Yong Zhao: The Achievement Gap Mania in America
Yong Zhao is one of the scholars I admire most. He turns out book after book, each saturated with remarkable scholarship and learning. He is also a superb speaker, who fills his lectures with learning and humor.
In it, he wrote about America’s obsession with “the achievement gap,” which is based on the belief that someday the bell curve, on which all standardized tests are normed, will close. The test score gaps can be reduced, as history shows. The biggest narrowing of the gap occurred at the high point of racial integration (late 1970s, early 1980s). For the past decade, the black-white gaps on NAEP have been unchanged.
The gap may narrow but it is designed never to close because bell curves are intended to rank people from best to worst, highest to lowest, most to least.
Here is part of Yong Zhao wrote:
The Achievement Gap Mania in America
For nearly two decades, since the enactment of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) (“No Child Left Behind Act of 2001,” 2002) in 2002, America has been suffering from “achievement gap mania” (Hess, 2011). Closing the achievement gap has been the commanding, almost exclusive, goal of education in America. All educational efforts, be they in policy, research, or practice, must be justified on the grounds that they can help close the achievement gap. As a result, the nation has devoted all its educational resources to the campaign to narrow the chasm in test scores and graduation rates CONTINUE READING: Yong Zhao: The Achievement Gap Mania in America | Diane Ravitch's blog
