Concepts
Ideas that keep showing up in the findings, each defined once.
The scissors
A credential and the outcome it stands for moving in opposite directions, so the two lines cross like open scissors. In the Texas data: the state's "college, career, or military ready" label for Black graduates roughly doubled (37% for the class of 2017, 75% for 2024) while actual enrollment in a Texas college fell (54% for the class of 2016, 45% for 2022), and every other group shows the same shape.
The access gap
The distance between how students score and how often they are placed in the advanced track, measured inside the same building. In 429 Texas high schools, White students complete advanced courses about 6 points more than Black students who score the same on the state Algebra test, and at 14 schools Black students score equal or higher yet still complete advanced courses less. Preparation explains only about half of placement (the correlation between the score gap and the course gap is 0.50); the rest is whatever sits between scoring well and being in the room.
The frozen gap
A gap that closes on one measure while staying still on another, which usually means the measure moved, not the students. Texas' readiness-checklist gap between Black and White graduates closed from 28.5 points to 11.4; over the same era the SAT/ACT college-ready score gap went from 33.6 to 31.3, essentially unchanged since 2012.
The folklore check
Taking a number people repeat and tracing it to a primary source. The repeated number is often wrong: "about 3 percent of high school football players play in college" matches an old Division I-only figure, while the rate across all NCAA divisions is 8.1 percent, and "two in ten thousand make the NFL" is too grim, since NCAA's own chained rates put drafted alone near eleven in ten thousand.