Recent Trends in Income, Racial, and Ethnic School Readiness Gaps at Kindergarten Entry

Oct 15, 2026

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The study investigates whether prior declines in racial/ethnic and income school readiness gaps continued in more recent cohorts of children entering kindergarten. Using nationally representative kindergarten samples from 1998, 2006, and 2010, it estimates trends in gaps across academic achievement, self-control, externalizing behavior, and approaches to learning. Results show readiness gaps narrowed modestly from 1998 to 2010, especially between high- and low-income students and between White and Hispanic students.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages18

Reading Time45 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Prior disparities in achievement and readiness

New evidence on recent trends

Data and measures

Findings on narrowing gaps

AERA Open July-September 2016, Vol. 2, No. 3, pp. 1–18 DOI: 10. 1177/2332858416657343 © The Author(s) 2016. [http://ero.sagepub.com](http://ero.sagepub.com) Recent Trends in Income, Racial, and Ethnic School Readiness Gaps at Kindergarten Entry Sean F. Reardon Stanford University Ximena A. Portilla MDRC Academic achievement gaps between high-and low-income students born in the 1990s were much larger than between cohorts born two decades earlier. Racial/ethnic achievement gaps declined during the same period. To determine whether these two trends have continued in more recent cohorts, we examine trends in several dimensions of school readiness, including academic achievement, self-control, externalizing behavior, and a measure of students’approaches to learning, for cohorts born from the early 1990s to the 2000–2010 midperiod. We use data from nationally representative samples of kindergarteners (ages 5–6) in 1998 ( n = 20,220), 2006 ( n = 6,600), and 2010 ( n = 16,980) to estimate trends in racial/ethnic and income school readiness gaps. We find that readiness gaps narrowed modestly from 1998 to 2010, particularly between high-and low-income students and between White and Hispanic students. Keywords: school readiness, income gap trends, racial/ethnic gap trends Racial, ethnic, and income disparities in performance on standardized tests of academic achievement are a stubborn feature of the U.S. educational landscape. The White-Black and White-Hispanic achievement gaps in math and reading in Grades 4 to 12 range from roughly 0.50 to 0.85 standard deviations in recent years; the gap in achievement between kindergarten students from high- and low-income families was roughly 1.25 standard deviations in 1998 (Hemphill, Vanneman, & Rahman, 2011; Reardon, 2011; Reardon, Robinson-Cimpian, & Weathers, 2015; Vanneman, Hamilton, Baldwin Anderson, & Rahman, 2009) . These disparities are present when children enter kindergarten, and they persist as children progress through school (Fryer & Levitt, 2006; V. E. Lee & Burkham, 2002; Reardon, 2011) . These academic achievement disparities are not immutable social facts, however. Indeed, they have changed substantially in the last few decades. The White-Black and White-Hispanic achievement gaps were considerably larger in the 1970s than they are today; these gaps narrowed sharply in the 1970s and 1980s, before plateauing through much of the 1990s and then beginning to narrow again in the last 15 years (National Center for Education Statistics [NCES], 2013; Reardon et al., 2015) . The income achievement gap, in contrast, was considerably smaller in the 1970s than it is today but grew by roughly 40% between cohorts born in the mid-1970s and the mid-1990s (Reardon, 2011) . The causes of these changes are not well understood. In this article, we provide new evidence on very recent trends in these achievement gaps. In particular, we use newly available data to describe the trends in the magnitude of racial/ethnic and income gaps in math and reading skills among students entering kindergarten from the fall of 1998 to the fall of 2010. We focus on income-related gaps, rather than gaps related to parental education, occupation, or more general socioeconomic status, for comparability with the earlier income academic achievement gap trends reported by Reardon (2011) . We also describe trends in racial/ethnic and income gaps in students’ self-control, approaches to learning, and externalizing behavior. Because almost all other evidence on trends in academic achievement gaps is based on math and reading tests given to students in Grades 3 to 12 and because there has been little emphasis on income disparities in children’s behavioral school readiness, our analyses fill several important lacunae in the literature. Moreover, they indicate whether the trends among birth cohorts from the 1970s to 1990s in the income academic achievement gap documented by Reardon have persisted among mor

FAQs

Which cohorts and sample years does the study analyze for kindergarten entry readiness gaps?

It analyzes cohorts born in the early 1990s to the 2000–2010 midperiod, using kindergarten samples from 1998, 2006, and 2010.

What dimensions of school readiness are examined besides academic achievement?

The study examines self-control, externalizing behavior, and a measure of students’ approaches to learning, alongside academic achievement.

What overall change in readiness gaps is found between 1998 and 2010?

Readiness gaps narrowed modestly from 1998 to 2010, particularly between high- and low-income students and between White and Hispanic students.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Cipher