A Cultural Approach to Establishing Equity and Closing the Educational Achievement Gap.

TLDR: The achievement gap remains as wide today as when it was first documented by norm-referenced, learning and teaching outcomes (e.g., National Assessment of Educational Progress NAEP scores by ethnicity) among mounting evidence that in effect reveal an average differential of four grade levels.

Abstract: Addressing the underdevelopment awaiting most children belonging to historically disparaged groups in the uneven playing field of public education remains the top problem in advancing equity and excellence in education. Clearly, excellence in our educational system requires equity in opportunities to learn regardless of children’s background or status. The achievement gap remains as wide today as when it was first documented by norm-referenced, learning and teaching outcomes (e.g., National Assessment of Educational Progress NAEP scores by ethnicity) among mounting evidence that in effect reveal an average differential of four grade levels. While differences at the individual level are understandable, gross disparities in both educational and economic outcomes among ethnic populations represent a problem with both scientific and ethical dimensions (Portes, 2005). The social science community is still at a loss after decades of reforms that fail to reduce this enduring achievement gap in education. Well funded comprehensive school reform models have created the illusion that the gap is closing when this is not true. For example current NCLB policies and related programs, such as Success for All (Slavin, 2002) do not, in spite of claims to the contrary (see Pogrow, 1999; 2002), close the gap nor offer a viable alternative direction. Such an example raises ethical questions not only about how scarce resources are being misallocated but also of how pretense and self-serving entrepreneurship becomes part of the political economy of education. This problem may be defined in terms of how social injustice prevails alongside group-based poverty that in effect cause and sustain the educational system’s under-education by design. The latter in part defines the “achievement gap”. The gap is dialogical, a semiotic category that remains largely misunderstood by those who associated it with a cultural deficit that thrives in the thinking of influential policy writers (see Rothstein, 2004; Thernstrom & Thernstrom, 2003). These scholars frame the problem of the achievement gap in terms of faulty parenting practices that should be modified to parallel of those of middle class dominant group families and successful Asian groups. Zero tolerance practices championed by charter schools are considered a solution to the longstanding pattern of group based poverty and social disadvantages that include tracking and severe inequalities (Kozol, 1992; 2000).