Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Racial/ethnic achievement gaps in math and readings at school entry have narrowed somewhat over the last few decades but have remained a persistent feature of U.S. educational systems (Reardon & Portilla, 2016). The most recent national data on kindergarten test score gaps are from students entering kindergarten in 2010. In the years since then, many states have expanded their public preschool options for 3 and 4-year-olds. Thirty-three percent of 4-year-olds in the United States were enrolled in state prekindergarten programs in 2017, an increase of 9% in a decade (Friedman-Krauss et al., 2018). However, since most state testing programs do not begin until 3rd grade, we have little evidence on whether children’s academic skills at school entry have increased during this period.

In this study, we use a nationally-weighted dataset collected by NWEA containing math and reading test scores from kindergartners in each year from 2010 (N=88,900) to 2017 (N=479,000). We estimate both trends in overall achievement levels as well as achievement gaps in the fall of kindergarten. We find that student’s achievement levels at school entry were mostly flat in the first half of the decade but slightly decreased between 2014 and 2017. In total, the average math score has dropped approximately .24 standard deviations (SD) and the average reading score has dropped .14 SD during the 8 year time span.

Racial/ethnic achievement gaps at school entry have been mostly flat over the last 8 years, with Black and Hispanic students consistently scoring approximately .5 SD below White students in both math and reading. These findings indicate that the narrowing of racial/ethnic achievement gaps reported by Reardon and Portilla (2016) may have leveled off during the last decade.