The Opportunity Gap

The Opportunity Gap In the essay “The Facts about the Achievement Gap” Diane Ravitch accurately claims that we have made some progression in the achievement gap between Hispanic, black and white students. However, reformers argue this claim is false due to the standstill in the achievement gap. Ravitch continues to explain the academic progress continues to rise, while the achievement gap remains the same. Ravitch is proving that the “achievement gaps are only opportunity gaps” (para 31). Reformers continue to falsely argue that there is no progression at all due to statistics that the achievement gap stays the same without considering the total academic progression in all of the students. Ravitch accurately argues that students with less opportunities due to poverty, unemployed guardians or even racial isolation, have a disadvantage in the evolvement of this “achievement gap”. As Ravitch claims the major progression in the academic achievement gap, reformers stop considering that students of all races continue to progress so the gap is at a standstill. They see the gap remaining as no progression at all. Ravitch states that “the scores of black students in fourth-grade math increased dramatically in the two decades after 1990, when federal test were first offered; black student achievement was higher in 2009 …show more content…
Closing the racial achievement gap has been a major policy goal of education policy makers (para 11). When the passage of the No Child Left Behind Law, the expectation was that the black, white and Hispanic achievement gap would narrow, with even higher expectations that it would even close the gap. One of the major reasons for the passage was for teachers to be required by law to have high expectations for all students. With this theory, all students would learn and meet high standards. However, Ravitch argues that the NCLB program did not close the