Decomposing ethnic achievement gaps across multiple levels of analysis and for multiple ethnic groups

Beatriz Gallo Cordoba*, George Leckie, William J. Browne

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticle (Academic Journal)peer-review

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Abstract

Ethnic achievement gaps are often explained in terms of student and school factors. The decomposition of these gaps into their within- and between-school components has therefore been applied as a strategy to quantify the overall influence of each set of factors. Three competing approaches have previously been proposed, but each is limited to the study of student-school decompositions of the gap between two ethnic groups (e.g., White and Black). We show that these approaches can be reformulated as mediation models facilitating new extensions to allow for additional levels in the school system (e.g., classrooms, school districts, or geographic areas) and multiple ethnic groups (e.g., White, Black, Hispanic, and Asian). We illustrate these extensions using administrative data for high-school Colombian students and we highlight the increased substantive insights and nuanced policy implications that they afford.
Original languageEnglish
Number of pages58
JournalSociological Methodology
Volume52
Issue number2
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 8 Jun 2022

Bibliographical note

Sociological Methodology (2022)

Research Groups and Themes

  • SoE Centre for Multilevel Modelling

Keywords

  • Achievement gaps
  • mediation analysis
  • effect decomposition
  • multiple-level decomposition
  • multi-group decomposition

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