Achievement Gap

Nature of the Achievement Gap

Achievement gaps can be observed among students of different gender, race/ethnicity, cultural and linguistic background, ability, and socioeconomic status. In the United States, White students tend to outperform students of other ethnicities, and wealthier students often do better than students from low-income families. Similar or different achievement gaps exist for these and other groups of students in many countries around the world. Achievement gaps may appear in standardized test scores, grade point averages, enrollment in honors and advanced placement programs, school dropout rates, and admission to college and college completion rates. The 2007 Nation's Report Card shows that achievement disparities are still real and deeply entrenched in U.S. schools. For example, the average gap between White and Black eighth graders on the national Mathematics Report Card is more than 30 points and the gap between White and Hispanic students is about 25 points.

As schools reflect the ever-increasing diversity in the world, the number of students with diverse ethnic, cultural, linguistic, and socioeconomic backgrounds has increased dramatically over recent decades in many countries. Many students are at risk for education failure. The gap in academic achievement persists between minority and disadvantaged students and their White counterparts, and this has become one of the most pressing education challenges that societies currently face. The issue of improving these students' academic performance has become the concern of the public, policymakers, educators, parents, and researchers and has resulted in numerous educational reforms, debates, and studies.

Search for the Roots of Achievement Gap

The debate on the causes of the achievement gap can be attributed to the existence of several different theoretical perspectives. In the 1960s, deficit theorists explained that the poor are poor because of their own shortcomings and deficiencies and that children of color are victims of pathological lifestyles that hinder their ability to benefit from schooling. Such theorists tended to ignore the unequal systems that give some people access and opportunity while denying others.

Sociolinguists, on the other hand, argue that it is a cultural mismatch that contributes to the achievement gap. Multicultural curriculum theorists, such as James Bank and Shirley Brice Heath, blame the nature of the culturally irrelevant curriculum and schooling for achievement gaps. Teacher educators such as Kenneth Zeichner, Marilyn Cochran-Smith, and others focus on the pedagogical practices of teachers as contributing factors to either the exacerbation or the narrowing of achievement gaps.

Another perspective, represented by Gloria Ladson-Billings, later explains the gap with an economic concept, the education debt, which refers to the persistent social inequality in schools and in life. According to this school of thought, the education debt that has accumulated over time—comprising historical, economical, sociopolitical, and moral components—is the real source for achievement gap. It further suggests that to close the achievement gap we must first deal with its main cause: social inequalities. Over the years, the trend in searching for the roots of achievement gap seem to have moved away from the deficiency theory to societal reasons.

...