Where the gap opens
28 points by the first test
The Black-White math gap is already about 28 points at third grade, the state's first measurement, and stays that size through 8th.
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Texas first tests students in 3rd grade, around age 8. At that very first measurement, 30% of Black students met grade level in math versus 58% of White students. That 28-point gap was built before the state ever measured anything: by everything that came before school, plus grades K through 2.
Across grades 3 through 8 the gap barely moves. Texas schools, on average, neither widen it nor close it. They inherit it.
That redirects the whole conversation. Interventions aimed at high school arrive a decade after the gap formed, and national studies find the gap already present at kindergarten entry and widening through the first years of school, about a tenth of a standard deviation per year.
How does your school compare?
Every Texas campus, every student group, 2012–2025.