Fall Into the Gap

Posted by Mike Antonucci at 07:15 | Permalink | Com

John Rogers and Jeannie Oakes, co-directors of UCLA's Institute for Democracy, Education, and Access, found that the problem with public education in California isn't the racial achievement gap, it's the gap between the rest of the nation and California.

Rogers and Oakes write:

"For example, for years, people have been describing and lamenting California's general decline in education. We've all heard it. Test scores of California's Latino and African American students are, on average, among the lowest in the country. However, white students don't do well either, and by a wide margin: California's white eighth-graders score below white eighth-graders in every state but West Virginia and Nevada on the NAEP reading test."

If it's bad, it's bad for everybody, regardless of race, gender, ethnicity, English language status, income, parent education or teacher experience. What a great way of looking at the problem. Wish I had thought of it.