Gender disparities in U.S. educational achievement during elementary and middle school

In this dissertation, I use two novel test score data sets to study disparities in gender achievement during elementary and middle school within nearly every U.S. school district. The first paper, coauthored with Sean F. Reardon, Demetra Kalogrides, Anne Podolsky, and Rosalía Zárate, provides estimates of male-female test score gaps in math and English Language Arts (ELA) for roughly 10,000 school districts using state accountability test data from third through eighth grade students in the 2008-09 through 2014-15 school years. We find that the average school district has no gender achievement gap in math, but a gap of roughly -0.23 standard deviations in ELA. Both math and ELA gender achievement gaps vary among school districts and are positively correlated -- some districts have more male-favoring gaps and some more female-favoring gaps relative to the average district. We further find that math gaps tend to favor males more in socioeconomically advantaged school districts and in districts with larger gender disparities in adult socioeconomic status. These two variables explain about one fifth of the variation in the math gaps. However, they explain virtually none of the geographic variation in ELA gaps. In the second paper, I use longitudinal student test data provided by the Northwest Evaluation Association to understand how male-female achievement gaps in math and reading change from third through eighth grade. I find that, on average, male-female test score gaps widen in math and narrow in reading until fifth grade reflecting that male students gain ground relative to female peers. However, these trends reverse in favor of female students after fifth grade: nearly closing the math gap and widening the reading gap to its largest point. I also find evidence that grade trends vary among school districts. Similar to average gaps, growth in the gaps over grades varies in a gender-favoring pattern. Some districts have slightly male-favoring growth and others strongly female-favoring growth. I explore whether behavioral and socioeconomic covariates are associated with gap growth rates in school districts, but I find that they explain only ten percent of the between-district variation in gap growth. In the last paper, I use state accountability data to study the gender disproportionality of high achieving students within U.S. school districts -- those who score in the top ten percent of their state achievement distributions in math and ELA. I find that districts with high socioeconomic status and large proportions of adults working in business and science occupations tend to have large proportions of male and female high achievers in both math and ELA. These factors, along with racial composition, explain about fifty percent of the between-district variation in the overall proportions of high achieving male and female students served. On average the gender composition of the highest achieving students is stereotypical -- males are overrepresented among high achievers in math and females are overrepresented among high achievers in ELA within school districts. However, I also find that females tend to be less overrepresented in ELA in districts with higher proportions of adults in business and science occupations, as well as in districts with larger male-female disparities in business occupation rates. Taken together, these three papers show there is substantial variation in gender disparities among U.S. school districts. Moreover, they consistently show that local variation in both gaps and gap growth is gender-favoring, suggesting that researchers and policymakers need to focus on local, contextual factors that may provide one gender an academic advantage over the other during school years.

Keywords: Education.
Advisor: Reardon Sean F. 
Loeb Susanna
Penner Andrew M.