Essay On Achievement Gap

Clearly, performance on MAEP is not flat. The gains in reading have been slow, steady, and significant. The gains in mathematics in both tested grades have been remarkable for whites, blacks, Hispanics, and Asians.
Despite these increases, the achievement gaps remain between white and black students and between white and Hispanics students because all groups are improving their scores. Asian students perform as well as white students in reading and better than white students in math. Reformers ignore these gains and castigate the public schools for the persistence of the gap.
Closing the racial achievement gap has been a major goal of education policy makers for at least the past decade. There has been some progress, but it has been slow and uneven. It isn’t surprising that it’s hard to narrow or close the gap if all groups are improving.
There is nothing new about achievement gaps between racial and ethnic groups and between children from families at different ends of the income distribution. Such differences exist wherever there is inequality,

The source of the difference is no secret. African Americans have been subject to a long history of social and economic oppression and disadvantage; they have experienced higher levels of poverty and lower levels of education than white Americans. After the Brown decision in 1954, the federal government and many states adopted policies to redress the past inequities, but those systems were insufficient to overcome generations of racism, which limited access to jobs and education. Despite significant progress in expanding educational access, education attainment, and economic opportunities for black citizens in the past half century, blacks continue to agonize. African Americans face many trials such as being disproportionately poor and attending racially isolated communities, where children are likely to be exposed to violence, gangs, and drug