The education gap

The education gap

Nation's education system cannot target only easily educated students

April 10, 2001

Reading scores for the nation’s fourth graders are rising slowly — or rather, the average of the reading scores of fourth-graders has improved over the past decade. That’s good news.

The bad news is that the gap between high-performing students and their less successful peers is growing as well. The best students — who already have considerable advantages — continue to improve while the lowest-scoring groups continue to lose ground. That may mean that those who most need targeted assistance are not receiving it. It may mean that we are not appropriately allocating education funding. It may mean that we have not identified the best methods of teaching all children to read.

Those issues are all related to the education children receive at school, but there’s another issue, perhaps a larger issue: the home environment. The fact that poorly performing fourth-graders tend to be poor, minority students suggests that they are also those whose parents have the fewest resources with which to educate them.

A parent who has to work long hours to pay rent and buy food is not likely to be available to read bedtime stories and play counting games. A child who is unsupervised after school is more likely to be watching television — and not educational television, either — than to be doing homework, reading library books and having meaningful conversations. A child whose parents did not graduate from high school may hear about the value of education, but he or she is less likely to witness the tangible benefits.

Parents are, and should be, powerful influences in the lives of their children, and it’s probably unrealistic to expect schools to compensate for their absence or lack of skills. Yet in order to break the cycle of hopelessness that traps many of these children, someone must compensate. Schools must find ways to capture the attention of these children and hold it after the bell rings, and they must find resources to fund those programs.

The gap in reading scores between white and minority students grew in six states, including Colorado, Utah and Arizona. Educators and administrators argue that the testing system is not fair, and indeed it may not be, but few people are arguing that poor minority students are receiving the education they need to get ahead in today’s high-tech world.

Education, at its most effective, is a partnership between parents, educators, and the community, and the balance of that partnership shifts. Some parents make a teacher’s jobs easier and more enjoyable; some parents cannot, and others simply do not. Our education system — nationwide, not just in southwestern Colorado — cannot be designed for upper-middle-class kids from two-parent professional families. Those students will succeed with little assistance, while others need a great deal.

Everyone is proud to claim responsibility for high-achieving students, and it’s very tempting to blame someone else for those who don’t do so well. The truth is that everyone is failing them, and that failure will come back to haunt us all.

We’re glad that students who have always done well are now doing even better. Now it’s time to tackle the hard job, to focus attention on those whose educational needs are simply not being adequately met. Functional literacy and numeracy should be within the reach of every child.