Achievement Gap to Opportunity Gap
American ideology, dating back to the mid-nineteenth century, has conceived of our system of public schooling as a “Great Equalizer” (Mann, 1848). This idea suggests that schools provide all students, regardless of background, with the skills necessary to succeed in our society. Moreover, since at least the Lyndon Johnson administration, educational reform has been the “favored solution” to social problems such as “poverty, inequality, and economic insecurity” (Kantor & Lowe, 2013). Historically, however, our schools fall short of the ideal. In the United States, parental socioeconomic status continues to have a significant impact on a student’s achievement and later earnings (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2010). Reardon (2011) found that the achievement gap between students at the 90th and 10th percentiles of family income rose from roughly 0.9 standard deviations for children born in the 1950s, 1960s, and early 1970s to roughly 1.25 standard deviations two decades later. While the concurrent black-white achievement gap has fallen since school desegregation, it has persisted at roughly the same level since the 1980s (Reardon, 2011). These “achievement gaps” result in overall attainment gaps that not only negatively impact the national economy (Auguste, Hancock, & Laboissiere, 2009), but also impact the physical and mental health of those at the lower end of the gap (Baum, Ma, & Payea, 2010; Verba, Schlozman, & Brady, 1995). The observed “achievement gaps” and their consequences are manifestations of underlying opportunity gaps. For example, poor and minoritized students are more likely to experience exclusionary discipline, have inexperienced teachers, and study watered-down or remedial curriculum (see, e.g., NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., 2006; Berry, 2013).
In response to these disparities, characterized as students having been “left behind,” politics and policy have implemented numerous programs, including using common standards and standardized testing as a tool for ensuring achievement for all students (Hursh, 2005). These served to create a narrative that schools – rather than the societies in which they operate – were “failing” (Dianis, Jackson, & Noguera, 2015; Carter & Welner, 2013). Teachers and education advocates became villains in conversations around public schooling (Ladson-Billings, 2013). Meanwhile, in schools, teachers and administrators too often attributed to students and families (see, e.g., Valencia, 1997) rather than engaging in conversations about race, poverty, access, and opportunity (Scherff & Piazza, 2008; Tatum, 2007; Pollock, 2001).
Simultaneously, there has been a push toward “data-driven decision making (DDDM)” (Hamilton, et al., 2009). Generally, DDDM is meant to be a system of data collection and analysis that allows stakeholders to guide a range of decisions to improve student success (Ikemoto & Marsh, 2007). While the goal of DDDM is to not only identify patterns but also uncover the underlying causes of those observed patterns (Ikemoto & Marsh, 2007), too often an over-reliance on test-score data results in a blame and shame game (see, e.g., Mandinach, Friedman, & Gummer, 2015; Mandinach & Jackson, 2012; Au, 2008).