Op-Ed: Waiting for AchillesFocusing on NJ's student achievement gaps misses he broader -- and better -- picture
There is a famous paradox, attributed to the Greek mathematician Zeno, in which there is a race between the great hero Achilles and a lowly tortoise. In view of their vastly different speeds, the tortoise was granted a substantial head start. The race began, and in a short time Achilles had reached the tortoise's starting spot. But in that time, the tortoise had moved slightly ahead. In the second stage of the race Achilles quickly covered that short distance, but the tortoise moved a little farther onward. And so it was that this continued -- Achilles would reach where the tortoise had been, but the tortoise would always inch ahead, just out of his reach. From this example, the great Aristotle, concluded that, "In a race, the quickest runner can never overtake the slowest, since the pursuer must first reach the point whence the pursued started, so that the slower must always hold a lead."
The lesson that we should take from this paradox is that when we focus only on the differences between groups, we too easily lose track of the big picture. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the current public discussions of the size of the gap in test scores that is observed between racial groups. It has been noted that in New Jersey the gap between the average scores of white and black students on the well-developed scale of the National Assessment of Educational Progress