We all have our pet causes and issues in education that get us carbonated. At the top of my list is the fate of potentially high-achieving kids, low-income kids who are left to languish in lowest common denominator schools. Thus I’m happy to see the estimable Jay Mathews devote his Wash Post column to the recent Fordham report, High-Achieving Students in the Era of No Child Left Behind. I’ll think twice, however, about casually tossing around the phrase “achievement gap” in the future, thanks to Uncle Jay.
Why don’t I like talking about the achievement gap? Because we use the term in a way that suggests narrowing the gap is always a good thing, when that is not so. Here are some ways the gap could narrow: Low-income scores improve but high-incomes scores don’t; low-income scores don’t change but high-income scores drop; low-income scores drop but high-income scores drop even more. In each of those cases of gap-narrowing, something bad is happening.
Mathews posits that concerns about the income gap have crept into the way we talk about academic achievement. “I can understand distaste for people who build 50-room mansions with gold bathroom fixtures. But can anyone learn too much?” he asks. “Wisdom tends to help everyone who comes in contact with it. Ski chalets in Aspen are less useful to those of us who can’t afford them.”
Labels, of course, tend to stick once they’ve taken root, and it’s unlikely “achievement gap” will disappear. Low-income underachievement, perhaps?
