Learning from the other achievement gap

Understanding the growing achievement gap between white and Asian-American students requires looking beyond family income and education.

Educators tend to be familiar with an educational achievement gap between black and Hispanic students on one hand and white students on the other, a gap that seems to be tied up with relative rates of poverty.

But there is also a fairly startling — and growing — achievement gap between white students and Asian-American students, and it can’t be chalked up to family income or education (e.g., Hsin & Xie, 2014). While some Asian immigrants are professionals and successful businesspeople, far more are not, and their children are, on average, just as far ahead.