Can Schools Alone Close the Achievement Gap? Research says no
By CHRISTINE KIERNAN

Over the past decade an informal network of alternative schools has sprung up around the country, dedicated to the challenging task of raising the proficiency levels of students left behind by the traditional public school system.

These students primarily hail from lower-income families, are predominantly of color, and consistently score lower on standardized tests than their white, middle-income counterparts. The alternative schools, many of them charters, have received praise for improving the test scores of their students, leading many to conclude that educational reform alone can close the achievement gap.

Many of these schools are based on the philosophy that giving poor children an education equal in quality to that received by middle-class children is not sufficient. Rather, poor children require an even better education in order to overcome the disadvantages that are part and parcel of their socioeconomic status.

A series of studies conducted by academics in recent years has bolstered this point. In 1995, psychologists Betsy Hart and Todd Risley showed that 3-year-old children of middle-class parents had a vocabulary far exceeding that of the parents of working class children.

Anthropologist Annette Landreau demonstrated that the involvement of middle-class parents in their children’s lives and their encouragement of inquisitiveness led to increased confidence and feelings of empowerment among their children. And, educator Jeanne Brooks-Gunn found that racial and ethnic differences in parenting styles largely paralleled racial and ethnic differences in school readiness.

In short, it has become clear that children of working class parents and parents on welfare are already behind their middle-class counterparts in terms of behavioral and academic skills before even beginning school.

Some proponents of the charter school movement argue that poor children need to be educated in a different way than middle-class children in order to overcome these disadvantages. They espouse longer school days with more time spent in class and an emphasis on building character and cultivating a strong work ethic. They say this will help students gain ground in academic disciplines and familiarize themselves with the culture of achievement in which their middle-class counterparts function so comfortably. They claim that elevated scores on statewide standardized tests speak to the effectiveness of this methodology.

Statistics, however, can be deceiving. Because each state establishes its own definition of proficiency, it is unreliable to compare a school’s standardized test scores across state lines. While a school’s proficiency levels in math and English in one state may rank high by that state’s standards, they may be considered failing by another.

Furthermore, there can be a high degree of variation within a particular school. A few above-average children in the classroom can inflate test scores. Tracking the advancement of one particular child over the years is a more effective tool to gauge a school’s success than is relying on comparisons of the median tests scores of one school to another.

Even if these alternative schools do prove to be wildly successful, it would be impossible to replicate them on a wide scale. Currently charter schools enroll only about one percent of all public school students in the nation. In one-third of states they are not yet even authorized to function. Many of the most innovative and most successful charter schools, such as those based on the KIPP model, rely on generous contributions from private donors.

These alternative schools would not be able to realistically function with public financing alone. In addition, these schools require an extensive time commitment and personal investment from their teachers. Some teachers go so far as to give out their cell phone numbers so students can reach them after hours. For the most part these teachers are predominantly young and inexperienced and willing to subsist on salaries lower than those received by tenured teachers at many public schools—but for how long? Finally, the oversight of these charter school is manageable now because there are so few of them. Should these models be put into practice on a wide scale, quality of implementation will be a concern.

It is implausible to think that schools alone can close the achievement gap that separates children by race and income. Perhaps most importantly, the disadvantages that poor children have accrued by the time they reach kindergarten are evidence that a much wider scale of assistance is needed.

On the developmental level, there is a need for summer and after school reading programs, extracurricular activities like sports and museum visits, family literacy programs that encourage a love of learning, and child rearing workshops that demonstrate to mothers and fathers the importance of actively engaging in their child’s development.

On the socioeconomic policy level, concerns to be addressed include lack of affordable housing, poor healthcare, and prison and minimum wage reform. The obstacles that poor children face are so encompassing that focusing on education alone will never solve the problem.

That said, quality of schools does count. But working to improve school quality should be part of a much greater effort across all fields to advance the minds and opportunities for young people across America.

The solution is not to expand the responsibilities of an already overloaded and overstretched public education system. Neither is it to increase reliance on private, charter or parochial schools. Rather, bridging the achievement gap requires a simultaneous investment in other social and economic programs aimed at eliminating poverty.