Closing the Achievement Gap

The achievement gap has been something that has plagued education since its beginnings. The difference in scores between race and economic status has become extremely evident. Although these gaps have grown smaller over the years, they are still alive today. In this blog, I hope to inform you about the achievement gap, inform you on how to close the achievement gap, and give all students an equal chance at a better education.

To understand the achievement gap we must look into our past. Once the Civil War was over, African Americans were allowed to read and learn to write. As most of you know, the south heavily segregated their schools. African American schools were not funded at all. This lead to a worse education for African Americans. This then circled around to the next generation. There was less funding for African American schools and because of this there was a lesser education give to the African American students. Although there was one difference, this generations parents were educated. Although with a very low quality of education. This lead to more at home discussions and more of an aptitude for learning. So the African American populations learning grew ever so slightly. White americans received huge funding for their schools and have highly educated parents. Not to say that every African american child gets a bad education and every White child gets a good education, but since their funding was drastically different, usually their quality of education was worse. So this went on for many generations, not just for African American students but for other races to. In WW2 Japanese children were sent to internment camps and their learning was backpedaled. During reconstruction Chinese americans were set back because of their ethnicity. The list goes on and on. The U.S. did not realized this inequality in our education system until schools were integrated in 1954 with the court case of Brown Vs Board of education of Topeka. Once each student was tested they saw the drastic difference. 

The achievement gap today is very different but can still be tied to the errors of the past. The achievement gap today is mostly in poor neighborhoods of inner-cities and rural towns. This is mostly do to as always finances. The funding for the schools in inner-cities and rural towns are horrible and the schools themselves are often under kept and understaffed. Teachers often have large class sizes and so little funding that they often have no books or even textbooks to read to their class. These students leave school to go to homes that are dirty, eat foods that most of the time, will get them sick. They come to school tired, sick, and just unwilling to learn. This is where we see the achievement gap today. Not so much in segregation anymore, but in the income of families. 

So how do we close the achievement gap? Well, most politicians do not know the answer. Most point the gap to poverty. I believe that we can combat the achievement gap in many ways. One way is to teach families how to have at home discussions about the lessons in school. If we can have the reenforcement of a lesson at home we may pull the achievement gap closer. Now there needs to be effective reenforcement at home. Parents need to turn outings into lessons and instill a love of learning in their children. We also need to lessen the class size. It is unfair to the student and the teacher to have a class of sixty or fifty. We need to have smaller class size for many reasons. One is less disruptions. If a teacher can focus more on teaching than quieting down the class, than their scores will go up. Two is more focus on students. If the teacher has a smaller class size they can focus on the needs of more students and can reteach more subjects. The last thing we can do to close the achievement gap, is to give need schools more funding. Children should not have to go to a school where the roof leaks and the walls are cracked. Students do not deserve a school that does not have a library or does not have extra-curricular activities. A child deserves a school that can help them grow and flourish in a positive way. 

As you can see, closing the achievement gap will not be easy, it will not be quick, there is no silver bullet. I believe that if we follow these steps and do not repeat the mistakes of our past, we can close the achievement gap. Thank you for reading.  

Sources:Spring, Joel H. American Education. Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill, 2006. Print.

Charter Schools: Sifting Through the Fog

Charter schools have been one of the most debated topics in education.  Making sense of the endless squabbling, however, has been difficult.  Among the discourse there are just as many truths as there are myths.  The purpose of this article is to evaluate why charter schools produce scores that are similar (though sometimes worse) than public schools in an attempt to separate truth from myth.

What is a charter school and why where they created?  Charter schools were created by Ray Budde, a professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in 1974.  Charter schools can be found in any environment, whether rural, suburban, or urban).  Since they are supposed to be "saving American education," however, they are mostly frequently found in low socio-economic and rural areas, typically with low national test scores.  Since charter schools are privately owned they are not required to follow mandatory state curriculum, disciplinary rules, and can pick and choose which students to admit.  Charter schools are designed to bring ingenuity into the classroom because they are free from state curriculum mandates.

Charter schools have an admissions program that filters students who will best fit into the school's atmosphere.  There is often a comprehension test on subjects like Reading and Math, a personality test, and an essay that is completed to find the best and the brightest while eliminating children who may bring down the school’s average test scores and with it, the school’s credibility.

This simply makes no sense.  If charter schools are supposed to aid children in rural and low socio-economic areas, then excluding students most in need of a good education undermines the very goal charter schools profess to achieve.  English-as-a-second-language learners, children with disabilities, and children with bad grades are typically excluded from charter school admission.  The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued a report stating that while 11% of students in the U.S. have disabilities, charter schools only enroll 8% of them.

So this leads back to the main question, are charter schools better than public schools?  The truth is that most charter school students do not score higher or even the same on national tests than public school students.  In some instances, they scored lower than their public school peers.  In the District of Columbia, Louisiana, and many other states such as Wisconsin, Michigan and North Carolina, students in charter schools barely made any progress over their public school peers in Mathematics and in English.  

Why are charter school students not gaining ground against public school students?  Mainly, it is due to the curriculum. Charter schools rely on high stakes testing and therefore, often “teach to the test” based on a set schedule.  Charter schools also often move quickly through curriculum and do not take the time to "re-teach" the subject until the test review days.  Charter schools also have a high teacher turnover rate.  If students perform poorly on tests, the teacher will often be fired or leave their jobs after only a couple of years.

In my view, the worst part about charter schools is the quality of education the students are receiving.  A good education system is supposed to created lifelong learners and spark an interest in the student.  If a child is being force-fed information and is not learning to enjoy that subject or dive deeper into it to and learn outside of the classroom, then we are stifling the passion within that child..  The most critical topics our education systems address must be discussed outside the classroom.  Complex problems and ideas like Global Warming, the Pythagorean Theorem, the Civil War and works of Charles Dickens need to be discussed beyond our schools’ four walls.  If we restrict our children’s learning to simply what they learn in school and fail to create passionate, life long learners then we simply will not be preparing the next generation to solve the many difficult problems that they will face.

So why are we pouring money into charter schools when they are not effective?  One reason might be that many people are grossly under-informed about the failings of charter schools.  They are often placed on a high pedestal and without critically examining what they actually produce.  It just goes to show that if we dive deeper, not just in education, but in life, we will solve more problems than we create.

Sites: Ravitch, Diane. "Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America's Public Schools." Barnes & Noble. N.p., n.d. Web. 07 May 2017.