Educational attainment in each school district in the U.S.

Each circle represents one school district. Larger circles represent districts with more students.





The study, by Sean F. Reardon, Demetra Kalogrides and Kenneth Shores of Stanford, also reveals large academic gaps in places like Atlanta, which has a high level of segregation in the public schools.

There are large gaps between white children and their black and Hispanic classmates. The gaps are largest in places with large economic disparities.

White students



Chart shows districts with at least 100 white, 100 black and 100 Hispanic students per grade. Reliable estimates are not available for Asian-Americans.

Why racial achievement gaps were so pronounced in affluent school districts is a puzzling question raised by the data. Part of the answer might be that in such communities, students and parents from wealthier families are constantly competing for ever more academic success. As parents hire tutors, enroll their children in robotics classes and push them to solve obscure math problems, those children keep pulling away from those who can’t afford the enrichment.

“Our high-end students who are coming in are scoring off the charts,” said Jeff Nash, executive director of community relations for the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools.

The school system is near the flagship campus of the University of North Carolina, and 30 percent of students in the schools qualify for free and reduced-price lunch, below the national average.

The wealthier students tend to come from families where, “let’s face it, both the parents are Ph.D.s, and that kid, no matter what happens in the school, is pressured from kindergarten to succeed,” Mr. Nash said. “So even though our minority students are outscoring minority students in other districts near us, there is still a bigger gap here because of that.”

By contrast, the communities with narrow achievement gaps tend to be those in which there are very few black or Hispanic children, or places like Detroit or Buffalo, where all students are so poor that minorities and whites perform equally badly on standardized tests.

The data was not uniformly grim. A few poor districts — like Bremen City, Ga. and Union City, N.J. — posted higher-than-average scores. They suggest the possibility that strong schools could help children from low-income families succeed.

“There are some outliers, and trying to figure out what’s making them more successful is worth looking at,” said Mr. Reardon, a professor of education and lead author of the analysis.

The new analysis surveys data from about 200 million standardized math and reading tests given to third through eighth graders in every state between 2009 and 2012. Although different states administer different exams, Mr. Reardon and his team were able to compare the state results with scores on federal tests known as the National Assessment of Educational Progress in order to develop a consistent scale by which to compare districts.



Not only are black and Hispanic children more likely to grow up in poor families, but middle-class black and Hispanic children are also much more likely than poor white children to live in neighborhoods and attend schools with high concentrations of poor students.

These schools can face a myriad of challenges. They tend to have more difficulty recruiting and keeping the most skilled teachers, and classes are more likely to be disrupted by violent incidents or the emotional fallout from violence in the neighborhood. These schools often offer fewer high-level classes such as Advanced Placement courses, and the parents have fewer resources to raise extra money that can provide enhanced arts programs and facilities.

“If a school is in a neighborhood that is highly segregated serving students of color and under-resourced, that is going to have a devastating impact on those who are experiencing a crisis,” said Thena Robinson Mock, project director of the Ending the Schoolhouse to Jailhouse Track program sponsored by the Advancement Project, a civil rights group. “But the others who may not be suffering that crisis at home are also going to suffer from not having enough resources or high-quality teachers. So it will impact the entire school community if those factors are at play.”

Even in districts where white students and their minority classmates had similar socioeconomic backgrounds, academic gaps persisted.

White students



Here, we're showing only districts where black and white students or Hispanic and white students came from similar backgrounds.


Others who examined the data said it raised as many questions as it answered. “This data is giving us a magnifying glass into places that have the same socioeconomic gaps but different achievement patterns,” said Rucker C. Johnson, associate professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley. “So we need to use that magnifying glass to figure out what the constellation of other factors” are that affect academics.





Note: Socioeconomic status captures income, the percentage of parents with a college degree, the percentage of single parents, poverty, SNAP and unemployment rates. Charter schools are included in the local school districts where they are located.

Correction: May 3, 2016

An earlier version of this article, using information from Stanford, misstated gaps in Menlo Park, Calif. and Tredyffrin-Easttown, Pa. Charter schools in those areas are located outside of the district or online, not in those communities.