This study identifies students’ academic trajectories in the middle grades relative to a set of college readiness benchmarks. We apply math and reading college readiness benchmarks to rich longitudinal data for more than 360,000 students across the nation. Student-level and school-level demographic characteristics significantly predict academic trajectories. Compared to White and Asian students, higher proportions of Black and Hispanic student are always off-track throughout middle school. Among students who started 6th grade on track, being male, Black, Hispanic, and attending schools with a higher percentage of low-income students are positively associated with falling off track.

这项研究确定了相对于一系列大学入学准备基准的中等年级学生的学术轨迹。我们将数学和阅读大学准备情况基准应用于丰富的纵向数据，以供全国超过360,000名学生使用。学生水平和学校水平的人口统计学特征显着预测了学业发展轨迹。与白人和亚裔学生相比，整个中学期间，黑人和西班牙裔学生的比例总是偏高。在开始上六年级的学生中，男性，黑人，西班牙裔和上学的低收入学生百分比较高，与辍学成正相关。