Are We Trending to More or Less Between-Group Achievement Inequality Over the School Year and Summer - Comparing Across ECLS-K Cohorts

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Stanley

Examining whether schools continue to function as “equalizers” across time, this study analyzes nationally representative Early Childhood Longitudinal Study–Kindergarten cohorts from 1998–1999 and 2010–2011. It assesses how between-group achievement inequality by race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status changes over the school year and summer, with attention to seasonal learning patterns through kindergarten and into first grade. Findings show more equalizing by race/ethnicity and SES over kindergarten in the recent cohort, followed by greater inequality widening over summer and differing trajectories into first grade.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages19

Reading Time48 min

AccessFree to download

Study background and motivation

Prior evidence on summer learning and inequality

Reasons to expect changing inequality dynamics over time

Research question and data

Comparing ECLS-K:2011 and ECLS-K:1999

Seasonal trends and cohort differences

Main findings and implications

AERA Open October-December 2018, Vol. 4, No. 4, pp. 1–19 DOI: 10. 1177/2332858418819995 Article reuse guidelines: [sagepub.com/journals-permissions](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)[ ](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)© The Author(s) 2018. [http://journals.sagepub.com/home/ero](http://journals.sagepub.com/home/ero) Are We Trending to More or Less Between-Group Achievement Inequality Over the School Year and Summer? Comparing Across ECLS-K Cohorts David M. Quinn University of Southern California Q. Tien Le Los Angeles Unified School District Scholars have argued that schools are “equalizers” because inequalities in test scores by race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status (SES) grow faster over summer vacation than over the school year. In this study, we use nationally representative data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study–Kindergarten Classes of 1998–1999 and 2010–2011 to examine the extent to which such patterns have changed over time. Results suggest that more between-group equalizing by race/ethnicity and SES occurred over kindergarten in the recent cohort. However, this was often followed by more inequality widening over summer and more widening or less narrowing over first grade in the latter cohort. The net result was that in recent years, inequality tended to widen more (Black-White) or narrow less (SES and Hispanic-White) over the first 2 years of schooling. Keywords: summer learning loss, summer setback, achievement inequality, achievement gap, seasonal learning, ECLS-K Since at least the early 20th century, social scientists and educators have worried about the potential negative impact of summer vacation on student learning (Cooper, Nye, Charlton, Lindsay, & Greathouse, 1996) . Researchers have been particularly focused on whether summer learning rates differ by students’ socioeconomic status (SES) or race/ethnicity in ways that exacerbate between-group inequalities in educational outcomes. Early studies generally found that inequality in literacy by SES grew over the summer (Cooper et al., 1996) and at a faster rate as compared with the school year (Alexander, Entwisle, & Olson, 2001; Heyns, 1978) . This evidence was often interpreted as showing that schools were “equalizers” (Alexander et al., 2001; Downey, von Hippel, & Broh, 2004) . Summer loss was also generally found in math but equally for students across SES backgrounds (Cooper et al., 1996) . An underexamined question in this line of research is whether and how these patterns might be changing overtime. As compared with earlier work, recent studies have drawn more mixed conclusions regarding the seasonal dynamics of achievement inequality (Atteberry & McEachin, 2016; Quinn, Cooc, McIntyre, & Gomez, 2016; von Hippel & Hamrock, 2016) . Beneath the cross-study differences in test scaling, modeling, and design, it is difficult to know whether meaningful time trends are occurring. Yet there are reasons to expect that between-group inequality dynamics may have changed over the past several decades. To begin with, inequality in income and parental spending on children’s education has been growing (Duncan & Murnane, 2011; Kornrich & Furstenberg, 2013), and the country is becoming increasingly segregated by income and race (Orfield & Frankenberg, 2014; Reardon & Bischoff, 2011) . These trends would lead one to expect that achievement inequalities may be widening more over the school year and summer today as compared with the recent past. At the sametime, however, there have been efforts to improve early childhood education for children from low-income backgrounds, and the academic rigor of kindergarten (K) has been increasing more for students from low-income backgrounds versus students from wealthier backgrounds (Bassok, Latham, & Rorem, 2016) . This would lead to the prediction that, at least over K, inequality trends may be improving. In this article, we contribute to the literature on seasonal learning by examining the extent t

FAQs

What question does the article investigate about seasonal achievement inequality?

It asks whether between-group achievement inequality changes over the school year and summer have shifted over time, especially in relation to the “equalizer” role of schools.

Which data sources are used to compare trends across time?

The study uses nationally representative ECLS-K cohorts from 1998–1999 and 2010–2011 to compare seasonal patterns.

What general pattern does the study find across the two cohorts?

More between-group equalizing occurs over kindergarten in the recent cohort, but this is often followed by more inequality widening over summer and different patterns of widening or narrowing into first grade.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Stanley