The results of “Equity Within Reach: Insights From the Front Lines of America’s Achievement Gap” are available from Teach for America.
Teachers in low-income communities say the key solutions to the academic-achievement gap are high-quality teachers, effective leadership, and higher expectations for students, according to a report.
Produced by Teach for America—a New York City-based organization that recruits high-achieving college graduates to commit to two years of teaching in underserved urban and rural schools—the report is based on a survey last June of 2,000 of TFA’s 3,500 teachers serving at that time.
Among other findings, nearly all the teachers surveyed, 98 percent, said they believe the public is generally unaware of the existence or extent of the achievement gap between mostly lower-performing minority students and their generally higher-performing white peers. Teachers surveyed also reported that the public seemed to not know of or understand the educational difficulties that come from living in poverty.
