摘要：Advocates of uniform standards frequently argue that disparate standards produce unequal
opportunities to learn. Holding some students to a lesser set of standards, the argument goes,
discriminates against students at the low end of the standards spectrum. While states clearly
establish different definitions of proficiency, little research explores how this affects different
demographic groups. This study examines the demographics of students in states with low expectations
of proficiency when compared to those with high expectations. The findings indicate that although
lower performance standards are expected of some demographic groups, the pattern is not uniform: In
the 4th grade, the median African-American student faces a lower proficiency cut-score in both math
and reading than the median white, median Hispanic, median ELL and median poor student. By 8th
grade, however, there is virtually no ―expectations gap.‖ These findings suggest that the achievement
gap is not primarily the product of different formal expectations facing students. In short, schooling
contexts likely better explain the continued existence of the test-score gap.
