The achievement gap is a serious issue that is happening in schools everywhere and it affects so many students. It can affect students in many different ways, there is no one perspective on what causes the gap. The achievement gap affects minorities more than those who are not minorities. The achievement gap can be caused by multiple things. Teach for America mentions many different ways that the achievement gap can be caused; socioeconomic correlation, race correlation, inequitable school funding, weight of poverty and many more. While Webb, Metha, and Jordan primarily focus on socioeconomic saying that NAEP testing can show that the achievement gap is related to parental education and the student’s eligibility for free or reduced lunches. The went on to say that NAEP scores are lower for students who are eligible for free or reduced lunched than those who don’t qualify. We can’t blame one specific perspective on the achievement gap. …show more content…
Ravitch talked about how principals know how to get higher test scores, one way is to make sure that low performing students don’t attend that school or that they don’t take the test. They may require that the student’s parents come in for an interview knowing that they might not come, or make the student write an essay explaining why the want to attend that school. Schools will also sort through different racial groups and pick the best, this is called skimming or cream-skimming. To make sure that the school gets high test scores, the school might also reduce the number of participants taking the test, or expand the pool of those who need accommodations such as extra time, a dictionary and other
Whether on the scale of a school district, a state, or the nation, achievement gaps exist. Wealth seems to be the deciding factor, with race coming in at a close second, but these do not (and should not) be deciding factors. The State of Texas has developed The P-16 Initiative which seeks to close theses performance gaps between the poor and wealthy. Our textbook reads: “The P-16 is an effort to work with stakeholders collaboratively to foster a more integrated education system, while addressing issues of college readiness standards, teacher education, and educational
When relating poverty to the achievement gap, one can see the correlation. The achievement gap is the discrepancy in academic performance between groups of students, it is more often used to describe the troubling performance gaps between African-American and Hispanic students at the lower end of the performance scale. Many students who are living in poverty fall within these backgrounds and it is understandable why their grades and school performances are suffering. Abraham Maslow’s pyramid of hierarchy needs show that before a child is able to learn or perform any kind of activity, the basic needs must be met, food, shelter, and water (Shaffer, 2014, pp 158).
The achievement gap is defined as the disparity between the performance groups of students, especially groups defined by gender, race/ethnicity, ability and socio-economic status. The achievement gap can be observed through a variety of measures including standardized test scores, grade point averages, drop out rates, college enrollment and completion rates. The Black-White achievement gap is a critical issue in modern society’s education system. Although data surrounding the issue clearly indicates that the racial performance gap exists in areas of standardized tests, graduation rates, dropout rates, and enrollment in continuing education, the causative reasons for the gap are ambiguous—therefore presenting a significant challenge in
The “achievement gap” in education refers to the disparity in academic performance between groups of students. The achievement gap is shown in grades, standardized-test scores, course selection, dropout rates, among other success measures. It’s most often used to describe the troubling performance gaps between African-American and latino students, towards the lower end of the performance scale, compared to their white peers, and the similar academic differences between students from low-income families and those who are privileged. In the past decade, scholars and policy makers began focusing their attention on other achievement gaps, such as those based on sex, English language and learning disabilities.
Achievement Gap (Use data to identify the gap): According to state achievement test results, there is a gap of 47% in reading between 3rd to 5th grade, low-income African American students and higher income, predominately white students.
She also used the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) for closing the achievement gap. Paul Barton and Richard Coley of the Educational Testing Service wrote an overview of the black-white achievement gap over the course if the twentieth century and concluded that the period in which that gap narrowed most was the 1970s and 1980s (Ravitch 365). Over the past generation, there was a remarkable decline from the blacks and Hispanic students who score the lowest on National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) testing. When the NAEP did not help with the gap between the blacks and the Hispanic students, teachers turned to a different
The Achievement Gap is a term that represents the difference of academic success in certain groups of students such as race, gender, and
the term receivement gap is useful because it focuses attention on educational inputs-what the students receive on their educational journey, instead of outputs-their performance on a standardized test. This refocusing also moves attention away from the students as the source of these disparities, and toward the larger structure and forces that play a role in their education and development (p. 417). Venzant-Chambers (2009) asserted the issue of the Black and White achievement gap must be viewed through other lenses opposed to the single view of Black students cannot perform as well as White students. Venzant-Chambers (2009) offered other avenues by which to examine the achievement gap such as school tracking, examining the
These surveys give convincing evidence that the gaps have decreased over time, but are still widely spread. The authors conclude that it would take over 50 years to close the gap in reading achievement scores and over a century to close the gap in mathematics and science achievement scores. The adjusted gaps for social-class, family structure, and community variables were closing from 1965-1992. At this rate of change over the entire period, they would close in the same amount of time as the unadjusted gaps. The rate of change for the unadjusted gaps seem to have reversed after 1972. These results do not give a lot of support to the theory that the gaps in average test scores are caused by the differences in social-class and family structure. Thus, it supports the theory that the gaps in test scores are an outcome of other factors, such as discrimination.
In debates about public education, what is the “achievement gap?” What policies have been implemented to address this
In 1965, Lyndon B Johnson signed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act in an attempt to achieve more equity among minority groups within the education system. Along with the numerous attempts to close the achievement gap came America’s first federally funded state assessments, created with the intention of holding the nation’s schools accountable for providing a quality education for every student. This legislation was revisited in 2001 by the Bush administration with the No Child Left Behind Act, which saw the achievement gap that still existed among ethnic minority groups, but also recognised a prominent gap within poverty- stricken communities. With this came state tests that were more difficult and more frequent in an attempt to further
Schools can’t solve the problem alone,” and” without local initiative, reformers cannot succeed.” The neighborhood is where the children grow up, so some of the small level programs depend on local promote. Third, do not ignore the stupendous gap of income. The achievement gap begins when children are young because some of them have had better medical care and have memorized more vocabulary than others because of highly educational parents. According to what Sean Reardon found, the income achievement gap is growing, and it is two times larger than black-white achievement. Therefore, to mend the schools, to act in concert with local, and not to neglect the large income achievement gap are the points that Diane Ravitch
The achievement gap is a term that has evolved over the past decades to describe
Immediately after the "d" word was mentioned, Shankar Vedantam, the host of the podcast, turned his focus toward relationships and supported this notion with more data and more science. What matters most concerning the achievement gap (which is a multi-layered and complex issue) in the classroom is how we connect to our students. When students and teachers form strong bonds, test scores improve, students are far more likely to complete high school, and overall academic achievement improves. The academic numbers then translate to future earning potential and success post-schooling. And those are the numbers that matter; those post-secondary achievement numbers are the ones that ultimately improve the lives of our students.
Although there is an apparent achievement gap within schools, there are some researchers and people who claim that because schools are not the major cause of the achievement gap, closing the achievement gap is not a school issue. These people claim that schools should not be the ones to try and fix the gap because the problem exists outside