Achievement gaps in the United States

The education of African Americans and some other minorities lags behind those of other U.S. ethnic groups, such as White Americans and Asian Americans, as reflected by test scores, grades, urban high school graduation rates, rates of disciplinary action, and rates of conferral of undergraduate degrees. Indeed, high school graduation rates and college enrollment rates are comparable to those of white Americans 25 or 30 years ago. It should also be noted that the category of African immigrant population (excluding Haitians and other foreign-born black people born outside of Africa) has the highest educational attainment of any group in the United States, but they represent a small group within the larger African American population. Asian Americans of Indian, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean descent score the highest on average, with the difference primarily on mathematics subtests, in all scholastic standardized tests such as the SAT, GRE, MCAT, USMLE exams and IQ tests followed by White Americans who score in the intermediate range. Hispanic American and African American scores tend to follow White scores. U.S. students as a whole have in general attained average scores on the International PISA test while other wealthy industrialized developed East Asian countries, such as China, Japan, Singapore and South Korea, achieve the highest top scores. However, compared with children in some less developed countries like Benin where some children, especially girls, end their education after the elementary level, education in the United States is compulsory to age 16 regardless of race or class. It is anticipated that over half of public education students will be required to pass standards-based assessments which expect that all students to be at least exposed to algebra by high school and exit prepared for college. Researchers have not reached consensus about the causes of the academic achievement gap; instead, there exists a wide range of studies that cite an array of factors, both cultural and structural, that influence student performance in school. Sociologist Annette Lareau suggested that students who lack middle-class cultural capital and have limited parental involvement are likely to have lower academic achievement than their better resourced peers. Other researchers suggest that academic achievement is more closely tied to race and socioeconomic status and have tried to pinpoint why. ==Gender achievement gap==

For the past fifty years, there has been a gap in the educational achievement of males and females in the United States, but which gender has been disadvantaged has fluctuated over the years. In the 1970s and 1980s, data showed girls trailing behind boys in a variety of academic performance measures, specifically in test scores in math and science. Male students consistently achieved worse school marks than female students from 1913 to 2011 in all countries for which there is data. Literacy Traditionally, girls have outperformed boys in reading and writing. Although this gap may be minimal in kindergarten, it grows as students continue their education. According to the 2004 National Reading Assessment measured by the US Department of Education, the gap between boys and girls, only slightly noticeable in 4th grade, left boys 14 points behind girls during their 12th grade year. On the 2008 test, female students continued to have higher average reading scores than male students at all three ages. The gap between male and female 4th graders was 7 points in 2008. By 12th grade, there was an 11-point gap between males and females. In the more recent 2007 National Assessment of Writing Skills, female students continued to score higher than male students, though margins closed slightly from previous assessments. The average score for female eighth-graders was 20 points higher than males, down 1 point from the 2002 score. For twelfth-graders, females outscored males by 18 points as opposed to 21 points in 2002. All of these assessments were conducted on a 100-point scale. However, males score higher on standardized math tests, and these score gaps also increase with age. Male students also score higher on measures of college readiness, such as the AP Calculus exams and the math section of the SAT. . The differences in National Assessment for Educational Progress (NAEP) math scores between boys and girls nearly double from the 9-year-olds to the 17-year-olds. The gender gap in mathematics is particularly large among the highest-achieving students; for example, there is a 2.1 to 1 male-female ratio among students who score an 800 on the math portion of the SAT. At least one study has challenged the existence of the gender gap in mathematics. In 2008 Janet Hyde and others published a study showing that male and female students did equally well on No Child Left Behind standardized tests that were administered in second through eleventh grades in ten states. However, Hyde and her team did find gaps that favored males at the upper end of the achievement distribution and tried to examine gaps on more difficult test questions (previous research has shown that males outperform females on more challenging items), but the tests they examined lacked adequately challenging items. This raised questions about whether there is still a gender gap in math achievement. However, a different study published after Hyde's using NAEP data from all 50 states found a small mean sex difference in favor of males in grades 4, 8, and 12 that had remained stable through the 1990s and 2000s, as well as a 2:1 male to female ratio at the highest scores. There is also a large discrepancy between the number of men and women working in STEM fields. Women have been, and continue to be, underrepresented in these fields. This underrepresentation is evident in the distribution of college majors among men and women; from 1997 to 2007, women earned only 18% of engineering bachelor's degrees. Degree attainment (Issued August 2003) Educational attainment by race and gender: 2000 Census 2000 Brief Percent of Adults 25 and over in group Men . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80.1 52.5 26.1 10.0 Women. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80.7 51.1 22.8 7.8 HS = high school completed SC = some college BA = bachelor's degree AD = advanced degree According to 2007 data, 55 percent of college students were females and 45 percent were males. From 1995 until 2005, the number of males enrolled in college increased by 18 percent, while the number of female students rose by 27 percent. Males are enrolling in college in greater numbers than ever before, yet fewer than two-thirds of them are graduating with a bachelor's degree. The numbers of both men and women receiving a bachelor's degree have increased significantly, but the increasing rate of female college graduates exceeds the increasing rate for males. In 2014, the percentage of women with bachelor's degrees was higher than the percentage of men with bachelor's degrees for the first time in America. Women also earn more master's degrees and doctorates than men. Lifetime earnings Although more women are graduating with undergraduate degrees, men are still earning disproportionately more in their lifetimes. This could be due to many factors, including different types of jobs for males and females. Females are greatly underrepresented in science and engineering fields, which are typically correlated with high lifetime earnings. Males and females also have vastly different labor market histories based on type of job and time spent in each job. According to researcher Thomas Good, there are two competing views of how teachers can indirectly impact the achievement of their students. The first is that teachers are more likely to give special attention and extra assistance to students who appear to be struggling in their class. In reading and writing classes, male students are often behind female students in terms of achievement. Therefore, male students are more likely to get more teacher attention, and this extra interaction could give males an advantage in terms of future achievement. The second view is that teachers demand more of and show more respect toward students who they view to be high achievers, which creates a cycle in which only students who are perceived to be intelligent receive extra help and teacher attention. Teacher evaluations How teachers perceive students' knowledge and abilities varies by gender and influences classroom processes and student achievement in both reading and math. Teachers usually have higher expectations for students they view as higher achievers and treat these students with more respect. The opposite trend has been found in math classes. Teachers still tend to view math as a "masculine" subject and tend to have higher expectations for and better attitude towards their male students in these classes. A study by Fennema et al. has also shown that teachers tend to name males when asked to list their "best math students". Females are more likely than males to be negatively impacted by this underestimation of their math abilities. These gender-specific evaluations from teachers are implicit; usually the teachers have no idea that they are favoring one gender over the other until they are shown concrete evidence, such as a video recording of their classroom. However, even though the discrimination is implicit, it still has negative effects on both male and female students. Stereotyping There is speculation that gender stereotyping within classrooms can also lead to differences in academic achievement and representation for female and male students. Math and science are often perceived as "masculine" subjects because they lead to success in "masculine" fields, such as medicine and engineering. English and history, on the other hand, are often perceived as "feminine" subjects because they are more closely aligned with "feminine" jobs, such as teaching or care work. These stereotypes can influence student achievement in these areas. Parent socialization How a child's parents view his or her skills can also contribute to the gender achievement gap in education. A study by Jacobs and Eccles has shown that adults rate female children as having better social skills than male children, and that girls are more likely to be seen as "good children" than boys. Socio-economic factors The gender achievement gap, measured by standardized test scores, suspensions, and absences, in favor of female students, is larger at worse schools and among lower-income households. So poverty and school quality are partially responsible for the gap. Self-regulation and conscientiousness Girls tend to have better self-regulation skills than boys. Self-regulation skills correlate with time spent on homework and time spent taking notes in class. This contributes to girls getting better grades than boys in all subjects. See Sex differences in psychology. Biology The idea that one gender is on average inherently, genetically intellectually inferior is controversial and critics of the idea attribute it to historical or contemporary sexism. Most researchers have argued for no significant sex differences in g factor or general intelligence, while others have argued for greater intelligence for males, and others for females. The differing maturation speed of the brain between boys and girls affects how each gender processes information and could have implications for how they perform in school. Implications It is important to address the gender achievement gap in education because failure to cultivate the academic talents of any one group will have aggregate negative consequences. If women are underrepresented in STEM fields, and if men are underrepresented in the social sciences and humanities, both genders are missing opportunities to develop diverse skill sets that can help them in the workplace. If the gender achievement gap in education continues to exist, so does the stereotype that medicine, science, and engineering are all "masculine" fields and that women belong in fields like teaching, counseling, or social work. This stereotype can lead to the image that women who pursue careers in the STEM fields are seen as "nerdy" or "geeky", and this can have a detrimental effect on the self-esteem of females who do choose to enter these fields. ==LGBTQ achievement gap==

The LGBTQ achievement gap refers to the difference in academic performance and achievement between LGBTQ youth and their heterosexual peers. Historically, the circumstance of LGBTQ youth in education has received little attention from scholars and the media. The term LGBTQ refers to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer persons but often is understood to encompass the sexual minority. Before the turn of the century, little research went into the topic of the LGBTQ population in schools. However, with the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network's (GLSEN) recurring study on school climate in the U.S. for LGBTQ students, there is now more information indicating the existence of an achievement gap. LGBTQ students in the U.S. tend to have lower GPAs than their heterosexual peers, as well as higher truancy and dropout rates. There are many supposed causes of this achievement gap, as well as efforts to alleviate the disparity. In United States secondary schools, LGBTQ youth often have more difficult experiences compared to their heterosexual peers, leading to observed underachievement, though current data is limited. In Massachusetts, LGBTQ youth are 12% less likely to make A and B grades than their heterosexual peers. A GLSEN survey in 2011 found that 92.3%(76.1% in 2021 survey) of LGBTQ youth report experienced verbal harassment in schools once within the last year with 48.9%(29.8% in 2021 survey) reporting it more often or frequently. Among LGBTQ youth, those who endure more severe harassment report significantly lower GPAs than LGBT youth who endure less harassment (2.9 to 3.2, respectively). Less-harassed LGBTQ youth are also twice as likely to plan for higher education than their highly victimized peers. Though popular belief attributes homosexuality to higher education levels, more current studies suggest otherwise, at least among women. An extensive nationwide survey conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicates that, among women, LGBTQ identity is inversely related to education level, meaning that for every progressive education level, the percentage of women identifying as LGBTQ steadily decreases. For instance, while 6.7% of women with no high school diploma identify as lesbian, bisexual, or something else, only 2.9% of women with a bachelor's degree or higher identify that way. The same study showed no statistically significant correlation between LGBTQ identity and education for men. Studies on LGBTQ students in college show that LGBTQ students, while not enduring the same harassment and struggles as LGBTQ youth in high schools, still have different experiences than their heterosexual peers, sometimes for the better: gay men in college have significantly higher GPAs and are more involved in extra-curricular activities than their heterosexual peers. A study has in fact found a positive correlation between educational attainment and homosexuality and non-exclusive heterosexuality among men. In the study, gay men were significantly less likely to fail to graduate from high school compared to completely heterosexual men (3.94% vs. 9.91%) and were more likely to complete college (43.86% vs. 26.46%). Additionally, about 52% of gay men age 25 and older hold a bachelor's degree, which is higher than the national average. Joel Mittleman, a sociologist from the University of Notre Dame finds that gay men tend to value studying over activities like video games or sports that heterosexual men typically enjoy. Mittleman states that gay men consistently perform better than straight men regardless of race, but the same cannot be said for lesbian women—black gay women perform much worse than their white counterparts. Lesbian and bisexual women, however, report being much less satisfied with their education than heterosexual women in college. Two studies indicate that approximately 30% of LGBTQ youth encountered physical violence and 26% were kicked out of the house. This risk is higher for transgender teens. In addition to these homeless youths' higher risk for sexual violence, drug abuse, and prostitution, all of which would affect performance (or general attendance) in school, these youth may not be able to enroll in school at all. Some public schools are either reluctant to or ignorant about enrolling homeless students, significantly thwarting a teen's pursuit of educational opportunities. However, many states in the U.S. including Alabama, Texas, Arizona, and others, have laws explicitly prohibiting the inclusion of homosexuality in education. Alabama and Texas laws even require teachers to refrain from presenting homosexuality as an acceptable lifestyle. Significant opposition to changing these statutes exist in these states, preventing the inclusion of LGBTQ curriculum. The NEA recommends the inclusion of specific school policies protecting LGBTQ from harassment and bullying. LGBTQ students in Massachusetts who attend schools with safety policies explicitly regarding LGBTQ students are 3.5 times more likely to make A and B grades than LGBTQ youth in other schools. Additionally, student organizations such as gay-straight alliances (GSAs) can improve the experience of LGBTQ youth in schools. Even when LGBTQ students do not participate in their school's GSA, the very presence of the organization can reduce threat and injury of LGBTQ students by one-third, and reduce LGBTQ suicide attempts by almost 50%. LGBTQ students in Massachusetts schools with GSAs were twice as likely to earn A and B grades than LGBTQ students in schools without GSAs. == Immigrant and native-born gap ==

Educational attainment rates change when it comes to comparing the same races against immigrants or foreign born students. No matter which race is examined, immigrants of that race outperform natives of the same race. For example, Black African and Caribbean immigrant groups to the U.S. report having higher levels of education than any other group. Of all foreign-born U.S. residents, foreign born Africans (those who come from the African continent) nowadays have a higher level of educational attainment than any other racial or ethnic group in the United States. They tend to be highly educated and be fluent in English. This trend was first reported in the 1990s by the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, The educational attainment amount varies by group. According to the U.S. Census, out of the African populations, Nigerians reported to having the highest level of education. == Religion ==

The amount of education completed varies greatly between members of religions in the United States. Hindus and Jews, for example, are more likely than general population to have completed a college education, whereas members of Evangelical churches, historically Black Protestant churches and Jehovah's Witness are less likely (21%, 15% and 12% respectively). US religions ranked by percentage reporting a college degree: == Deaf vs. hearing ==