We all know that our schools don’t serve poor and minority students as well as they do white, middle-class or wealthy students, and we’ve got the achievement gaps to prove it. Many hands have been wrung trying to narrow or close them. A new report takes a fresh approach to the achievement gap question by estimating how much time it will take states and the nation to close those gaps if they keep doing what they are doing now.
My colleague Mary Ann Zehr explains it all for you in her story, which links to the report itself. There is some really depressing news in there (if Washington state keeps doing what it’s been doing, it will take more than a century for black 4th graders to read at the same level as their white peers) and some more cheerful bits (if Louisiana keeps its pace, black and white 4th graders will be reading at the same level in a little more than a dozen years). It’s worth a look.