Achievement Gap, of Students

The gap between majority-minority students has attained the status of the search for the Holy Grail in education, especially since the provisions and penalties of Public Law 107–110, No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, are aimed at removing it. Despite the expectations of the erasure of the gap in achievement test scores advanced in the federal legislation, the discrepancy [Page 14]between minority-majority students on school achievement tests continues into the present. It is neither a recent phenomenon nor confined to the United States.

Scholars who have examined the persistent gap in achievement are convinced that there is no single cause and that the gap is not monolithic. However, nearly all indicate that socioeconomic status is a key indicator: that children from lower-income families tend not to do as well in school as their higher-income counterparts. Lack of access to the dominant forms of cultural capital in the larger society remains a key stumbling block for children of lower-income families. Other critical variables include the level of education of the parents, the number of parents in the home, and the type of community in which a family resides. In this respect, schools reflect rather than act as social change agents for lower-class families. Schools also embody forms of power that reinforce the subservient status of children of color and poverty.

Another key aspect of the achievement gap is the nature of the tests themselves. Originally, both intelligence and achievement tests were based on assumptions anchored in eugenics, and they were consistently biased against the poor. Alfred Binet, the creator of the IQ test in France, noticed that lower test scores were invariably from children in lower-class homes. The differences such tests revealed were often considered as measures of innate properties rather than measures of cultural access. A key supporting argument of the notion that children of the lower classes were “less able” was based on the alleged research of Cyril Burt in England. Burt, the director of testing in England's schools, publicized studies in which he showed that environment had less impact on schooling success than the student's general intelligence. Today, Cyril Burt's research has been listed as fraudulent. Burt invented his data to support his biases. There are still modern proponents of the IQ as an explanation of the achievement gap, that is, the viewpoint that the discrepancy is due to the fact that some children are simply less intelligent than others. Such was the view proffered by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray in 1994 with their book The Bell Curve. The assertions of Herrnstein and Murray are that differences in test scores are more innate than acquired and that government spending on the poor to improve their learning in schools will largely be futile. Such views are considered by most scholars as arguments advancing racism in public policy.

Tests used in school are not only measures (partial or otherwise) of the curriculum and general schooling experience, they are also measures of culture, and culture is a multidimensional phenomenon bringing with it a host of attitudes, expectations, and strategies for coping with life. The schooling experience is not neutral. It is packed with values both written and hidden. Children of different cultures come to the school with a broad range of familiarity with its routines and values. Children with less familiarity are at a disadvantage in a competitive environment.

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