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Achievement gaps matter, even if all students are learning (Letter from Sean Reardon and colleagues)

June 16, 2016
Washington Post
Sean Reardon and two colleagues respond to a critic of achievement gaps and explain why they are a vital step toward equal opportunity in education.

In his June 13 Education column, “Gaps in student achievement don’t tell us much — just ask Detroit,” Jay Mathews discussed our research and lamented what he described as a useless fascination with racial inequalities in academic achievement, suggesting that the concerns of educators, parents and policymakers about equal educational opportunity are based on a resentment of high-performing students.

Mr. Mathews argued that we should ignore achievement gaps and focus on ensuring that all students are improving. Disregarding academic differences ignores the fact that some students enjoy more opportunities than others. That’s like giving one runner a head start and saying the other runner’s complaint is unjustified. Mr. Mathews would have us believe a race is fair as long as both runners are moving forward.

Achievement levels and achievement gaps merit attention. Gaps are indicators of the extent to which society provides children from different racial or ethnic groups the same opportunities to thrive. Educational success has value partly because of where one ranks relative to others. If both runners in our race above ran faster, we would rightly celebrate their improvements, but the gold medal would still go to the one who got a head start. The race still wouldn’t be fair.

Like Mr. Mathews, we don’t see any point in resenting the success and accomplishments of others. But we do resent the implication that Americans should be content to applaud a rigged race.

Sean Reardon is Professor of Poverty and Inequality in Education at Stanford. Demetra Kalogrides is a research associate at Stanford's Center for Education Policy Analysis. Kenneth Shores was a doctoral student at Stanford Graduate School of Education, receiving his PhD in 2015.  The New York Times published a story and info-graphic about their research on academic achievement gaps in April. Their studies and data-set development was also the subject of a Stanford news release. Reardon helped to launch much discussion about how the growing wealth divide affects education with this op-ed in the Times in 2013.

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