Roots of achievement gap run deep

The achievement gap is fueled by a broad array of factors that extend well beyond the schoolhouse door, warns a recent Educational Testing Service report, which urges policymakers to tackle the problem with comprehensive strategies that begin in early childhood.

The report, Parsing the Achievement Gap: Baselines for Tracking Progress, identifies 14 factors related to student achievement and finds that minority student populations were adversely and disproportionately affected on each and every measure—from low birth weight and lead exposure to parental involvement in education and school safety. And 11 of these factors revealed gaps between students from low-income families and higher-income families.

“All children can learn, [but] closing the gap requires changing the conditions that create it,” report author Paul Barton told attendees at a Washington, D.C., press conference late last year.

The report divides the factors into three general categories. Weight at birth, lead poisoning, and hunger and nutrition constitute the “early development” class. Rigor of school curriculum, teacher preparation and experience, class size, availability of classroom technology, and school safety make up the “school environment” category. The “home learning environment” category consists of TV watching, reading to young children, parent availability/support, student mobility and parent participation in education.

“Identifying and tracking these factors is the first step,” said Sharon Robinson, president of ETS’s Educational Policy Leadership Institute. “Most importantly, this report serves as a reminder that each of us—parents, teachers and policymakers—has a crucial role to play to make sure that every child becomes a high achiever.”

Parsing the Achievement Gap can be downloaded online at www.ets.org/research/pic.

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