At Huron High School, an administration of the M-STEP standardized test during the 2014/2015 academic year yielded results which manifest several gaps. The test was given to 11th-grade students.
For the moment, we’ll table the question of exactly what the M-STEP test allegedly measures, and the question of how well it measures it.
In each subject area, the M-STEP categorizes students as advanced, proficient, partially proficient, or not proficient. Students in the top two categories are aggregated as ‘advanced or proficient,’ and the total fraction of the student body which places into that category is supposed to be the measure of the school’s, and the individual’s, success.
One obvious and consistent gap displays itself across every portion of the test. In Science, of the 359 juniors tested, 69.7% of the Asian students measured as “advanced or proficient.” No other demographic group performed as well. Of the entire group, including Asians and all other demographic groups, 51.5% were “advanced or proficient.”
Similar numbers appear in other content areas: 81.8% of Asians were ‘advanced or proficient’ in Mathematics, compared to 54.9% for the entire group.
In English Language Arts, 80.3% of Asians were ‘advanced or proficient’, a significant number light of the fact that for many of them, English is not a native language. The average for the all students in the sample was 66.3%.
In Social Studies, 84.9% of the Asians were ‘advanced or proficient,’ while only 66.9% of the total population was ranked at that level.
But the ‘Asian gap’ is not the only statistical chasm.
In Mathematics, 55.6% of all females were ‘advanced or proficient,’ while only 54.0% of males were so. This cuts across all racial or ethnic groups, and constitutes therefore a ‘gender gap.’
The ‘gender gap’ is even clearer in English Language Arts, where 73.0% of all females were ‘advanced or proficient,’ while only 59.2% of males scored that high.
These numbers, by themselves, constitute too small a sample, and are derived from too unreliably a measuring instrument, to justify a general conclusion.
But these numbers merely reflect a larger pattern, seen in standardized tests from ACT to SAT to AP. The ‘Asian gap’ and the ‘gender gap’ are real, measurable, observable, and quantifiable.
