Study Finds Gaps Remain Large for Hispanic Students

While growing numbers of Hispanic students have changed the face of American education over the past two decades, the gap between them and their white classmates in math and reading remains as wide as it was in the 1990s, according to a new federal study.

The National Center for Education Statistics report , released Thursday morning, finds that Hispanic students overall have improved significantly on the National Assessment of Educational Progress since 1990. The mean scale scores in mathematics rose 28 points for Hispanic 4th graders and 21 points for 8th graders; in reading, the scores improved 10 points in the 4th and 8th grades from the early 1990s to 2009, with each 10-point increase equal to about one grade level of improvement.

Yet non-Hispanic white students exceeded Hispanic students’ increase in math in both the 4th and 8th grades during the same time, and while white students’ performance improved more slowly in reading, the growth was not slow enough for Hispanic students to catch up and close the gaps of more than two grade levels between the...