Study Finds Gaps Remain Large for Hispanic Students

Published Online: June 23, 2011, Education Week

By Sarah D. Sparks

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While growing numbers of Hispanic students have changed the face of American education over the past two decades, the gap between them and their white classmates in math and reading remains as wide as it was in the 1990s, according to a new federal study.

The National Center for Education Statistics report, released Thursday morning, finds that Hispanic students overall have improved significantly on the National Assessment of Educational Progress since 1990. The mean scale scores in mathematics rose 28 points for Hispanic 4th graders and 21 points for 8th graders; in reading, the scores improved 10 points in the 4th and 8th grades from the early 1990s to 2009, with each 10-point increase equal to about one grade level of improvement.

Yet non-Hispanic white students exceeded Hispanic students’ increase in math in both the 4th and 8th grades during the same time, and while white students’ performance improved more slowly in reading, the growth was not slow enough for Hispanic students to catch up and close the gaps of more than two grade levels between the groups in both subjects.

Trends in Reading

Achievement gaps have narrowed since 1998 between white students and Hispanic students who are not classified as English-language learners on National Assessment of Educational Progress tests in reading. But the progress has been less marked for Hispanic ELLs, who continue to trail far behind both white students and Hispanic students with better English-language skills in both 4th and 8th grades. At the 8th grade level, the 32-point gap between ELL and non-ELL Hispanics grew by 7 scale-score points, to 39, between 1998 and 2009.

SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education

“I think with this report coming out, people can respond in two ways,” said Raul González, the director of legislative affairs for the Washington-based National Council of LaRaza, a Hispanic-advocacy organization. “We can say, ‘Well, we tried and we failed, so let’s not try anymore,’ or we can look at the data and say, ‘If 20 to 25 percent of your school system’s kids are not doing well, we need to do something urgent.’ ”

The report on Hispanics is the second in a series of NCES reports analyzing long-term achievement trends for specific student groups on NAEP, often dubbed “the nation’s report card.” It compares students’ average scale scores on the tests, not the percentages of students who reach each proficiency level.

The first study, in 2009, found narrowing achievement gaps between black and white students in 4th grade math and reading and 8th grade math, but there, too, white students retained a two-grade-level performance advantage on NAEP.

Language and Poverty

The new study does point to promising signs of improvement. Among students in poverty, as identified by the National School Lunch Program, Hispanic and white students both improved significantly in math in both grades between 2003, when the data were first disaggregated, and 2009. The achievement gap narrowed slightly in grade 4, and it tightened notably in grade 8, dropping from 17 points to 13 points.

Language ability also seems to play a role in the achievement gap, the data show. Between 1998, when data were first disaggregated, and 2009, the achievement gap in reading between English-proficient Hispanic students and their white peers shrank significantly, from 24 points to 15 points in 4th grade and from 22 points to 15 in 8th grade.

By contrast, the reading gap between Hispanic English-language learners and their white peers actually rose by a point in 8th grade during the same time, and shrank by 13 points in 4th grade, an amount that was statistically not significant for that group because of differences in the sample sizes.

Yet NCES Commissioner Sean P. “Jack” Buckley said he would balk at saying English-language gaps are a bigger issue than racial disparities, in part because each state can use different accommodations for English-language learners taking the assessment.

In more-detailed data tables not included in the report, Mr. Buckley said researchers have found that within the Hispanic student group as a whole, “it would appear we have evidence that the cohorts of lowest-performing kids have increased [their scores] at a higher rate than the higher-performing kids.” Yet these gains among the lowest-performing Hispanic students have not yet been enough to close the gaps between the two groups appreciably, he said. “Whatever policies have [been] implemented ... in the last 20 years or so ... would not have appeared to have been effective at closing the gaps, though they did seem to be effective in raising scores for both groups,” Mr. Buckley said.

State Differences

As of 2009, Hispanic students trailed non-Hispanic white students by more than two grade levels across the board, including national math gaps of 21 points in 4th grade and 26 points in 8th grade, as well as reading gaps of 25 points in 4th grade and 24 in 8th grade.

Most states hewed close to the national average gap, but Hispanic students in some states fared better than others. Florida, Kentucky, Missouri, and Wyoming all had achievement gaps smaller than 15 points in both grades and subjects, while California and Connecticut had larger achievement gaps than the national average in math and in 4th grade reading. Several states did not have sufficient data on Hispanic or white students in given assessments to be included in the NAEP report at all.

Iris M. Chavez, the education policy coordinator for the Washington-based League of United Latin American Citizens, or LULAC, said her group has been monitoring NAEP results “very closely” for the past few years. The state NAEP results, she said, “unfortunately are not surprising. It definitely matches what we’re hearing from our advocates at work in districts and states, exacerbated by the budget problems we’ve seen at the state and district levels.”

Ms. Chavez partially attributes the lack of progress in some of the states with large Hispanic student populations to waves of recent laws, particularly in heavily Hispanic Southwestern states, requiring English-only instruction and greater scrutiny of immigrant students entering public schools.

“From LULAC’s perspective, you’ve seen some really backward movement in those states,” she said. “While those states should have been the ones making the biggest gains, politically they’ve moved backwards, and that has had a tremendous detrimental effect on these students.”

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Florida, however, is bucking the trend. It was second only to California in having the largest Hispanic student population in grades 4 and 8 in 2009, but while California had wider achievement gaps for Hispanic students than the national average, Florida had less than half the national reading gap in grades 4 and 8. Gaps in math were 6 points smaller in 4th grade and 11 points smaller in 8th grade, compared with the national averages.

“We feel fortunate to have a state assessment system and the NAEP to balance and compare, to make sure we are headed in the right direction,” said Mary Jane Tappen, Florida’s deputy chancellor for curriculum, instruction, and student services.

The state’s K-12 chancellor, Michael Grego, said Florida has made significant policy changes targeting the Hispanic achievement gap in the past decade, including requiring any school administrator or teacher in a core content area or an elective who will have at least one ELL student to go through 60 hours of training “focused on specific strategies about how best to teach someone learning the English language.” English teachers must receive 300 hours of training in teaching English as a second language.

The state also has an advisory committee including Hispanic parents and community members who weigh in on any changes to the state’s accountability system or English-language-proficiency program.

“We’re dedicated to closing the achievement gap by half by 2014,” Ms. Tappen said. “It would have been to our students’ disadvantage if we had not had high expectations and continued to push.”