Student Achievement Gaps on the Forefront of Education Dialogues

Earlier this week, we commented on a report that addressed college and workforce readiness, which called for the need to remedy shortcomings in these areas with better preparation in high school. We would like to expand on this issue by looking at another dimension.
 
The Education Trust released a new report titled Breaking the Glass Ceiling of Achievement for Low-Income Students and Students of Color, which adds some nuance to the conversation by exploring the gaps between white students and students of color, as well as the gaps between students in the highest and lowest ends of the achievement spectrum. Kati Haycock, President of The Education Trust, opened the report with her own insights into the ever-present issue. “Far too many children,” she writes, “have such low reading and mathematics skills that they will be forever locked out of decent jobs and full participation in our democracy if we don’t do something different, and do it fast.”
 
The report is the first in a series of reports that aims to “draw attention and action to gaps” at not only the low end of the spectrum, but the high end as well, which is something Haycock believes is critical to their mission. The achievement gaps will “never close,” she writes, “if we focus only on bringing the bottom students up,” which is a fact she believes is proven by “simple mathematics.” Indeed, the report is backed up by thorough statistical research, covering public school trends over 8 years in fourth and eighth grade reading and math results.
 
On the low-end of the achievement spectrum, there has been significant progress among students of color. From 2003 to 2011, the number of Hispanic and black fourth grade students performing at below the basic level dropped by more than 10% each, whereas the number of white students at the same level dropped 4%, thus closing the black-white gap by 8% and the Hispanic-white gap by 7%. However, on the high-end of the achievement spectrum, the only fourth grade students who progressed were white and higher income students, thus widening gaps significantly. The number of these students scoring at advanced levels in mathematics rose from 5% to 9%, while the number of black students remained at 1%, and the number of Hispanic students rose to only 2%.
 
“The proficiency rate data seem to suggest that we are making progress with our low-achieving, low-income students and students of color,” the report states, “but not so much with our high-achieving, low-income students and students of color.” However, when the report studied the highest and lowest percentiles of the students in question, the results showed that all students have made progress, and that there were more instances of gap-narrowing. They also discovered that the reason why more students have not reached advanced levels of performance is because, more often than not, low-end students are starting at lower levels of learning.
 
Despite the wider gaps among low-end students, though, the authors of the report believe that “a true gap-closing approach must focus on gaps at all levels, simultaneously building capacity to support low-performing students while challenging students who are ready to go further faster.”
 
NMSI is doing its part to help close the achievement gap by training and supporting teachers across the nation, and our results are evidence of that. This year we are providing teacher training events in 30 states around the nation. With our AP program alone, AP scores among black students across 70 schools have more than tripled the number of qualifying scores, and those same scores have doubled for Hispanic students.
 
We are looking forward to sustaining the momentum of our programs, and addressing the current STEM crisis that is facing America. NMSI will be participating in several key conferences this summer including the U.S. News and World Report STEM Solutions Conference later this month.