U.S. history state assessment items: Exploring the income–achievement gap and levels of academic language, historical thinking, and historical literacy demand

ABSTRACT States have been restructuring their U.S. history state assessments to include literacy-intensive reading and writing assessment items that have the potential to evaluate students’ historical literacy skills in high-stakes testing environments. The purpose of this study was to explore how the restructuring of a U.S. history state assessment with the addition of an extended-response item was associated with an increase in the income–achievement gap and to explore the role urbanity status played in student performance by school income level. An assessment item analysis as well as difference-in-means and multiple-regression statistical analyses were used in this study. The findings first identified that the extended-response item presented higherlevels of academic language demand, historical thinking demand, and historical literacy demand than the multiple-choice items. Second, the quantitative analyses identified an income–achievement gap between students from low-income schools and students from non-low-income schools, with students from low-income urban schools underperforming all other income levels and urbanity categories. The findings suggest a performance gap may exist for some students on the extended item that may be contributed to underdeveloped language, historical thinking, and historical literacy skills.