The Facts About The Achievement Gap By Diane Ravitch

Improved Essays
Summary and Response
In the article “The Facts about the Achievement Gap”, author Diane Ravitch shows that privatization in the United States education system is a direct response to the achievement gap between white students and minorities. She is a “researcher of education at New York University” (prologue), and once served “in the U.S. department of education from 1991 to 1993” (prologue). Her personal experience in the field of education has shown that “privatization inevitably means deregulation, greater segregation, and less equality” (361). Some major key points that challenge the achievement gap consist of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), and socio-economics. Progress has been made towards closing the gap, but it still remains.

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    In this essay, “Still Separate, Still Unequal: America’s Educational Apartheid” Jonathan Kozol believes that America's urban and inner-city schools are having another occurrence of segregation. Jonathan Kozol gives great and unbelievable statistics that supports desegregation in schools. Evidence in the essay, blacks and Hispanics are predominantly enrolling in most of the public schools in major cities. According to Jonathan Kozol, white children living in public school districts that enroll in blacks and Hispanics as majority will transfer to private schools where the majority is white students.…

    • 284 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    From Still separate, Still Unequal: America’s Educational Apartheid: Segregation, funding, lack of programs, and gaps between races. 2. Facts About the Achievement Gap: Segregation, lack of programs, and gaps between races. How collaboration can help fix things. 3.…

    • 777 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    However, we are ignorant to what is going on, or we just refuse to see the division that is occurring in America right now. In Still Separate, Still Unequal, Kozol discusses how the divide between the education that whites receive is still much better than the education that minorities receive. In Still Separate, Still Unequal, Kozol describes the many schools he visited, “Schools that were already deeply segregated twenty-five or thirty years ago are no less segregated now.” (Kozol, 202) We, as American’s like to believe that we no longer have racial tensions with black and Hispanic people, but they do still exist and it is affecting our school system.…

    • 1133 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The world of education as we know it is a place built on a foundation that is surrounded by enigmas and empty promises. It is for this reason that America has yet to find an effective solution that works for schools nationwide that is “progressive” as well as “consistent” in the field of education. The articles and the book that we have read so far in class have left me a bittersweet taste in my mouth. I think about how far we have come and how many steps we continue taking backwards. The issues surrounding education seem to share the same common factors of race, high expectations, and hidden agendas.…

    • 1060 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In today’s society, the achievement gap continues to exist. Author Diane Ravitch, wrote “The Facts about the Achievement Gap”, an excerpt from her book Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools, published in 2013. Ravitch’s purpose is to convey the idea that closing the achievement gap doesn’t solely rely upon the schooling system. She explains how her argument stems from our unwillingness to improve the conditions of communities and how unconcerned we are about poverty.…

    • 1238 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    “We cannot provide equal educational opportunity if some children get access to a full and balanced curriculum while others get a heavy dose of basic skills (Ravitch 108).” Using logos, Ravitch makes the audience realize that it is simply unacceptable for a country as advanced as the United States to have such a huge discrepancy in education depending on whether or not you go to a private school. Private schools have the necessary funding in order to offer a wide variety of classes to their students. Public schools get funding from the government and hard economic times have caused their budgets to shrink. With a decreased budget…

    • 1041 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Equality is all we have ever asked for, so why is it difficult to understand and give. In “Still Separate, Still Unequal” written by Jonathan Kozol, describes and addresses the problems with our public schools. Kozol mainly focuses on the racial segregation and the isolation students still face today. He uncovers the inequality the education system puts among their students of color. For example, most of the funding for schools goes primarily to white schools, while giving the minority schools the remains.…

    • 995 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    For many years now both men and women have struggled to obtain justice in education, the economy, and in the workforce as segregation continues to seek its element of inequality in the lives of American citizens. While segregation is known as problem of the past, it has also shown to affect today’s society in many ways. In the essay “Still Separate, Still Unequal,” Jonathan Kozol reports on the matter of segregation occurring in today’s public schools throughout urban and suburban cities in the Unites States. Along with him, in “Rethinking Affirmative Action” David Leonhardt observes how discrimination policies have desperately addressed the topic of race rather than emphasizing on the disadvantages students encounter by college admissions.…

    • 1561 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In this specific case, I believe that the multiple issues presented in American Promise have proven that the mission of education is succeeding in reproducing social and economic inequalities. As I have previously explained in my paper, the American Dream is a dominant ideology that states, freedom, opportunity, and social mobility can be achieved equally through hard work. However, the academic and social struggles that Idris and Seun experienced at the Dalton School proves that “whole groups of people are increasingly privileged or constrained by their family’s wealth histories” (Johnson 1); that reveals the socio-structural problem of the racial wealth gap. Race in the Classroom and Linguistic Reproduction…

    • 1137 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The authors suggest three types of reform that can help close the achievement gap: the action of preschool programming in formal education; the improvement of classroom and school practices, for example, training and recruiting high-quality teachers and administrators; and changing school cultures to make education constant with the basic rights and interests of children. Howe’s and Covell’s argument is very strong, but computer-based learning interventions and new technologies will play an important part in future education practices, however Howe and Covell’s work makes it plain and simple that the achievement gap will only grow if education policy fails to solve for socio-economic disadvantage and negative school cultures. This book contributes to my research because it gives specific directions that can help close the achievement…

    • 1226 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Ossian Sweet Thesis

    • 508 Words
    • 3 Pages

    After eighth grade, whites went on to high school. By not allowing black children to attend their schools guaranteed their children would not be sitting next to black boys and girls. “A perfectly stupid race could never rise to a very high plane.” (75) Even today many children are not afforded quality education due to the same struggles: finances and demographics.…

    • 508 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Education in the United States went through great reform in the late 1800s to 1900s. Change didn’t come about easy and educational equality is still a popular debate today. Although educational change was talked about and seemingly in progress, equality still had a long way to go. Differences in racial and social classes became prevalent especially through schooling. Black Americans were limited and restrained with obstacles such as what schools they were allowed to attend, what classes they were to take, and by what the teachers were taught to educate on.…

    • 923 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    When it comes to controversy regarding the topic of the achievement gap, the controversy mostly develops when we try to figure out how to actually solve the problem. Everybody knows it is a problem, but how do we fix the issue? According to the National Educational Association, there are a few different ways that we can work together to close the gap, a few of those listed are; enhanced cultural competence, comprehensive support for students, outreach to families, extended learning opportunities, strong district support, and adequate resources and funding. Teachers cannot fix this problem alone, there has to be support from the district level, state level, and national level. We tried solving the program with the No Child Left Behind Act in…

    • 186 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In his poignant essay “Still Separate, Still Unequal: America’s Educational Apartheid,” author Jonathan Kozol presents evidence to demonstrate that segregation is still a persistent problem in our education system. Kozol provides countless percentages of drastically unbalanced demographic statistics within urban schools throughout the nation. He also travels to several struggling inner-city schools to interview faculty, students and parents. Kozol uses the interviews to illustrate a vivid depiction of substandard conditions within urban schools. Overall, the subject matter throughout the essay is an emphasis on the deficient quality of education given to the children from low income families and minorities.…

    • 631 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In principle, the public has been behind closing the achievement gap, and schools have employed a variety of tactics to address it ("Achievement Gap - Education Week," 2016). One thing we can do to try and contribute to closing this gap is provide equal systems of education for all racial…

    • 590 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays