Achievement gap in the United States

Policy Outcomes As states move forward with education reforms, some provisions of No Child Left Behind, the most current version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act stand in the way of their progress. Although NCLB was started for national student achievement, unintended consequences of NCLB have reinforced the wrong behaviors in attempting to strengthen public education. NCLB has created incentives for states to lower their standards, focusing on absolute scores, rather than…

Latinos are far behind their white peers in most academic areas. Although many look towards the high school dropout rate is a cause for this discrepancy in academic achievement, I believe it starts before schooling ever begins. On average, Latinos households have higher rates of poverty and lower average annual household income. However, this is a grouping of all Latinos and we see that not all Latinos are alike. For example, Cubans Americans tend to be among the “well off” Latinos with average…

Economic stratification in the United States has greatly impacted the quality of education for students from low-income families. Previously, American schools had responded well to the ever-changing economic growth, as high and low-income families were awarded the same standards of education. However, the rising income inequality has been difficult for schools to keep up with, and as a result, many low-income students are being left behind. Programs like Head Start and Early Head Start, New…

While education reform is a hot topic debate, the right solution never seems to be reached. In “What Americans Keep Ignoring about Finland’s School Success” Anu Partanen evaluates why Finland overshadows almost every other country, including the United States of America, in education. She argues that the U.S has the potential for the same educational success as Finland, but “when it comes to the lessons that Finnish schools have to offer, most discussion seems to be missing the point”…

My dad came to this country when he was 10 during the civil war in El Salvador. My grandma made the decision to come to the United States because if she had stayed in El Salvador my dad would have had to be a soldier in the militia. The militia was barging into family homes in the middle of the night and abducting children to force them to become part of the Escuadron squad. That…

steady growth in the number of immigrant families and children in our population. There are concerns over the achievement gaps that are part of a larger concern about lacking student achievement in the United States and its impact on American economic competitiveness. By No Child Left Behind (NCLB) requiring the reporting of achievement by student groups and requiring all groups to make achievement gains annually, they seek to make schools accountable for teaching all their students effectively.…

Common Core: Are National Standards Right for America? Introduction The introduction of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) across the country has met with both praise and condemnation. Though many states agreed to the implementation of these standards, several have since backed out of the consortiums that administer the standardized tests, and have rewritten or altered the CCSS into their own state standards. This is happening because some in education and many of the public are asking if…

Noguera, 2014; Davis et al., 1994; Carter & Wilson, 1992; Garibaldi, 1992; Polite, 1993). Likewise, few of these males show up in gifted tracks, Advance Placement courses, and higher education institutions (Williams & Hilton, 2015). To address the achievement gap in education, many scholars and practitioners have turned to creating a more rigorous curriculum (Palumbo et al., 2012; Gewertz, 2010). However, the more rigorous curriculum…

important and should be universally open to all ages and not only for a certain age group. Attention Getter: Pre-K just isn’t enough. The United States is stealing our children education and we must do better to bridge this educational gap. How can a country promise…

In my Education for Social Change in the United States (EDU 300) class, we have learned so many things about the roots of some issues our society still facing today. In this class, there had been many answers to the questions I thought couldn’t be answered, because I used to think that things just happen. There are two important lessons that will stay in my mind thanks to this class. The first one is that we, all, in a way or another have privileges and the second one is that there is no justice…