Inequality Matters

This is one of a series of five papers outlining the particular domains and dimensions of inequality where new research may yield a better understanding of responses to this growing issue.The aim of this paper is to describe, in very broad brushstrokes, the state of academic scholarship regarding social inequality, with an eye toward identifying important gaps. The focus is on four key interacting social domains: 1) socioeconomic (financial and human capital)2) health (including physical and psychological) 3) political (access to power and political representation)4) sociocultural (identity, cultural freedoms, and human rights

No Pressure

In lieu of an abstract, below is the essay\u27s first paragraph. You\u27ve done it a thousand times. You know how to do it. You practiced all off-season for hours on end. You don\u27t get nervous in the off-season, because no one is watching you from the stands. You notice that the stands are empty and you feel a sense of loneliness. The sun beats down on your already red neck and you begin to daydream

The Widening Academic Achievement Gap Between the Rich and the Poor: New Evidence and Possible Explanations

Analyzes growth in income inequality and the "income achievement gap" in test scores of children in high- and low-income families over fifty years. Examines parents' education and investment in cognitive development as factors in children's achievement

Effects of the California High School Exit Exam on Student Persistence, Achievement, and Graduation

Analyzes the impact of the exit exam requirement on student persistence, achievement, and graduation by race/ethnicity and gender and the factors behind the differential effects. Considers implications for the fairness and effectiveness of the exams

Estimating Achievement Gaps from Test Scores Reported in Ordinal "Proficiency" Categories

Test scores are commonly reported in a small number of ordered categories. Examples of such reporting include state accountability testing, Advanced Placement tests, and English proficiency tests. This paper introduces and evaluates methods for estimating achievement gaps on a familiar standard-deviation-unit metric using data from these ordered categories alone. These methods hold two practical advantages over alternative achievement gap metrics. First, they require only categorical proficiency data, which are often available where means and standard deviations are not. Second, they result in gap estimates that are invariant to score scale transformations, providing a stronger basis for achievement gap comparisons over time and across jurisdictions. We find three candidate estimation methods that recover full-distribution gap estimates well when only censored data are available

NEPC Review: How New York City's Charter Schools Affect Achievement

How New York City's Charter Schools Affect Achievement estimates the effects on student achievement of attending a New York City charter school rather than a traditional public school and investigates the characteristics of charter schools associated with the most positive effects on achievement. Because the report relies on an inappropriate set of statistical models to analyze the data, however, the results presented appear to overstate the cumulative effect of attending a charter school. In addition, the report does not provide enough technical discussion and detailed description to enable a reader to assess the validity of some aspects of the report&rsquo;s methodology and results. Policymakers, educators, and parents, therefore, should not rely on these estimates until the authors provide more technical detail and the analysis has undergone rigorous peer review.</p

On the Measurement of “Grayness” of Cities

We consider a situation where individuals belonging to multiple groups inhabit a space that can be divided into smaller distinguishable units, a feature characterizing many cities in the world. When data on an economic attribute (in our case, income) is available, we conceptualize a phenomenon that we refer to as “Grayness” - a combination of spatial integration based upon group-identity and income. Grayness is high when cities display a high degree of spatial co-existence in terms of both identity and income. We lay down some desirable properties of a measure of Grayness and develop a simple and intuitive index that satisfies them. We provide an illustration by using data from the Indian city of Hyderabad, and selected American cities