UVA Batten assistant professor Andrew Simon and his co-authors explore the “racial excellence gap” in primary and secondary schools in their article, published in Nature, one of the world's leading scientific journals.

The gap — the difference in the percentage of students between racial groups that reach the top levels of overall academic performance — has been relatively overlooked by policymakers and academics, who have focused on the racial differences in average achievement or reaching minimum levels of proficiency.

“Economists are always interested in unintended consequences,” Simon said. “In a world where policymakers are putting in incentives to get schools to direct more resources to the middle of the distribution [of student achievement], there’s concern that top-performing students are going to be negatively impacted, and this could widen gaps.”

What they found

Using data on state standardized test scores as well as SAT and AP tests for students in Michigan primary and secondary schools over the past 20 years, Simon and co-authors document these excellence gaps, and examine the causes and the extent to which public policies may contribute to or help reduce them. They found meaningful gaps in achievement in math and reading between students traditionally underrepresented in the highest levels of education (Black and Hispanic) and other students (white and Asian).

Simon said the research found that by third grade, Black and Hispanic students are 8% less likely to be in the top 10% of the achievement distribution than their white and Asian peers. They further found that this gap slightly widens, especially for female students, between third and eighth grades, and persists through high school. Even comparing students who get the same exact test score in a given year, the likelihood that Black or Hispanic students persists at the top of the achievement distribution is significantly less than the likelihood for white and Asian students.

From there, Simon and his colleagues determined that about 40% of this gap could be attributed to the school’s environment and family financial resources. They also found no strong evidence that Michigan’s accountability policy requiring schools to direct resources to students in the middle of achievement distribution widened racial excellence gaps, despite concerns about these potential unintended consequences.

“The fact that there are students, especially Black and Hispanic students, who, from the evidence we provide, aren't able to reach the highest levels of academic achievement because they lack other supports is, in some sense, a failing of society,” Simon said. “Having access to high-quality education that helps foster high academic achievement plays an important role for where you go to college, to what degree you succeed in college, and what kinds of jobs you get.”

Why it matters

In their paper, "Measuring Racial Educational Disparities Over Time Amongst Top Achievers," Simon and his co-authors note that as the United States seeks to compete in an increasingly global marketplace, cultivating high-achieving students in the STEM fields is of paramount importance, yet the excellence gaps are growing. Further, the groups failing to reach high achievement are the fastest growing segments of the U.S. population. They write: “The needs of every student must be met to fully achieve equity, and in turn, to bring greater efficiency in policy to reach longer-term economic goals.”

Ultimately, Simon said, by not investing in shrinking the racial excellence gap, there are potential negative ramifications in all aspects of society.

“This is classic market failure in economics. Education has private benefits, that is, people personally benefit from more education because it helps them develop skills that lead to higher earnings, among other things. But it also has social benefits — economic growth is a function of how many people go to college, what they study, what they're able to do in their job, and the innovation they create,” Simon said. “These are important things that we're missing out on by not investing enough in everyone.”

Simon and his co-researchers are now working to document similar disparities between first-generation students and their peers using data from North Carolina. Simon, a public finance economist, joined the UVA Batten faculty last fall. He received his bachelor's in economics and mathematics at Cornell University and master's degree and doctorate in economics at the University of Michigan. Prior to joining UVA, he was a postdoctoral scholar in the Department of Economics at the University of Chicago and the Research School of Economics at the Australian National University.  Simon is continuing to do more research in the higher-education policy sphere. 

“Being able to follow students along their educational path through college and finding more direct measures of what it's going to mean for their professional success is something that I’m very excited to continue delving into.”