue of the fact that gifted poor kids are much likelier to “lose altitude” as they pass through school than their more prosperous peers.
What, then, should state leaders do—assuming, as we should, that they care about giving every child the fullest and most challenging education that those youngsters can effectively use, developing their state’s human capital, deploying rational policies, and narrowing the yawning “excellence gaps” that exist today?
Rejoice! An answer is at hand. They should turn to and follow the useful nine-part policy roadmap for state leaders that was recently developed by the National Working Group on Advanced Education in its excellent report, Building a Wider, More Diverse Pipeline of Advanced Learners.
Here’s the plan—noting up front that all nine of these steps must be taken in synchronized fashion. It’s not “pick and choose” your policy—or today’s chaos will persist.
First, in their school and district accountability systems, states should place significant weight on student-level progress over time, not just grade-level proficiency, so as to encourage all schools to help all students achieve their full potential, including high achievers. When all the focus is on getting kids over the proficient bar, those who have already cleared it may be ignored.
Second, states should eliminate any policies that bar early entrance to kindergarten, middle school, or high school. This allows high performers to start sooner, move faster, and get farther.
Third, states should mandate the use of local, school-based norms for identifying students for advanced programs, in particular at the elementary level. That means that every elementary school in the state should have a “gifted program” of some kind, serving at least the top 5 or 10 percent of its students or ensuring that they’re well served elsewhere.
Fourth, states should implement specific requirements about the services provided to advanced learners, services such as achievement grouping, accelerated learning, serious enrichment, specialized schools, and more. Too many states—as in the Ohio example above—require identification but nothing to ensure that those who get identified will get the schooling they need.
Fifth, states should mandate that districts and charter networks allow for acceleration (including grade skipping) for students who could benefit from it, and should clarify that middle school students who complete high school courses can earn high school credit.
Sixth, state should publicly report on the students participating in advanced education, including their achievement and growth over time, as well as their demographic characteristics.
Seventh, states should ensure that preparation and in-service professional-development programs offer evidence-based instruction in advanced education, both for district-level coordinators and for teachers.
Eighth, states should enforce the federal requirement that states explain how teacher-preparation programs address education of special populations, including advanced learners. (Today, this is a requirement for Title II reports that is widely ignored.)
Ninth and finally, states should provide funding and other incentives to encourage schools to frequently and equitably evaluate all students and provide a continuum of services to every student who could benefit.
Take that list to heart, state leaders, put its precepts into practice—all, not some of them, and in time your state will do right by its advanced learners, strengthen its economy, encourage upward mobility, and boost equality of opportunity.
If you believe the media, it seems a dark lord has come to cut down the educational Eden that is the Houston Independent School District. He’s closing libraries to open detention centers. He’s “dismantling” public education in Texas. He’s a McCarthy-like demagogue bent on jailing educators. Protest signs outside the district headquarters compare his policies to prison and occupied territories. Next will come fire and brimstone.
Such hyperventilation is entirely unwarranted, first because the district was already sorely troubled. In 2019, when the Texas Education Agency (TEA) initiated a state takeover, Houston ISD had twenty-one failing schools and its board members faced several misconduct allegations. Last Spring, the TEA succeeded in its efforts and appointed a crusading new superintendent Mike Miles to head the flailing district.
But this story begins earlier, roughly two decades ago. Once upon a time, Houston ISD was, in fact, a shining star of the education reform movement, with many deeming it the “Texas Miracle.” But a changing of the school board guard over the last decade coincided with a slow descent into mediocrity. Miles’s appointment is less of a nefarious attempt by conservatives to wrest control of public schools from good, well-meaning liberals—as the New York Times frames it—and more an emergency measure to resuscitate a once-enterprising district and try to do right by its 190,000 pupils.
Miles’s story also begins decades ago. Before his tenure in Houston, he helmed Colorado’s Harrison School District, where he gained notoriety for pioneering work in merit-based pay schemes. In Texas, he then led the Dallas public schools—the Texas Tribune characterized it as a “successful stint”—where he implemented the ACE initiative that financially rewarded the most effective teachers who chose to teach in the lowest-performing schools. An academic review of the policy found that the improvements it fostered were “dramatic, bringing average achievement in the previously lowest performing schools close to the district average.” Since then, he has been the CEO of Third Future Schools, a charter network that specializes in school turnarounds.
He’s no tyrant, but a seasoned education reformer with a powerful track record. The education reform movement has something of a love-affair with enterprising personalities—Eva Moskowitz and Michelle Rhee, for example—no-nonsense types who come in and push through significant policy reforms through sheer force of will without heed to unions weeping or media gnashing of teeth.
Some have been more successful than others. In all cases, however, their well-publicized actions have influenced districts and schools across the country, providing both models to emulate or failures to avoid. So far, Miles’s short tenure in Houston bodes well.
This includes dealing forcefully with a student misbehavior epidemic. In Houston as elsewhere across America, it’s reached near-crisis levels after returning to full-time, in-school operations. Some surveys suggest that student violence has doubled across the country, both among students and towards teachers. While optically questionable, Miles’s decision to repurpose some school libraries into discipline centers shows that he is one of the few district leaders in the country willing to take the behavior crisis seriously. Nor is he abolishing these libraries—students can still check out books—but repurposing them when necessary to account for increased rates of detentions and in-school suspensions.
His other significant policy move so far has been a promise to pair back administrative staffing. According to Miles, Houston’s central office staff has increased over the last decade even as student enrollment has declined. Cutting over 2,000 such positions, he suggests, will allow the district to offer more competitive pay-for-performance system to the district’s best teachers. In Dallas, his similar ACE initiative concurrently supported teachers with better training in reading and math instruction, extended days, and increased parent engagement.
Finally, Miles is leaning on community members to provide supplementary classes like Spin, yoga, piano, and photography. Very evil indeed.
Since 2008, the Texas Education Agency has taken over seven districts, seen improvement in six of these, and returned control to five. It’s possible, of course, that Miles will lead the giant Houston district into an educational wilderness. But it’s far more likely that he’ll implement a mix of reforms and oversee moderate improvements in the district. In neither case is he implementing, in the words of the former board president, a “partisan agenda” intent on “weakening Texas Public Schools.”
Many Americans believe that the foremost mission of public education is to provide a pathway to success for every student, even in the face of considerable life obstacles. Yet persistent achievement gaps along dimensions of race, income, family education level, and other factors call this earnest expectation into question. A recent CALDER working paper by thirteen scholars—among them Tim Sass, Cory Koedel, David Figlio, Dan Goldhaber, Eric Hanushek, and Steve Rivkin—examines academic mobility in U.S. public schools to determine the extent to which that vaunted pathway to success actually exists for all public school students. By academic mobility, they mean how much students’ ranks in the distribution of academic performance change during their time in school. An education system with high academic mobility would be one where students’ early-grade ranks are less predictive of their later-grade ranks; one with low academic mobility would see students locked into their early-grade ranks for their entire school career.
The researchers use data from seven states—Georgia, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, Oregon, Texas, and Washington—comprising nearly 3 million students. They follow four cohorts of all students in those states between 2005–06 and 2008–09 who have standardized test scores in math and ELA in the third grade (the initial testing grade in states) and track them through high school, where they typically assess progress in English language arts in tenth or eleventh grade (which tends to be the exam with the highest coverage rate administered in a common grade). Students attend traditional district schools and charter schools, although the latter contribute little to the results since there are comparatively few of them in the total sample.
Their four outcomes of interest are eighth grade test performance, high school test performance, on-time high school graduation, and high school graduation within one year of being on time. Their focus is on upward mobility among initially-low-achieving students. They primarily assess absolute upward mobility (as opposed to relative mobility that compares kids to their peers), which is gauged from the 25th percentile of the distribution of initial performance ranks.
The study follows the framework developed by Raj Chetty and colleagues to study intergenerational economic mobility. That mostly means that their test-based mobility metrics are constructed based on percentile rankings in the test distribution at different points in time during the schooling career.
Overall, students’ ranks in the distribution of academic performance are highly persistent during K–12 education; thus, it follows that absolute upward mobility is low. For example, on average across the seven states, a student who starts at the 25th percentile in the third grade can be expected to perform at roughly the 30th percentile by high school.
Among students who begin with a low performance rank, those from more advantaged backgrounds generally have greater upward academic mobility than their peers from less advantaged backgrounds. But despite finding that academic mobility is low on average in U.S. public schools, the researchers do see statistically significant differences in upward mobility across school districts, which tends to be driven by differences in their initial “baseline” of mobility, when students were first tested
They further find that absolute upward mobility is largest in districts serving students from more socioeconomically advantaged backgrounds. For instance, mobility is higher in districts where local-area incomes, education levels, and residential stability are higher; and where more Asian and White families live. Outside of those attributes, district value-added to student achievement, which controls for student characteristics, is also a consistently strong predictor of high upward mobility. Additionally, because high school graduation rates tend not to be discerning (rates are already so high), students’ early career performance rank is a weaker predictor of their likelihood of graduating.
In summary, academic mobility as a whole appears to be limited, at least as defined here. These results underscore existing research on the persistence, and even widening, of achievement gaps that occur during K–12 schooling. Yes, that feels rather defeatist; however, there is one practical implication: Because baseline mobility is a key driver of differences across districts—and districts with high baseline mobility increase progress throughout the achievement distribution—low-performing students tend to experience their largest gains in districts where students generally excel overall. So district leaders should think twice about targeting additional resources and improvement strategies to specific groups and/or specific grade levels, as is often the case. That’s because building a culture of excellence in schools early on—across the board, aimed at all students—could be the rising tide that lifts all boats.
SOURCE: Wes Austin et al., “Academic Mobility in U.S. Public Schools: Evidence from Nearly 3 Million Students,” CALDER Working Paper (March 2023).
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Linda Jacobson, a senior writer at The 74, joins Mike to discuss why more students are attending in-person classes with a virtual teacher. Then, on the Research Minute, Amber discusses a new study on the minimally positive effect of summer school interventions designed to mitigate pandemic learning loss.
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