An achievement gap occurs “when one group of students continually disproportionately outperforms other groups of students on achievement tests” (Blackford & Khojasteh, 2013, p. 6). The National Center for Educational Statistics adds to the definition when stating “the difference in average scores for the two groups is statistically significant” (Cowan-Pitre, 2014, p. 209).
The achievement gap is seen in students’ grades, standardized test scores, and other student measures of academic success like college admission (Blackford & Khojasteh, 2013; Cowan-Pitre, 2014; Connor & Craig, 2006).
As the data from Table 3 displays, twelfth grade White students had significantly higher scale scores than their African American peers with the largest score gap between them being 29-points in 2013 and 2015. Twelfth-grade African American students had the lowest scale scores each year out of all subgroups with enough students to report data. This represents an achievement gap.