Tom Fudge: Last week, thousands of educators gathered in the Sacramento Convention Center for what was called an Achievement Gap summit. The conference was prompted by California State Schools Superintendent Jack O'Connell, who has taken on the subject as a kind of personal mission. His main concern, these days, is that some test score data show that race is a better indicator of how well a kid will do in school than income. Scores released this summer showed that low-income whites and Asians outscored middle-class blacks and Hispanics.
Those statistics seem to indicate that race is the issue, not economics. Possible explanations for that have included institutionalized racism and cultural differences in how highly certain ethnic groups value educational achievement. The good news is that the achievement gap is nothing new and shocking, and it's been studied a lot. And, some studies show that the achievement gap is actually narrowing, albeit slowly.
Guests
- Julian Betts, professor of economics at UCSD.
