Essay On Opportunity Gap

Eliminating the achievement gap has also become a common topic in society. The Boston Globe newspaper has an article by Martin Scanlan and Rebecca Lowenhaupt, professors at Boston College’s Lynch School of Education, that considered the opportunity gap and how it coincides with the achievement gap. Their view is that if we focus on resolving the opportunity gap issue, and the achievement gap will fix itself. They say, “We can build educational equity in our school communities by turning attention away from bemoaning achievement gaps to focusing on eliminating opportunity gaps.” The question is, is that not an issue with racism and not education? To answer this question, the authors discuss how race plays a role in the opportunity gap, and how people of different ethnicities don’t have the same amount of opportunities due to the achievement gap. Upon reading the article, it became apparent that the two topics do, in fact, relate to each other. It is a cause and effect situation. Schools are not assisting students that struggle with the achievement gap, which causes the opportunity gap. In classrooms, teachers are told not to “teach to test” in their everyday curriculum. Ironically, at the same time, …show more content…
In this article, she notes back to the No Child Left Behind act that was passed in 2002. She says, “NCLB seems to have transferred this problem from students to teachers… Under NCLB, teachers feel pressured to focus their energies solely on preparing students to excel on standardized tests.” It is not about teaching to test, yet, teachers have come to the conclusion that there is no other option if they want to keep their jobs secured, even though it could be harming the students of the twenty first century public school