Closing The Achievement Gap

Roger Wilkins
August 23, 2005


Roger Wilkins is a co-chair of Renewing Our Schools, Securing Our Future: A National Task Force on Public Education and is the Clarence J. Robinson Professor of History and American Culture at George Mason University. Today the task force released Getting Smarter, Becoming Fairer: A Progressive Education Agenda for a Stronger Nation, which outlines a comprehensive plan for closing the learning gap among our own students and with others across the globe.

More than 40 years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and President Lyndon B. Johnson’s declaration of a war on poverty, minority and poor students—in rural areas and cities alike—continue to consistently fall behind in basic math and reading skills. It would be wrong and unfair to assume that the reason for these students’ poor achievement lies largely within them. The children on the wrong side of the achievement gap often come from devastated neighborhoods where unemployment, poor health care and crowded sub-standard housing are common. These difficulties, often experienced for generations, reduce the likelihood of parents providing the preparation and support for school that is standard in middle-class families. The health checkups, trips to the dentist, family and individual counseling and visits to museums and other institutions—which are key in preparing students for academic success—simply do not occur often enough for low-income and minority children.

Middle-class families, and I include myself here, clearly believe in out-of-school supports for their children, and make sure that their children have access to anything that may help them fulfill their potential. If a meritocracy such as ours truly reveres fair competition and rewards tenacity and talent, as it claims, then we need to make sure that all children have access to these resources. As a co-chair of Renewing Our Schools, Securing Our Future: A National Task Force on Public Education, I traveled across the country to identify innovative strategies for helping every child succeed in school. One of the most compelling approaches we found was the establishment of “community schools," where schools serve as a hub for an array of social and community services, ranging from health care to employment services, from after-school programs to family counseling.

Not only do these schools provide services in an environment that is accessible and familiar to parents and students, but they also raise academic performance and increase parental involvement. Portland, Oregon’s Woodmere Elementary, for example, is a community school that offers students tutoring and mentoring through extended day classes. Parents can take English language lessons, as well as parenting skills classes, with follow-up in-home support services to help improve family relationship dynamics. While three-quarters of the student population comes from low-income families, test scores have risen substantially.

But the deficit of social support that poor and minority children experience begins early. Babies from middle-class families come home to regular health checkups and parents playing classical music to help stimulate brain development. We must also reach outside of the school walls to assist new parents in readying their children for school through early screenings for disabilities and developmental challenges. Currently, only about half of disabilities—like speech-language impairments, mental retardation, learning disabilities and emotional or behavioral disturbances—are identified before a child enters school. Home visitation programs, especially those for young, low-income or first-time parents, can help to identify and treat developmental, physical and emotional challenges.

In addition to recommending the above programs, the Task Force proposes a number of changes to the school system itself in order to address the out-of-school challenges many students face. We call for more and higher-quality learning time, from extending and reorganizing the school year to universal pre-school, from more after-school learning time to increasing access to post-secondary education. To make this additional learning time matter, we recommend voluntary national standards and sophisticated evaluation systems, and improving teacher and principal training—as well as the rewards they receive for excellence. In short, we are proposing strategic improvements to our education system from birth to college.

Previous efforts at bettering public education have been intermittent and piecemeal, and we have shirked the hard, long and collective responsibility of completely overhauling our education system. We have substituted slogans for substance and replaced resources with rhetoric. Reverberating through the lives of millions of children, our failure to create an education system that fully prepares every child for both the workplace and ballot box stifles economic growth, weakens our democracy and makes a mockery of the American dream. It’s time for a new direction. The Renewing Our Schools, Securing Our Future task force lays out a road map for creating a quality public education system for all. I call on our nation's leaders to show the courage to guide America along this path.