Staff members of the Regional Educational Laboratory Southeast (REL-SE) conducted searches of the Internet and UNCG (University of North Carolina at Greensboro) online education databases (EconLit, Google Scholar, Wilson Web, etc.) for research and studies regarding the academic achievement gap and strategies for closing the achievement gap. REL-SE staff members also consulted relevant non-profit organizations (AIR, Mathematica, NASSP, RAND, Urban Institute, etc.) as well as U.S. government websites (U.S. ED, GAO, IES, WWC, etc.) for evaluation and research involving the achievement gap. The search produced a series of papers and studies that roughly fall into two categories: general academic research concentrating on the extent and impact of the achievement gap and more applied papers examining "best practices" and strategies that have been deemed to improve the academic performance of ethnic minority students in various settings. The latter group of studies range in methodological approach from more rigorous to expert opinion. Overall, findings from this limited sample of studies indicate that the achievement gap for ethnic minority students is often narrowed and, at times, statistically significant improvement in student achievement is achieved. However, these are mostly quasi-experimental and simple observational studies that lack strong external validity (which would allow inferences to be generalizable to other settings and/or populations). Caution should be used when interpreting and using the results provided in these studies. Common themes, as those discussed above, are emerging in both the causes and the possible strategies for successfully dealing with the achievement gap. (Contains 1 footnote.)