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Achievement Gap Effect

Decent Essays

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

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