Slow and Uneven Progress in Narrowing Gaps

Posted by on December 19, 2010

A mere 105 years

The Center on Education Policy (CEP) has released a study that tracks trends in achievement gaps for minority and low-income students in all 50 states, and the picture is bleak, according to The Christian Science Monitor. The report calculates how long it would take to close various gaps at their current rates. For Florida, which is making headway, it would take 28 years to close the African-American/white achievement gap for fourth-grade reading. In Washington State, the task would take 105 years. Gaps for Latino students appear to be closing faster than other groups, but other gaps — such as the Native American/white gap for reading, or some male/female gaps — aren’t closing at all, or are widening. The report declined to rank states — assessment tests are too different — but states like Arizona and Florida, for instance, are clearly doing the best job narrowing the gap between Latino and white students, while Florida also stands out in closing the African-American/white gap. Tennessee is closing gaps for low-income students. “[The report] is in a way saying that we’ve gone through 10 years of talk and some action, but if we’re serious about this, we have to do much more and do it a lot faster,” said Jack Jennings of the CEP.

Read more: http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Education/2010/1214/Persistent-achievement-gap-vexes-education-reformers-Six-takeaways/Progress-on-achievement-gaps-sluggish

See the report: http://www.cep-dc.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=document_ext.showDocumentByID&nodeID=1&DocumentID=317