A Counterfactual Analysis of Racial and Residential Test-Score Gaps in Year-Round and Nine-Month Schools

• In Event: 435 - Section on Sociology of Education Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 13. Race/Ethnic Gaps across Educational Outcomes

Abstract

Persistent racial/ethnic and residential disparities in test-scores suggest schools fail to serve as society’s great equalizers. In fact, studies show that racial inequalities in test-scores grow mostly while children are in school rather than when they are not. However, these studies rarely consider the qualities of children’s neighborhoods as contributors to educational stratification, or use counterfactual modeling to strengthen causal inferences. Using ECLS-K data, an optimized matching algorithm and HLM, we pair children who attend year-round schools to those in 9-month schools. We then explore 1) whether there are mean differences in the reading and math performances of 1st graders attending year-round and 9-month schools; 2) if racial and residential differences in children’s test-scores exist between the schooling types; and, 3) if neighborhood effects related to children’s performances strengthen or weaken as their exposure to schooling increases. In contrast to previous claims that schooling increases test-score inequality, we find that year-round schooling is related to less racial inequality, most notably for African Americans, and that schools appear essential to the delivery of neighborhood influences on math and reading test-scores. The study implies that schools can be greater equalizers according to race than they are currently, but may also serve as enablers of neighborhoods’ impressive stratifying effects.

Author

• Odis D. Johnson, Washington University-St. Louis