Achievement Gap

How It Works

The achievement gap refers to the disparities in standardized test scores, graduation rates, college enrollment, and other academic outcomes between different student subgroups. The most commonly cited gaps are between white and Black students, white and Hispanic students, and between students from low-income and higher-income families. On the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the white-Black reading gap in fourth grade has been approximately 25-30 points (on a 500-point scale) for decades, representing roughly two and a half grade levels of difference. The income-based gap is similarly large. The achievement gap has multiple interconnected causes: unequal school funding, differences in teacher quality and experience, neighborhood effects, access to early childhood education, out-of-school learning opportunities, and the compounding effects of historical discrimination. Schools cannot fully close achievement gaps on their own because many contributing factors exist outside school walls, but the size of the gap varies enormously between schools with similar demographics, proving that school-level factors matter. On OpenSchoolData, we report proficiency data by subgroup when available so parents and researchers can see not just a school's overall performance but how equitably it serves all students. Schools that achieve both high overall scores and small within-school gaps are the highest-performing schools by any measure.

Related Terms

• Proficiency Rate, The percentage of students at a school who meet or exceed grade-level standards on state-mandated standardized tests in reading and math.
• Free and Reduced-Price Lunch (FRL), A federal program providing subsidized meals to students from low-income families, widely used as a proxy measure for school-level poverty rates.
• English Learner (EL), A student whose primary language is not English and who is developing English language proficiency, previously referred to as Limited English Proficient (LEP) or English Language Learner (ELL).
• Special Education, Specially designed instruction provided at no cost to parents for students with disabilities, as mandated by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).