Gender Gaps in Math and Reading Gains During Elementary and High School by Race and Ethnicity (continued)

Gaps at a point in time can be quickly swamped by small differences in learning rates. Consequently we focus our research on rates of gain in achievement (i.e. learning rates). Some previous research, such as the work by Mead on NAEP, is based on comparisons of the performance of one cohort of students in one year (e.g., the average math scores of 9-year-olds in 2004) with the performance of another cohort in another year (e.g., the average math scores of 9-year-olds in 1973). While interesting, these comparisons cannot distinguish between differences in learning rates and differences in the composition of the cohorts being studied. In order to focus on learning rates we follow individual children over time.

Our data include two periods in children's lives. The first period starts in the fall of kindergarten and continues through the end of third grade (when children are typically 9 years old). The second period goes from eighth grade to twelfth grade, the critical adolescent and teenage years. In earlier work we looked at differences in test score growth rates by gender and by race separately (LoGerfo, Nichols, and Reardon 2006). In this report we look at the interactions between these two characteristics.

This report is divided into three sections. First, we discuss the data and analytic methods that produce the gender gap estimates. Second, we present and explain our findings. Finally, we conclude with a brief summary of our findings.

The complete paper is available in PDF format.