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Title: The Evolution of the Black-White Test Score Gap in Grades K–3: The Fragility of Results
Resulting in 1 citation.
1. Bond, Timothy N.
Lang, Kevin
The Evolution of the Black-White Test Score Gap in Grades K–3: The Fragility of Results
Review of Economics and Statistics 95,5 (December 2013): 1468-1479.
Also: www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/REST_a_00370#.U5DN_hDCrsk
Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79
Publisher: MIT Press
Keyword(s): Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (ECLS-B, ECLS-K); Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Reading); Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT); Racial Differences; School Progress; Test Scores/Test theory/IRT

Although both economists and psychometricians typically treat them as interval scales, test scores are reported using ordinal scales. Using the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (ECLS-K) and the Children of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (CNLSY), we examine how order-preserving scale transformations affect the evolution of the black-white reading test score gap from kindergarten entry through third grade. Plausible transformations reverse the growth of the gap in the CNLSY and greatly reduce it in the ECLS-K during the early school years. All growth from entry through first grade and a nontrivial proportion from first to third grade probably reflects scaling decisions.
Bibliography Citation
Bond, Timothy N. and Kevin Lang. "The Evolution of the Black-White Test Score Gap in Grades K–3: The Fragility of Results." Review of Economics and Statistics 95,5 (December 2013): 1468-1479.