From the Achievement Gap to the Education Debt: Understanding Achievement in U.S
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From the Achievement Gap to the Education Debt: Understanding Achievement in U.S. Schools Author(s): Gloria Ladson-Billings Source: Educational Researcher, Vol. 35, No. 7 (Oct., 2006), pp. 3-12 Published by: American Educational Research Association Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3876731 Accessed: 22-10-2018 21:40 UTC REFERENCES Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3876731?seq=1&cid=pdf-reference#references_tab_contents You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms American Educational Research Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Educational Researcher This content downloaded from 150.135.239.99 on Mon, 22 Oct 2018 21:40:30 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Featuresi 2006 Presidential Address From the Achievement Gap to the Education Debt: Understanding Achievement in U.S. Schools by Gloria Ladson-Billings The achievement gap is one of the most talked-about issues in dynamic,U.S. edu- turbulent, and at times seemingly chaotic community. And cation. The term refers to the disparities in standardized test what scoresis more, nothing anywhere in the training of social scientists, teachers, or social workers now prepares them to understand, to cope between Black and White, Latina/o and White, and recent immigrant with, or to change the normal chaos of ghetto communities. These and White students. This article argues that a focus on the gap are graveis mis- lacks which must be remedied soon if these disciplines are placed. Instead, we need to look at the "education debt" thatto become has relevant [emphasis added] to the stability and survival of accumulated over time. This debt comprises historical, economic, our society. (p. xxix) sociopolitical, and moral components. The author draws an Clark's analogy concern remains some 40 years later. However, the para- with the concept of national debt-which she contrasts with dox that is that of education a research has devoted a significant amount of its enterprise toward the investigation of poor, African American, national budget deficit-to argue the significance of the education debt. Latina/o, American Indian, and Asian immigrant students, who represent an increasing number of the students in major metro- politan school districts. We seem to study them but rarely provide have spent a better part of this year reading the presidential the kind of remedies that help them to solve their problems. addresses of a number of former AERA presidents. Most To be take fair, education researchers must have the freedom to the wise course of giving addresses about something pursue basicthey research, just as their colleagues in other social sci- know well-their own research. Of course, I was not encesfully do. per-They must be able to ask questions and pursue inquiries suaded by their wisdom. Instead, I attempted to learn "justsomething because." However, because education is an applied field, a new, and, unfortunately, the readers will have to fielddetermine that local states manage and declare must be available to the whether I learned it well enough to share it with my professional entire public, most of the questions that education researchers ask colleagues. need to address the significant questions that challenge and con- The questions that plague me about education research are not found the public: Why don't children learn to read? What accounts new ones. I am concerned about the meaning of our work for the for the high levels of school dropout among urban students? How larger public-for real students, teachers, administrators, parents, can we explain the declining performance in mathematics and sci- ence at the same time that science and mathematics knowledge is policymakers, and communities in real school settings. I know these are not new concerns; they have been raised by others, people like exploding? Why do factors like race and class continue to be strong the late Kenneth B. Clark, who, in the 1950s, was one of the first predictors of achievement when gender disparities have shrunk? social scientists to bring research to the public in a meaningful way. The Prevalence of the Achievement Gap His work with his wife and colleague Mamie formed the basis for One of the most common phrases in today's education literature is the landmark Brown v. BoardofEducation (1954) case that reversed "the achievement gap." The term produces more than 11 million legal segregation in public schools and other public accommoda- citations on Google. "Achievement gap," much like certain popu- tions. However, in his classic volume Dark Ghetto: Dilemmas of lar culture music stars, has become a crossover hit. It has made SocialPower, first published in 1965, Clark took social scientists to its way into common parlance and everyday usage. The term is task for their failure to fully engage and understand the plight of invoked by people on both ends of the political spectrum, and few the poor: argue over its meaning or its import. According to the National To my knowledge, there is at present nothing in the vast literature of Governors' Association, the achievement gap is "a matter of race social science treatises and textbooks and nothing in the practical and and class. Across the U.S., a gap in academic achievement per- field training of graduate students in social science to prepare them sists between minority and disadvantaged students and their for the realities and complexities of this type of involvement in a real, white counterparts." It further states: "This is one of the most pressing education-policy challenges that states currently face" Educational Researcher, Vol. 35, No. 7, pp. 3-12 (2005). The story of the achievement gap is a familiar one. The OCTOBER 200613 This content downloaded from 150.135.239.99 on Mon, 22 Oct 2018 21:40:30 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms numbers speak for themselves. In the 2005 National Assessment Down the Rabbit-Hole of Educational Progress results, the gap between Black and Latina/o Let me begin the next section of this discussion with a strange fourth graders and their White counterparts in reading scaled scores transition from a familiar piece of children's literature: was more than 26 points. In fourth-grade mathematics the gap was more than 20 points (Education Commission of the States, 2005). Alice started to herfeet, for itflashed across her mind that she had never In eighth-grade reading, the gap was more than 23 points, and in before seen a rabbit with either a waistcoat-pocket, or a watch to take eighth-grade mathematics the gap was more than 26 points. We out of it, and burning with curiosity, she ran across the field after it, can also see that these gaps persist over time (Education Com- andfortunately wasjust in time to see itpop down a large rabbit-hole mission of the States). under the hedge. In another moment down went Alice after it, never once considering how in the world she was to get out again. Even when we compare African Americans and Latinalos with incomes comparable to those of Whites, there is still an achieve- Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland ment gap as measured by standardized testing (National Center for Education Statistics, 2001). While I have focused primarily The relevance of this passage is that I, like Alice, saw a rabbit with on showing this gap by means of standardized test scores, it also a watch and waistcoat-pocket when I came across a book by econ- exists when we compare dropout rates and relative numbers of omist Robert Margo entitled Race and Schooling in the American students who take advanced placement examinations; enroll in South, 1880-1950 (1990). And, like Alice, I chased the rabbit honors, advanced placement, and "gifted" classes; and are admit- called "economics" down a rabbit-hole, where the world looked ted to colleges and graduate and professional programs. very different to me. Fortunately, I traveled with my trusty copy Scholars have offered a variety of explanations for the existence of Lakoff and Johnson's (1980) Metaphors We Live By as a way to of the gap. In the 1960s, scholars identified cultural deficit theories make sense of my sojourn there. So, before making my way back to suggest that children of color were victims of pathological to the challenge of school inequality, I must beg your indulgence lifestyles that hindered their ability to benefit from schooling (Hess as I give you a brief tour of my time down there. & Shipman, 1965; Bereiter & Engleman, 1966; Deutsch, 1963). The 1966 Coleman Report, Equality of Educational Opportunity National Debt Versus National Deficit (Coleman et al.), touted the importance of placing students in Most people hear or read news of the economy every day and racially integrated classrooms. Some scholars took that report to rarely give it a second thought. We hear that the Federal Reserve further endorse the cultural deficit theories and to suggest that Bank is raising interest rates, or that the unemployment numbers there was not much that could be done by schools to improve the look good. Our ears may perk up when we hear the latest gasoline achievement of African American children.