The Importance Of The Achievement Gap In American Education

Howard (2010) quickly changes gears in Chapter two, Changing Demographics, to look at the differences in language, ethnicity, race issues, culture and classism when regarded and compared to those who achieve on level and those who fall in the achievement gap. Howard examines the quickly changing face of America with the increase in Latino populations across the nation. Positing that teachers must adapt to understand and connect to students of diverse populations or there will be a great disconnect and divide that could be disastrous for the growing number of students that are part of the achievement gap, as well as the negative ramifications that could come from not evaluating the needs of those in the achievement gap. Howard (2010) also speculates the long term negative aspects that could come to the United States, especially in global market, if we as a country do

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

How should society handle the perceived differences between races when it comes to education? The goal of both researchers is to narrow the academic gap between white and black students. Both authors attribute the gap between the academic scores of black and white students from opposite sides of racial identity. As Dr. Beverly Daniels Tatum, President of Spelman College and clinical psychologist has written an article entitled “Why are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?” Her approach is from the perspective of the student and how they perceive their role and upper limits while maintaining their place in their peer group's expectations of their race. Dr. Diane Ravitch, a research professor of education at New York University, has written an article entitled "The Facts about the Achievement Gap.” Her approach is from the perspective of how schools and society implicitly or explicitly cast students into achievement tracks based on their race. Both approach the same idea about racial identity, but they have different solutions, such as peer groups, the school board, and who is right about the solution.

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.

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

The “gap” as referred to in the title, is the distribution of the scores on achievement tests that differ between black and white students in the United States. The purpose of this study was to record the degree of the gap in achievement scores, decide how much of the racial gap is due to social-class, how the gap differed in the 30-year period, and how that which is credited to the social-class has changed over the years.

Ever since the establishment of equal education in the United States, there has been a disparity in academic success between children of different races. The education of African American children has become a prime example of this. As discussed in the historical text, A Letter to My Nephew, which was written during the time of the civil rights movement in the 1950’s and 1960’s, African Americans were not given equal opportunities to succeed educationally and could do little to change their futures for the better. They had to work much harder than whites to receive even a portion of the recognition and success that whites achieved (Baldwin 1). Although many today believe America has overcome this problem, it still remains a pressing issue in many aspects of society, arguably the most important being education. The racial achievement gap, an important term to familiarize with when discussing this topic, refers to the disparity in educational performance between students of different races (National Education Association 1). As of now, although the education achievement gap has been narrowing, there still remains a large disparity between African Americans and their racial counterparts. According to a study by Roland G. Freyer and Steven D. Levitt, professors at Harvard University and W.E.B Du Bois Institute, respectively, African American students enter kindergarten already significantly behind children of other races, and their test scores continue to drop

After reviewing the Government laws and policies that have been in placed and replaced in history and more currently to contribute and correct the issue. The most important question of all remains. Why does the Achievement Gap still exist? According to former Secretary of Education John King (2016) “Black and Hispanic students continue to lag behind their White peers in achievement and graduation rates.”After so many attempts made by the Government to close the Gap and create equality, clearly there is something that is not being addressed across American Public Schools. Frederica Wilson (2013) former state senate member stated in the Brown vs Board Documentary There is such a difference in going to one school in one community and going to another in another community. Why don't we tackle that problem instead of testing the students predicting they will fail, watching them fail and denying them a good life?”The question now that remains how exactly are the schools different in different communities?

The achievement gap is a series of test that students have to take, which score how smart or dumb they are. Of course it is also separated by race to see who is doing better. The test for academic performance is unfair all around because not all students receive the same education or the same help in or out of school. Those that are White students usually perform a lot better than those that are from minority homes and again higher and lower income students will be different in score and in education. These test that they are obligated to take is more of a student-to-student competition between each other.

As minority students increased in urban public schools, they have now become the majority of the school population and have brought difficult topics to the surface; race and ethnicity. In Another Inconvenient Truth: Race and Ethnicity Matter, Hawley and Nieto published their beliefs on how cultural differences are not to be tucked away and hidden in an educational setting, but embraced and celebrated to promote education by the teacher in an academic journal: Educational Leadership. Their appeals and claims provide various instruction to guide professional educators to overcome the achievement gap.

The first public school in the United States opened in Boston in the year of 1821. By the end of the 19th century, public secondary schools began to outnumber private ones. Nevertheless, the education system started with many flaws. One of the biggest problems of the public educational system is that, although it gave the less advantaged an opportunity to learn, it did so in a segregated way. When we talk about the segregation of the past, everyone seems to agree that it was a real problem. However, when someone say the schools are still segregated today, many people (from advantaged social groups) would disagree. One thing to keep in mind is that, desegregation is not limited to having multiracial schools with students of color sitting next to white students. Desegregation goes beyond the school scope and family and community cultures also play an important role. To make things worse, the education system is having several problems on achieving its mission of preparing the youth to succeed personally and professionally. According to experts, the achievement gap shows how big those problems are. In order to understand why the achievement gap is related to today 's segregation, we need to understand what achievement gap is. The best definition of achievement gap, describes it as the difference in educational proficiency between students who come from high or middle class white families,

What is one of the most controversial subjects in America? How about the fact that we have students in school who don’t get the same opportunities as others? In Diane Ravitch’s “The Facts about the Achievement Gap”, she discusses the issues about the achievement gap. While many people who have looked at the gap as a race issue it should be looked at as an economic issue. She also points out that while the schools have been working to close it over the past few decades they have failed to do so.

The achievement gap is a term that has evolved over the past decades to describe

Historical achievement gap. Historically, the achievement gap was an unobserved problem back in the 1800s during the Reconstruction Era when unequal education existed. Butchart (2010) reported that racism and segregation between European American and African American students attributed to unequal education. Before and after the Emancipation, many African Americans attempted to set up schools for students, but violent assaults occurred that hindered African Americans from obtaining an education (Butchart, 2010). Despite their situation, African Americans did well during the 1860s and 1870s. Their performance in formal education exceled despite the conditions of racism and landlessness, which were causes of poverty and not having the necessary tools needed for academic success (Butchart, 2010). During this time, unequal education was more prevalent in the South during the 1890s under the Jim Crow legislative actions when European American schools received more funding for their students compared to African American schools. The existence of unequal education in the South was vital to this study because it provided a historical background of the region where the local problem was identified.