Achievement Gap, of Students

Fenwick W. English

The gap between majority-minority students has attained the status of the search for the Holy Grail in education, especially since the provisions and penalties of Public Law 107–110, No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, are aimed at removing it. Despite the expectations of the erasure of the gap in achievement test scores advanced in the federal legislation, the discrepancy between minority-majority students on school achievement tests continues into the present. It is neither a recent phenomenon nor confined to the United States. Scholars who have examined the persistent gap in achievement are convinced that there is no single cause and that the gap is not monolithic. However, nearly all indicate that socioeconomic status is a key indicator: that children from lower-income families tend not to do as well in school as their higher-income counterparts. Lack of access to the dominant forms of cultural capital in the larger society remains ...

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