By John Fitzgerald, April guest blogger
I recently wrote an essay for Minnesota 2020 about the achievement gap. My goal was to bring to light new figures that show the gap still exists and has not changed for the better.
The achievement gap is most often seen through the lens of race — that is, how do minority students compare to white students? In Minnesota, they fare quite poorly. In 1992, white fourth-grade students scored 223 on a National Assessment of Educational Progress test while African American students scored 189, a gap of 34 points. Fifteen years later, that gap was 33 points. In eighth-grade math, white students scored 277 in 1990 and African Americans 236 — a gap of 41 points. In 2007, that gap was 37 points.
But race isn’t the only way to look at the achievement gap. Significant differences can be seen between those children who live in poverty and those who do not.
More than 30 percent of Minnesota students qualify for free and reduced price school lunch, the federal standard for poverty. There was a gap in the reading test of 30 points between fourth-graders from high-income families and low-income families in 1998. That gap was 27 points in 2007. Minnesota’s low-income fourth-graders rank 31st in the country in test scores.
The situation is worse in the eighth-grade math test. What was a 19-point difference in 2000 is a 25-point difference in 2007.
What’s the answer to the achievement gap? Heck if I know. I am often reminded of the saying “A war is won with boots on the ground.” I suspect that the achievement gap problem — vast and nationwide — will require a solution that includes increased manpower to reach out to students in danger of becoming achievement gap statistics. We simply must not allow these students to fail.
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