Test Score Gaps in New York State Schools: What do Fourth and Eighth Grade Results Show?

This report analyzes performance gaps by race/ethnicity, income and gender in New York State schools using fourth and eighth grade math and English language test results. Their results highlight the legacy of racial segregation where many schools have too few whites or non-whites to allow a meaningful calculation of the subgroup test performance or test score ‘gap’ between schools. Even with a minimum sub-group size of six, only 45.7% of elementary schools had enough whites or non-whites to calculate gaps. Findings indicate that the gaps do differ substantially; gaps between racially segregated schools are over 2.5 times greater than gaps in mixed schools.