Bridging the Achievement Gap
Parents Can Make A Difference

Vocabulary, Vocabulary, VOCABULARY!!!!

While the root causes of the achievement gap that exist between minority and white students is debatable, what's not debatable is that minority children continue to fall farther and farther behind abandoned by a system that views them as unsalvageable. When parents ask for help, teachers and administrators quickly offer testing to pinpoint learning difficulties.  What administrator's fail to consider, and parents may or may not be equipped to understand, is that the very words used to evaluate these children condemn them to a sentence of being labeled as learning disabled when in fact they simply don't understand what they are being asked to do because they don't know the meanings of the words being used.  That may sound overly simplistic but it is very often the source of the problem.  So what's the solution?  Parent's have to take the time to become actively involved in the process. 

Teaching Inequality: How Poor and Minority Students are Shortchanged on Teacher Quality:
A report out today from the Education Trust provides new information on the impact of teacher quality on student achievement and offers specific steps states should take to remedy the persistent practice of denying the best teachers to the children who need them the most.
(Click here for report)

Rethinking Schools Online
Race and the Achievement Gap
Using standardized tests to measure achievement perpetuates a system of institutionalized racism and lends the cloak of science to discriminatory practices. (more)

A Classroom Crusade
Eric Smith wants to prove he can eliminate the achievement gap that divides blacks and Hispanics from Asians and whites. His stint in Maryland will put him to the test

By Darragh Johnson
Sunday, November 10, 2002; Page W22

Eric Smith is looking at the numbers--the long skinny columns, the black squiggling type, the pages after pages of test scores. He reads these numbers the way others read novels, and in them he sees stories. He sees drama. He sees conflict.

"Look at this!" he cries, stabbing at the bottom few numbers--the dismal 28.8, the bleak 18.0, the mortifying 14.5 that show hundreds of Anne Arundel County students can barely read, write or do basic math. (more)