CLOSING GAPS?: ADDRESSING PRIVILEGE AND POVERTY
New ways of thinking about public education must occur before the U.S. can fulfill its obligation to the promise of universal public schools:
- We have failed public education; public education has not failed us.
- Education has never, cannot, and will never be a singular or primary mechanism for driving large social change.
- And, thus, public education holds up a mirror to the social dynamics defining the U.S. In other words,achievement gaps in our schools are metrics reflecting the equity and opportunity gaps that exist in society.
One aspect of these new ways of thinking about public education that is rarely discussed is that seeking laudable goals (such as closing the achievement gap in schools and the income and upward mobility gaps in society) requires that we address both privilege and poverty—the top and the bottom. Historically and currently, our gaze remains almost exclusively on the bottom.
Richard Reeves in the “The Glass-Floor Problem” poses a provocative and necessary admission about the polar ends of class in the U.S.:
When it comes to the economic malaise facing America, the biggest problem is not the widening gap