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.
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