I found two interesting articles regarding this gap.
First is this article from Jay Matthews at the Washington Post about the whole concept of the achievement gap and why it is faulty. The title of the article is "Class Struggle" but it can be applied to socioeconomic status, income status, or even individual student achievement status. If everyone improves but the achievement gap between students still grows, why is that a bad thing?
The second article is from Berkeley, CA. In an effort to help their struggling students, Berkeley High School is contemplating cutting its science labs and the teachers who teach them. This would have the effect of dumbing down the highest-achieving students in order to close the achievement gap. From the article:
The proposal to put the science-lab cuts on the table was approved recently by Berkeley High's School Governance Council, a body of teachers, parents, and students who oversee a plan to change the structure of the high school to address Berkeley's dismal racial achievement gap, where white students are doing far better than the state average while black and Latino students are doing worse.
Paul Gibson, an alternate parent representative on the School Governance Council, said that information presented at council meetings suggests that the science labs were largely classes for white students. He said the decision to consider cutting the labs in order to redirect resources to underperforming students was virtually unanimous.
So there you have it. Not letting the best and brightest among us reach their potential is certainly one way to narrow an achievement gap.
James
