Some schools much better than others at closing achievement gaps

Recent research demonstrates that the test score gap between relatively advantaged and relatively disadvantaged students is much higher in some school districts than it is in other districts. But measured school quality often varies dramatically within a school district, and therefore it is important to know whether individual schools differ in the relative success of advantaged and disadvantaged students.

A new report finds that schools vary dramatically in the relative success of advantaged and disadvantaged students, and that different schools within the same school district differ substantially in terms of their advantaged-disadvantaged success gaps. In some schools, both advantaged and disadvantaged students fare especially well; while in other schools, both fare especially poorly; while in still others, one group does relatively well and the other group does relatively poorly.

The report investigates whether these differences across schools can be explained by differences in relative kindergarten readiness of advantaged and disadvantaged students, and finds that pre-school preparation is unlikely to explain the cross-school differences that we find. Moreover, the report find that overall school advantage levels are unrelated to differences between the success levels of advantaged and disadvantaged students.