Low-income pupils still lag on tests

Despite a consistent rise in test scores, the achievement gap between poor Californians and their middle-class fellow students might be growing, a University of California-Berkeley report shows.

Poor students have always lagged behind their more well-off counterparts on standardized tests.

However, over the past three years the chasm has grown, particularly in English and in middle school, according to a report by Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE), a research group based at UC-Berkeley, UC-Davis and Stanford University.

The numbers belie the excitement over the rapid academic gains that immediately followed California’s major foray into school accountability in 1999, said Bruce Fuller, co-director of PACE and a UC-Berkeley professor.

“We saw this encouraging buoyancy in test scores,” Fuller said. “But seven years into this accountability initiative, achievement gaps have remained largely unchanged. These disparities in achievement have even widened.”

The study also shows that though students fare better than before, those with less money find it harder to catch up.

In 2003, nearly half of middle-class eighth-graders scored at grade level on state English tests, compared with 16 percent of poor eighth-graders.

The divide stood at 28 percentage points. Three years later, that figure has grown to 33 percentage points, according to the report.

In algebra, 47 percent of middle-class eighth-graders passed the test in 2003, compared with fewer than a quarter of poor students. This year, 53 percent of middle-class students passed in math, alongside 26 percent of the poor, meaning the gap grew from 25 percentage points to 27 over three years.

Younger students showed a smaller gap. In second, third and fourth grades, the difference between poor and middle-class student performance in math narrowed from 2003 to this year.

“We’ve had our best results in the early grades,” said Rick Miller of the Department of Education.

Miller said state Superintendent of Schools Jack O’Connell recognizes the severity of the achievement gap.

But he noted that researchers should not overlook the gains made in previous years.

“Consistently, all kids in California have improved,” Miller said, “and that’s meaningful.”

By Shirley Dang
MediaNews