The “Achievement Gap”: Banning the Language of Deficit
George W. Bush famously pushed through NCLB with his hyperbolic rally against, “The soft bigotry of low expectations.” His argument was that minority students were performing poorly, as measured by “the achievement gap,” because expectations for them were low, or “soft.” His answer? To raise standards and test to hold schools accountable to these standards.
Time has predictably shown that Bush’s stance has only served to reinforce a racialized world dominated by Whiteness. What standards are we asking students of color to rise to? Standards determined by dominant culture that are reinforced through a biased testing system that rewards those who benefit from privilege, and continues to punish those who lack it.
I assume that Bush would argue that success is determined by this dominant culture, and thus, it is this culture that our students must learn to navigate in order to be what our culture deems “successful.” (Though he probably would word it differently.)
If only it were so simple.
It seems that the game that determines the winners and losers against our standards of success is rigged.
In What’s Race Got To Do With It?, Wayne Au explains,
One of the key assumptions undergirding the use of standardized tests to measure, sort and rank students is the idea that these tests are measuring students objectively and accurately- for if the tests are objective, then they truly are assessing the individual merits of students. In turn the individual students who have worked the hardest and who have the most merit will rise to the top compared to their peers.
So far it kind of sounds like Bush was right, right?
Except he’s not.
Because standardized tests are neitherThe “Achievement Gap”: Banning the Language of Deficit | educarenow:
