Over at Chalkboard, Joe Williams has a great post challenging the idea that we need to close the achievement gap in order to compete in the global economy. He's responding to an otherwise good New York Times editorial that calls for enforcing the teacher quality provisions of No Child Left Behind.
Why do I think this is the wrong reason for closing the gap? I’m not entirely convinced the “create a supply of good workers” line is as emotionally/intellectually compelling as “maintain an equal, just, democratic society” in terms of the primary reason we should care about the future of impoverished black and brown children.
If producing more high-tech workers is the number one goal, we'd do better working on improving mediocre suburban schools rather than tacking inner-city schools, Williams argues. The reason to close the achievement gap is that providing educational opportunity to all Americans is the right thing to do.
I agree.
I gave up a lucrative (by newspaper standards) job as an op-ed columnist to report and write a book, Our School, about a San Jose charter school created to educate left-behind students. Students — 90 percent are Hispanic — enter ninth grade with fifth-grade reading and math skills, on average. All graduates go on to college. About 81 percent in the first three graduating classes remain on track to complete a four-year degree, a remarkable accomplishment for disadvantaged students. (Half of all students who start college never earn a degree and the record is far worse for low-income, Hispanic and black students.) Downtown College Prep grads may not be out there competing in the global economy. They'll be productive workers, informed citizens and education-minded parents. These young people deserve the chance to choose a school that meets their needs. They deserve a chance.
I'd like to thank Volokh Conspiracy for giving me a chance to guestblog this week. It's been fun to communicate with a new bunch of readers. Drop on over to joannejacobs.com, nominated as best education blog in the 2006 Weblog Awards.
The right thing gets done so rarely that we shouldn't quibble about the reasons.
On that point, we are doing okay, but not great.
The goal should be stated in terms of equal access to education, not in terms of equal end results. The latter is most easiest achieved by putting shackles on the top students, and don't think that administrations haven't figured that out. So, looking at differences between groups can be very pernicious without being helpful.
The medical and scientific advances of the next generation are mainly going to come from the top 10% of our students. To stop educating them in the goal of closing the gap between them and the bottom 10% hurts everyone. To bring more students from lower-performing groups into this top 10%, then to continue educating them, would be fantastic. But again, this is not what 'closing the achievement gap' usually means in practice - at least the current incentive system for schools certainly doesn't work that way.
This reader would like to thank you for accepting the invitation; I've learned a lot in the past week, and I'll be visiting your blog regularly from now on.