Academic stratification during educational transitions may be maintained, disrupted, or exacerbated. This study marks the first to use national data to investigate how the transition to high school (re)shapes academic status at the intersection of race/ethnicity and gender. We seek to identify the role of the high school transition in shaping racial/ethnic and gender stratification by contextualizing students' academic declines during the high school transition within the longer window of their educational careers. Using Add Health, we find that white and black boys experience the greatest drops in their grade point averages (GPAs). We also find that the maintenance of high academic grades between the eighth and ninth grades varies across racial/ethnic and gender subgroups; higher-achieving middle school black boys experience the greatest academic declines. Importantly, we find that white and black boys also faced academic declines before the high school transition, whereas their female student peers experienced academic declines only during the transition to high school. We advance current knowledge on educational stratification by identifying the transition to high school as a juncture in which boys' academic disadvantage widens and high-achieving black boys lose their academic status at the high school starting gate. Our study also underscores the importance of adopting an intersectional framework that considers both race/ethnicity and gender. Given the salience of high school grades for students' long-term success, we discuss the implications of this study for racial/ethnic and gender stratification during and beyond high school.

中文翻译：

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在过渡到高中的过程中，谁领先谁落后？种族/民族和性别交叉点的学业成绩

教育转型期间的学术分层可能会维持、中断或加剧。这项研究标志着首次使用国家数据来调查向高中过渡（重新）在种族/民族和性别的交叉点上如何塑造学术地位。我们试图通过将高中过渡期间学生在较长的教育生涯窗口中的学业下降背景化来确定高中过渡在塑造种族/族裔和性别分层方面的作用。使用 Add Health，我们发现白人和黑人男孩的平均绩点 (GPA) 下降幅度最大。我们还发现，八年级和九年级之间保持高学业成绩的情况因种族/族裔和性别子群体而异；成绩较高的中学黑人男孩的学业下降幅度最大。重要的是，我们发现白人和黑人男孩在高中过渡之前也面临学业下降，而他们的女学生同龄人仅在高中过渡期间经历了学业下降。我们通过将向高中的过渡确定为男孩的学业劣势扩大和成绩优异的黑人男孩在高中起点失去学业地位的关口来推进当前关于教育分层的知识。我们的研究还强调了采用兼顾种族/民族和性别的交叉框架的重要性。鉴于高中成绩对学生长期成功的重要性，