Unfulfilled Potential: High-Achieving Minority Students and the High School Achievement Gap in Math Stephen Kotok University of Texas at El Paso This study uses multilevel modeling to examine a subset of the highest performing 9th graders and explores the extent that achievement gaps in math widen for high performing African American and Latino students and their high performing White and Asian peers during high school. Using nationally representative data from the High School Longitudinal Study of 2009 (HSLS:09), this study aims to address three research questions: 1) To what degree does the achievement gap widen between dif- ferent ethnic groups during high school; 2) To what extent can a widening achieve- ment gap be explained by individual and school characteristics of students?; and 3) To what extent are the effects of various factors on achievement moderated by race/ethnicity? The study finds that factors such as advanced course placement and socio-economic status (both individual and school SES) explain away the gap for high achieving Latino 11th graders and some of the gap for African American 11th graders while student background explains away the large advantage for Asian 11th graders. Notably, the effect of math efficacy on math achievement is shown to vary by race/ethnicity. This study has important implications for post-secondary opportunities for high-achieving African American and Latino students. Keywords: Achievement Gap, Tracking, Ecological Theory, Opportunity Gap The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) brought renewed attention to racial achievement gaps in the United States by quantifying achievement levels for subgroups within and between schools (Lubienski & Crocket, 2007). However, almost 15 years since the passing of NCLB, African American and Latino high school students still perform significantly worse in math than White and Asian students (Plucker, Burroughs, & Song, 2010; Venzant Chambers & Huggins, 2014). Many scholars (Farkas, 2004; Harris & Robinson, 2007) suggest that this achievement gap persists because minority students are more likely to enter high school without the necessary skills. It is well documented and fairly intuitive that 9 th grade students lacking strong foundational math skills will have difficulty excelling in high school math. However, less attention has been given to how the math achievement gap widens during high school for African American and Latino students who enter high school with exceptional math abilities as well as the degree to which these disparities result from uneven opportunity structures (Bromberg & Theokas, 2014; Hedges & Nowell 1999; Riegle-Crumb & Grodsky, 2010) 1 . Using the most recently available nationally representative data from the High School Longitudinal Study of 2009 (HSLS:09), this study examines a subset of the highest performing 9 th graders and explores the extent that achievement gaps in math widen © 2017 The University of North Carolina Press 1 African American and black are used interchangeably throughout this article. 1