| Pamela Davis-Kean
University of Michigan
Trajectories of achievement: Understanding the profiles of achievement within race
FINAL REPORT
The achievement gap in American schools has long been the focus of educational research, policy, and intervention. This study took a new approach to examining the gap by looking for different achievement trajectories within each racial group. We used latent class analyses to identify different achievement trajectories within each racial group and determine what percent of the population are characterized by each trajectory. To examine our questions we used the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort (ECLS-K) which has approximately 8,060 students who entered kindergarten in the fall of 1998 and had complete math and reading achievement scores in the fifth grade. In our first analyses, we found heterogeneity within each racial group, suggesting that there are in fact Òachievement gapsÓ within each racial group.
Even though this study gives us some interesting information on achievement across time by racial groups and demonstrates that the achievement gap exists within race as well as between racial groups, there is still more work to be done to understand these trajectories and who makes up these trajectories. One potential avenue is identify and test various family and school variables that may predict differentially to membership in these groups and that will serve as a source of information on where intervention efforts will need to be focused as well as a potential ways to screen for children who are at-risk for certain trajectories of achievement. Once we have addressed these questions, this research will give schools, teachers, parents, researchers, and policymakers powerful information that can be used to address the specific achievement issues of different types of achievers and may help reduce the achievement gaps that currently dominate our school systems. This study is the first step in this process.
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