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.
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 the research consensus finds the gap emerges in early childhood, with the fastest growth in the earliest school years.