Students from low-income households are under-represented among the highest math performers in the early elementary school grades, a new analysis finds.
Those high-achieving, low-income students who start school at the top of their class in math are less likely to remain there in later grades than their higher-income peers, finds the new report by the testing company NWEA.
The findings come as more schools aim to identify and address students’ math struggles early through assessments and screeners.
“The goal of screening is more often to catch kids who are falling behind rather than to identify kids who are really high achievers,” said said Megan Kuhfeld, NWEA’s director of growth modeling and data analytics. “But this really highlights why it’s important to focus on the early math potential many low-income kids bring that may not be sustained.”
The analysis relied on MAP Growth math test scores for nearly 1 million students collected from 2021 to 2025. The computerized assessments, designed by NWEA, are administered by thousands of schools to gauge students’ academic progress throughout the school year.
Low-income students less likely to be high math achievers
Researchers deemed students low-income if they qualified for free or reduced-priced meals in at least one year of data. Students who scored at or above the 95th percentile of test takers were deemed high achievers.
While low-income students made up half of students in 2025, they represented just a fifth of high achievers, the analysis found.
“Among students who do demonstrate very high achievement, lower-income students are also somewhat less likely than their higher-income peers to remain at the very top of the distribution over time,” the report said. “The difference in persistence was especially pronounced in the elementary grades.”
By 4th grade, 20% of high-achieving, low-income students identified in kindergarten remained in the 95th percentile, compared to 41% of their higher-income peers.
School-level factors may also be at play. Low-income students who were identified as high achieving in kindergarten and remained at the top of the class in 4th grade were less likely to attend a high-poverty school than their lower-achieving peers. Researchers considered a school high poverty if at least 75% of students qualified for free or reduced-price meals.
Disparities narrow in higher grades
That disparity narrowed in higher grades. Seventy-two percent of low-income students who’d been identified as high achievers in 4th grade remained in the 95th percentile in 8th grade, compared to 80% of their higher-income peers, the analysis found.
“One possible explanation is that early elementary math achievement is especially sensitive to differences in access to instructional opportunities, home environments, and out-of-school supports,” the report said.
But the report didn’t offer cause-and-effect conclusions for why these patterns arise.
Authors cautioned against seeing the findings as “widespread evidence of academic decline.” Most of the students who fell below the 95th percentile continued to test at high levels—in the top 10 or 20 percent of their class.
Concerns about early math achievement have driven policy discussions at the state and district levels.
Twenty-three states have passed laws or implemented new policies related to math education since 2022. Of those, 14 have called for early math assessments. All of those states call for using that data to target support for students with gaps in understanding, but fewer call for acceleration to help high achievers sustain that success into later grades.
“It’s important to make sure these students are getting these additional resources so they are less likely to fall behind,” Kuhfeld said.
