In education, we talk a lot about achievement or learning gaps, but what is this really? And is it really that important for teachers to understand?
What are achievement gaps?
By definition, achievement gap is a term used to describe the difference in learning gains between two groups of students. The groups could be based on gender, ethnicity, socio-economic status, or learning opportunities such as students included in special education or honors courses.
We tend to talk about achievement gaps when we are discussing the outcomes of standardized tests or graduation rates.
When we talk about achievement gaps, we are usually talking about standardized tests.
Some assessments give individual classroom teachers information about how they perform when their class of students is broken up into the different groups. What those standardized tests don’t account for is the individuality of each student. They also don’t account for their experience at school and at home.
When we look at individual students, it can be helpful to compare their individual growth compared to that of their average peer. This lets us know if their learning gains are at the same pace as their peers, faster, or slower. In many states, this comparison is how students can be identified as having a learning disability.
I won’t go into the specifics about that right now. It is helpful to use the comparison of where students are to their peers to help get an idea of how much progress they need to make to get on grade level. Students who are below grade level have to learn more at a faster rate to get on grade level and stay there. It is possible when we fix those weak skills they have.
What are some things we know about achievement gaps?
Achievement gaps occur across grade levels in all states. The reasons for these gaps are varied. Many of them boil down to opportunities presented before students ever get to school.
So, what causes achievement gaps?
We know that students who have the opportunity to be read to consistently before kindergarten perform better once they reach school. Children who participate in preschool tend to have better learning outcomes. Students who have good nutrition and safe home environments perform better than those who do not. These, and so many other factors can and do play a part in achievement gaps.
Even students who have the cards stacked against them can be successful. Teachers work hard every day to support all students. Through everything that schools do, from meal programs to community outreaches, students have greater opportunities to succeed than ever before.
The number of intervention programs out there which focus on specific skill sets blows my mind honestly. But I do think that we are making the progress monitoring intervention process much more complicated than it needs to be. I have seen students in all the different groups make great gains academically when the root cause of the struggle is identified. Also, supports are provided that focus on this one skill set.
While teachers cannot fix all of the issues that contribute to achievement gaps, we can do so much in our classrooms to mitigate many of them.
We can use progress monitoring, at its simplest level to make sure that students who start at a disadvantage receive the support that they need to be able to be academically successful. To do that, we need a jumping off point and a way to compare where our students are versus where they need to be. For that, we can use universal screeners to help us figure out our starting points.
So, what are achievement gaps? Achievement gaps are what we see when we compare student groups. While they are a problem, we can work together to overcome them.