Academic Achievement Gap

Academic Achievement Gap
The education system has improved in many ways, however we still face many problems as a nation. Among many current education system problems is the academic achievement gap between different races. The academic achievement gap has existed for many years but has really been brought to the attention of United Stated citizens in the last decade. Statistics show that on average African American students score lower than white students on examinations, performance and overall grades in school (Camera, 2016). Many theorist have stated what they believe the problem behind the academic achievement gap is, however we have yet to close the gap. There have also been administrative acts set in place in the hopes of closing the
gap. Many solutions have been proposed and some even set to action in low preforming schools. Although the country has not yet figured out the reason behind the achievement gap, it has been agreed upon that we need to find a solution to the problem as soon as possible.
One of the first reports to address the academic achievement gap was the Coleman Report. The goal of the education research, conducted in 1966, was to address the inequalities among African American’s and White’s in schools, after the educational inequality turning point, Brown v. the Board of Education (Kiviat, 2000). However what Mr. Coleman stated instead was that he believes the achievement gap between different races is a product of family differences (Kiviat, 2000). This didn’t go well with American citizens. Coleman also stated that in order to decrease the gap we needed to focus more on the socioeconomic status of students rather than their racial identities (Kiviat, 2000). Today they Coleman report is one of the most influential research reports on education.
Along with the Coleman report many other scholars researched the academic achievement gap. John McWhorter studied and published a book on his findings. McWhorter believes that “African Americans undermine their own progress by subscribing to a ‘cult of victimology’ which leads them to loaf through school” (Fletcher). McWhorter believes that the gap in achievement can only be blamed on the African American families and students. He was criticized greatly on his views and even called a sellout and self-hater (Fletcher). Still he believed that African Americans faced problems in school because of the values they chose to follow and stand by. In McWhorter’s view, the academic achievement gap will not close until African American’s themselves change their morals and values on education.
In the last 50 years the racial academic achievement gap has close slightly. According to today statistics the average 12th grade African American student scored in the 19th percentile (Camera, 2016). In reading the average African American student place in the 22nd percentile (Camera, 2016). This is an improvement from the decades before. The Coleman report era showed that African American students in 12th grade scored in the 13th percentile in both reading and math (Camera, 2016). Therefore its clear there has been improvement in closing the academic achievement gap, although there is still a lot of work to do in order to close the gap significantly.
Along with the reports published by scholars, there have also been administrative acts place in order to try to better our education system.
One administrative act is the No Child Left Behind Act, passed by President Bush in 2001 (Korte, 2015). One goal behind the act was to help eliminate the academic achievement gap. No Child Left Behind required all states to develop content and standardized test in order to make sure that all students were meeting the required education achievement (Korte, 2015). This however was replaced in 2009 by President Obama who created Race to the Top. The goal of his educational reform was to turn low preforming schools around. He created a building system that measured student success (Korte, 2015). He created a competitive grant in hopes of motivating school professional to focus on helping poorly preforming student to achieve higher academics (Korte, 2015). Neither of these acts helped to close the academic achievement gap from what it was in previous
years.
There have been many solutions proposed in order to close the achievement gap.
Many scholars and researchers believe that we can’t focus on school reform alone but also socioeconomic reform. There has been a great number of researcher that suggest that community status has a great influence on the success of students in school. Corey Bower suggest that in addition to making changes in school, we should spend a great deal of effort in reforming the social aspect of these students life (Bower, 2011). Bower states that be believes about three quarters of the academic achievement gap comes from sources outside of the school, whereas only one quarter of the gap is experienced in school (Bower, 2011). After researching the academic achievement gap, Bower believed that schools alone can’t fix the academic achievement gap but that we need to address a social policy as well in order to close the gap successfully (Bower,
2011).
There has also been other scholars to publish articles stating that the academic achievement gap is because teachers and educational professionals are under developed. Donald L. Gillian-Daniel and Sara B Kraemer are both professors and scholars at the University of Wisconsin- Madison. They both share the common belief that teacher’s development is the key to close the current academic achievement gap (Gillian-Daniel & Kraemer, 2015). They state in their article that teachers need to learn to teach more inclusively with the larger minority population (Gillian-Daniel & Kraemer, 2015). They believe minority students need teachers to be more knowledgeable about cultural difference in order to better understand their students and be able to teach them in the best possible way. (Gillian-Daniel & Kraemer, 2015). This is another approach that researchers believe. While some scholars believe the way to close the gap is through teacher development others believe we need to set a social policy.
As a country it’s very evident that there are many flaws in our education system. One of the biggest issues we face is the academic achievement gap. Although there has been a lot of research on what is causing the academic achievement gap, we are still not positive on what causes it. There have also been many solutions proposed by scholars and federal government in order to try to close the academic achievement gap. However every solution is very different from the others and we have not yet pin pointed exactly how to solve this academic achievement gap. As a country we need to focus on one solution and put it in place in order to close the gap. The longer we wait to find a solution, the longer students are suffering.