Camika Royal, a historian of education and Teach for America alum, write a provocative post in which she called on people to stop using the term “achievement gap.” In her original post, she said the term is offensive and demeaning and explained why. The post generated many responses. I invited Dr. Royal to respond to her critics, and she does so here:
Some have tweeted me and/or commented on my original post about my objection to the term “achievement gap.” The post originally appeared on good.is and was reposted on the Philadelphia Public School Notebook’s blog. Some readers thought that my issue with the so-called achievement gap is just about words. It is not. My concern is neither. I am not the language police or the thought police. People may say what they want and think how they please.
However, there is a consequence for every choice we make. If we are serious about giving under-resourced and historically marginalized students the education they deserve, the narrative of education reform must shift, and our dialogue must honor all voices and perspectives, not just the loudest voices or the ones with the most money behind them.
Not only is the phrase “achievement gap” offensive (which is the least of my concerns), it is also inaccurate because of its inherent Anglo-normativity. Like so many other things in American life and culture, it suggests that whatever White people do is right and whatever everyone else does is wrong, incomplete, abnormal, and/or “the other.”
This is why when people suggest the difference in test scores between Whites and Asians is an “achievement gap” that supposedly disparages Whites, thus disproving the argument of Anglo-normativity, it does not. Even within the comparison of White and Asian students’ test scores, Whites’ test scores are seen as normal and Asians’ high test scores are seen as exotic and exceptional, hence the model minority myth. Both the so-called achievement gap and the model minority myth are racist constructs.
I realize that the label “racist” is strong and hard for some to digest. It isn’t my intention to offend by sharing this truth. Sometimes, the truth hurts. And our modern iteration of racism is so covert, insidious, and subtle that often people who benefit from it are usually completely unaware of it.
As for my blanket use of “White folks” in my original post, I apologize to those I offended by suggesting that there are no intra-racial differences among White people. There is a difference between Whites who are anti-racist advocates, White allies, those who advocate multicultural efforts, those who “don’t see color,” etc. If you believe the lie that we are post-racial in this country, then everything I am writing will seem as foreign as Klingonese.
I don’t think that education reformers use the term “achievement gap” cynically. I think they really believe they are working in the best interests of children. And to be clear, the so-called “achievement gap” and the work that goes into it are not only racist but also elitist.
What extends from the notion of the “achievement gap” is a messiah complex that fuels people rallied around “saving” children from themselves, their families, and their communities. Education reformers’ messiah complex manifests in the belief that the end (a “shot” in life via high test scores) justifies the means (mechanized and routinized instruction, ignoring or dismissing community input and cultural contexts, steam-rolling the concerns of veteran educators, etc.).
This messiah complex compels top-down reforms and resists partnerships with parents and listening to communities because these reformers truly believe they know best. Education reform fueled by martyrdom and the messiah complex is missing the mark. One of my mentors, Dr. Gloria Ladson-Billings, said recently, “Catching up is made nearly impossible by our structural inequalities.” In agreement with her and with you, Dr. Ravitch, I believe that until education reform corrects structural inequalities teeming in under-resourced, historically marginalized communities, education reform will continue to fall short of its goal.
As for Teach For America’s quest to close the so-called “achievement gap,” I received a message on Friday that the organization discussed my article on its monthly national call with its president. According to the message, TFA’s president agreed with my article and said the organization should no longer use the phrase “achievement gap.” This is a small yet significant victory.
Changing one’s language is just the beginning of the shift. Changing organizational thinking must then be tackled; then the actions can be changed. I am stunned but glad that TFA is examining itself for the ways it may be blocking its own mission. I was also impressed that TFA was willing to engage in a conversation with its employees and Twitter followers about my article. It tweeted my article along with the question, “What does everyone think?” One of my fellow TFA alums responded by tweeting, “I think she was a selection mistake.” It’s cool, though. I know a hit dog will holler.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Courage is in short supply and high demand.
Thank you for providing a fine example.
Seconded.
Didn’t read original post, but I will go back now and do so. Excellent response with ideas that made me think. You articulated issues I sense but have not been able to name with such clarity. Thank you for sharing.
I recently retired after a 38 year career as a teacher and principal. The last 18 years were spent in a large urban school disctrict in Tennessee. I now work part time in one of the lowest achieving elementary schools in the state, and I am learning a lot! Kudos to Camika Royal for encouraging me to re-examine my own vocabulary and the connotations that come with it. I keep pondering “opportunity” rather than “achievement,” and it has brought a new dimension to my understanding of children in poverty. The adults working in this school are talented, dedicated, and believe that the children can make it in spite of all the external baggage of growing up in an impoverished neighborhood. (BTW, I don’t hear Great Hearts knocking at the door to offer their services… ) One more acknowledgement to Dr. Ravitch and this blog. It is proving to be an anchor for thourghtful discourse at the national level, and I am hopeful that grassroots efforts will bring the necessary changes for schools and teachers to finally get back to the business of educating citizens.
Diane lots of typos here. Slower
I assume that your real objection specifically relates to the use of the term “achievement gap” in education reform discourse, and not with the idea that there is some significance to the relative performance of racial or ethnic groups on standardized tests. You can’t seriously believe that comparing the test scores of whites and minorities does nothing but “suggest that whatever White people do is right and whatever everyone else does is wrong.” Perhaps you mean to say that discourse about the “achievement gap” can sometimes have unintended racist connotations. Or that the concept of the “achievement gap” is being exploited to promote racist education policy. But certainly you can’t mean that there is no value in comparing test scores of racial, ethnic, or other (e.g., economic) groups. Imperfect as the measure may be, this is one of the key ways that people identify educational inequality. I’d be shocked if you haven’t used the term “achievement gap” in your own books and articles for that very purpose.
There is a substantial achievement gap in math. Unfortunately, higher math performance cannot be dismissed as just a racist construct that deems whites and Asians as superior. In math, there really are right and wrong answers that are not subjective, let alone “racist.” Math is very useful to us as human beings. It describes how the universe works. It tells us whether a bridge will hold up or whether an airplane will fly or whether a business’s budget makes sense.
If black kids don’t do as well in math, there won’t be as many black scientists or engineers or businesspeople or doctors. That’s a real problem that needs to be fixed, and refusing to talk about the achievement gap doesn’t make the problem go away.
Not being able to do math is as disabling in the job market as being blind and deaf. If black kids were turning up blind and deaf at 10 times the rate of white kids, would it make more sense to say, “Let’s figure out why and then try to prevent blindness and deafness,” or to say, “Let’s pretend that blindness and deafness are just racist white constructs that don’t really matter”?
I think, for me, the problem is in discussing the gap in terms of race as opposed to socio-economic status. If we frame the discussion in terms of race, then as a teacher, I may internalize expectations that my Asian kids will do best, my White kids will do OK, and my Black and Hispanic kids will do poorly. Even worse, when my pre-conceived expectations are met, it will reinforce my beliefs that math ability is linked to skin color, which is absolutely not true. And then the kids may start to believe it, too.
I know there are lots of studies, and some of them say that White students living in poverty perform better than Colored students living in poverty, thus reinforcing the idea of the achievement gap. However, my questions for those studies would be: Do the teachers and community have preconceived expectations concerning the students’ abilities that are affecting test scores? And, are the researchers differentiating between students whose families recently became poor and still have a middle-class belief in the power of education and the students who are living in generational poverty, who may not see a value in education?
I think the discussion needs to be reframed in terms of poverty, particularly the generational kind, but the words “achievement gap” are inextricably linked to racial concepts so the conversation becomes skewed.
“I know there are lots of studies, and some of them say that White students living in poverty perform better than Colored students living in poverty, thus reinforcing the idea of the achievement gap”
Rachel:
While we’re splitting hairs regarding semantics, I must ask: Did you actually intend to post that as written? I do hope you meant to put a portion of your words in quotes which would jibe with the gist of your stance. However, if these are your own words, I would think that you might find your word choice regrettable.
Regarding your position, I find the possibility of the effects of a “generational kind of poverty at play” very thought-provoking. There may be a kind of “generational poverty” when it comes to humanistic ideals as well. The mindset of staying with “one’s own kind” permeated our society throughout the immigration movements that populated this country for well over a century, but for many, these concepts came from the very nature of such a melting-pot society. People were forced to share a common society with people who they felt were foreign to them. “We stick together and take care of our own. Outsiders are suspect despite the fact that we are all eventually Americans.” In matters of marriage and, in many cases, friendship as well as other privileges, folk from “the old country” seemed to have advantages with their countrymen. The same went for the earlier, more established citizens. Outsiders were not to be trusted.
It is only through a change in the social-political climate that stereotypes are slowly being cast off, but the danger lies in allowing older prejudices to be replaced with new ones. We will never have finished evolving socially until we have eradicated the acts of bullying behavior such as those of exclusion, hatred, and distrust. Sadly, we may never completely remove these prejudices from our social structure.
“The same went for the earlier, more established citizens.” Ask that of those whose ancestors were here before 1500.
Absolutely. Prejudices can be found all over the world, for that matter. Not every war is started by power-hungry despot-bullies who suffer from a god-complex–borders and the projected “ills” of a society with a tribal mentality are often at the root of conflict. Unfortunately the practice of American social politics is not exempt from prejudice.
I was reviewing some old Jane Elliot material (blue-eyed/brown-eyed experiment) that, I believe, should be brought into the conversation. When I was first introduced to Elliot’s material, it was in relation to the Holocaust. Her continuing work in diversity training is fascinating. It is scary how our beliefs, whether conscious or unconscious, affect our own behavior toward others and how we can also accept destructive stereotypes about ourselves that influence our own achievement significantly.
Hmmm…anecdote: I once tutored an elementary school who did great in math and poorly in reading. His math performance dropped when he hit word problems. Sure math gets “objective” again at higher levels, but if you can’t read and/or deploy verbal reasoning to pass through the word-problem stage that serves as the transition into algebra, you won’t get there. It makes absolutely no sense to pretend that math performance is discrete. (And before you counter with Asian students who don’t speak English well; can they read and reason well in their OWN language?)
In this country education has never been a priority. Hence the reason that the wealthy fare better because they are able to construct and provide the best education for their children.
Tests and testing in this country are inherently biased and disregard the diverse cultures that fill the average public school. Example: selecting one word-sofa-to use within the context of a vocabulary test question. Many children grow up hearing ‘couch’ not sofa. Rather that offer synonyms, the assumption, based on those who construct ‘standardized’ tests is that everyone uses the same descriptor. Many children are blindsided-regardless of race or socioeconomic background, simply because standardized tests are rigid and exclusive. As well the bias that children who do not test well have learning challenges is also a very narrow-minded view of how individuals process knowledge.
What’s say we send a child from a middle-to-high income environment to spend the day with a child who lives in a low-income community. Observe how the latter child navigates life: being sent to the local ‘Mom and Pop’ grocery store for a few items, with the understanding that his/her mother expects to receive change from the purchase. Observe how that child selects the route to the store, avoiding potentially dangerous situations (i.e. gang members, drug traffic, etc.). Tell me that child has not mastered important information! Yes perhaps that child needs help with reading, but let’s understand that knowledge is an exchange of information, a give and take. Simply because a child may not be equipped with ‘standardized’ skills, does not prove that he is ‘learning challenged’; he like so many children is asked to fit into a box then labeled if the fit is not a good one. If education is to be a real priority we need to throw out the old Melting Pot myth and take into account that culture, ethnicity and race play a role in how children learn, and understand that even the ‘lowest achievers’ in their own way, master information!
I hope you don’t mind but I used your last paragraph (with attribution) on another blog where the discussion meandered to the notion of “unteachable” children. You make an excellent point – if most of us were thrown into the life of an inner-city poor kid, most of us would be deemed “unteachable” in their world.
Well Said Maggie!
I was a student that did not “test well” on standardized tests but did really well in the school setting.
Your last paragraph hits the nail on the head!
Reblogged this on Transparent Christina and commented:
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Camika Royal misses the point – several points.
She should be concerned that Big Sister from the central committee of TFA agrees with her. The tweet, “I think she was a selection mistake,” whether twoted in jest or in earnest, represents the current ideological mission of TFA, regardless of what its masthead and recruiters proclaim. It’s role is to fill urban boot-camps with idealistic or temporary loan-defraying recruits from whose midst those who talk the talk of acolytes, toe the line of education reform ideology and demonstrate eagerness to walk the walk over those who object to the reformers’ prescribed lockstep routines will be selected for a well-paid management internship.
The problem with the achievement gap rhetoric is the same as any arbitrary classification system whose discrete labels harden into group stereotypes. Studies and national tests like the SAT consistently find that academic achievement correlates most closely with parental education, which roughly translates to income level. Most urban school systems have disproportionately large numbers of low-income black students and, in much smaller numbers, an inversely large percentage of middle and upper middle class white students. In that national urban context, comparing two statistical averages, each representing an arbitrary “race”-based classification that blissfully ignores parental class, income or educational level, creates a gap that, like the race in Zeno’s paradox, will never close (but, unlike that archetypical race, never even narrows). That makes it a convenient brush for smearing veteran teachers and their union-based due process rights who just happen to stand in the way of ed-reformers’ goal of hegemony.
What will TFA come up with instead? Whatever it is will be used to promote the same edreform ideology that smears veteran teachers with collective guilt for those at the bottom end of Big Sister’s New Statistical Synonym. Whether word or phrase, it will have to be a good fit in the mantra, “Passionate about ___.” It’s amazing how easily stereotyping and collective guilt for societal inequities can be used by a cadre of self-promoters to beguile so many who are enthusiastic about making a difference.
“Twoted” is the past tense of tweet?
Erich, I agree with every single comment and observation in your post! Public education is a stable revenue stream for the drinking of the disaster capitalists…I can hear Milton Friedman laughing.
According to Wikipedia, women are normal and men are abnormal (50.7 vs 49.3). White people are normal (72.4 of US population).
What do you call the gap in achievement when comparing students with Asian blood to students with African blood?
While I may not be able to imagine the extent, I can imagine it is psychologically taxing to grow up as a minority. I’ve been in places where I was the minority and felt the stares and the discomfort. Growing up a minority not being able to escape must affect you. It is a huge adversity.
The human race has a past full of atrocities, and some of those have contributed to the plight of American minorities. An effort to understand why we are at this point is understandable and likely profitable. But that alone gets you nothing or little. Finding excuses for failure is small compared to finding methods to succeed. The blame needs to stop. The hyper-sensitivity needs to stop.
I find it offensive when people are so easily offended, so I guess you owe me a cookie.
What is “normal”?
If a test is somehow determined to be racially biased-free (and this is the key caviat), and a cohort of similar students generally performs better on that test than another cohort of similar students, then can one not argue there is an “achievement gap” between the two cohorts? I am certainly ready to kick the term achievement gap to the curb, but i don’t know that the OP’s conclusion is valid reason for me to do so.
There are some well-meaning points made here, but there’s also a large dose of gibberish in all this. I highly, highly doubt that Ravitch believes that test-performance variations between racial or ethnic groups reveal nothing of value. I think this is a very specific complaint about the way the term “achievement gap” has been used by ed reformers and charter supporters, not an assertion that standardized tests are “culturally biased” and therefore meaningless. I have yet to see a rebuttal to the point that one poster raised above about math. And even assuming that standardized tests are “culturally biased,” it doesn’t follow that performance gaps between different groups are meaningless. If tests are culturally biased, so is culture itself. You can throw the tests out, but the tests just reflect the dominant standards that society and the job market will impose down the road. Then what — will we say that “economic performance” meaningless because it’s culturally biased?
“If tests are culturally biased, so is culture itself.”
We have a winner!
Think about – why is there such a huge correlation between race and poverty, especially in the inner city? As far as I can think, there are only two explanations. Either blacks on average really are intellectually and/or motivationally inferior to whites on average, or the correlation is a result of systemic, culture-wide (largely unconcious) racism. I think the long list of achievements by blacks, when given half an opportunity, is testament enough to refute the first possibility.
“not an assertion that standardized tests are “culturally biased” and therefore meaningless. I have yet to see a rebuttal to the point that one poster raised above about math. And even assuming that standardized tests are “culturally biased,” it doesn’t follow that performance gaps between different groups are meaningless”
Not only are the tests culturally biased, they are completely invalid due to the myriad errors in the making, using and dissemination of results as demonstrated by Noel Wilson in “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” found at http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/577/700 Or as Wilson states any conclusions drawn are “vain and illusory”. Or as I have a tendency to say “Mierda” in “Caca” out.
Wow, speaking of gibberish:
“Contrarily, the cause of lowering standards is clearly tied in public discourse to soft leaders and the inevitable anarchy which that is fantasised to produce.”
Duh! I mean, “clearly” this “cause . . . is tied . . . to . . . leaders and . . . anarchy.” Which anarchy? The “inevitable anarchy,” of course. The one that “is fantasised to produced” by the “the cause.”
I’ll have to take your word that Noel Wilson “demonstrated” that standardized tests all “completely invalid,” because there is no amount of Adderall or graduate school credit that could motivate me to read that article, which appears to be a clumsy and incoherent attempt to apply Foucault to testing. And by applying Foucault, I mean liberally sprinkling the words “power,” “structure,” “discourse,” and “discipline” over English sentences that read as if they’ve been translated from French.
The purpose of education is {your answer here ☞}_________.
I don’t know many people who would seriously answer anything like “getting high scores on standardized tests”, so I’m guessing most people have at least some inkling of the difference between diagnostic indicators, predictive indicators, and true achievement.
Most thinking people can grasp the fact that all such indicators are extremely fallible and incomplete in their indication of anything we truly care about. That is why the term “achievement gap” is such a misleading misnomer on so many scores.
What we are really talking about here are Diagnostic Indicator Gaps (DIGs), Predictive Indicator Gaps (PIGs). True Achievement Gaps (TAGs) are another thing entirely.
None of what I am saying here will be news to people with backgrounds in education, organization studies, psychology, sociology, or any of their feeder fields. But there does appear to be a severe lack of knowledge about these issues among the nouveau regressive wannabe controllers of our educational system.
There exists differences in achievement. These differences are shown to be linked to social economic status and barriers to access of opportunity. The real concern here is why TFA, with their extremely limited training / understanding of education and learning, should be given any currency. While there are talented people who opt for the TFA program after they have earned a bachelor’s degree, most do so for the subsidized advanced degree. While some TFA’ers can become good teachers with further training and experience, this is more the rarity than the norm.
TFA exists as a corporate marketing and corporate partnership combine who’s goal is to sell cheap labor, ensure increased testing of students, incite expansion of value added measurements designed to remove more costly labor out of government budgets, bust unions (eradicating due process, bargaining, and negotiation), and ensure the corporate takeover of public schools. TFA, Students First, other public or private corporate (both domestic and foreign) reform profiteers, et al., are tasked with one objective in mind: profits. This is disastrous for public education and the lives of those who populate public schools, students and staff, and ruinous for civil rights and democracy in America.
We are witnessing the Milton Friedmanization of public education and the civil service sectors of the economy, the rebirth of the gilded age…and the masses are buying it hook line and sinker…the question is, will we find a Teddy Roosevelt to fight a resurgence of corporatism?
For me, the venality of Achievement Gap rhetoric is not so much its ethnocentric quality, though that is definitely present, but its use as a nightstick and handcuffs for discourse on education.
By limiting the discussion to an “achievement gap” – where needless to say achievement is test scores – rather than a “Pre-Natal Health Gap” a “Stable and Affordable Housing Gap,” a “Living Wage Employment Gap,” an “Incarceration Gap,”etc. – Trojan Horses for privatization like TFA make deeper inroads, and the false and blinkered rhetoric of corporate education reform sets the terms of debate.
When you concede the terms of debate, you lose, every time.
Breaking away from the almost cultish groupthink of an organization like TFA is a hard thing to do. Ms. Royal deserves respect and support for her courage, and by showing the hollowness of reformers terminology, she does us all a real service.
Brilliantly stated : “When you concede the terms of the debate, you lose, every time.”
Perhaps it would be best to talk about this. We could go back to the public school education of my youth. All student and teachers do the best they can.
I agree with Camika Royal that “achievement gap” is a racist term, and that “opportunity gap” is a better phrase. The privatization movement thinks those opportunities can be better supplied through vouchers and charters than through “reform” of public education Where does Camika stand in that debate.
I’m sorry. I see your point, I just don’t see why opportunity gap is that better. And moreover, I think this discussion around racism is a waste of time. I may be a racist in your terms, but I’m half “model minority” and half African-American, and a teacher for 10 years.
The logic goes like this
(1) There is an education problem in America
(2) People try to understand (through educational testing data) where are the greatest needs
(3) One cut that shows large disparity on educational testing data is race (other cuts include parents that have higher education, income level, etc.)
(4) The white population is selected as the baseline not because of caucasian-normativity; it is because they are the majority in terms of numbers. That’s it. Not becuase they are better or that they are right or that they even are homogenous in any other way than that they check the caucasian box on the text. It is irresponsible to try and draw conclusions from a systemic restriction of data (e.g., the demographic connections to test scores).
So we focus on popluations that achieve at levels below the majority and the gap is the comparison of the two.
This make you mad. This may undermine a piece of intellectual capital that you have provided to education. But I don’t think much of what you say impacts kids and therefore it is a waste of time.
Arguing semantic of terminology is much more hollow than the nuanced innacuracies of the terminology itself.
The truth is that everyone is influenced by how society defines them. Girls aren’t good at math. African Americans are good at sports. Asians are smart. Mexicans are lazy. We know that the expectations we have for our students and the expectations they have for themselves influence performance. We all have hidden prejudices that affect both others and ourselves. We need to think about them when we are making judgements about performance, especially when we are relying on standardized measures designed with a norm population that is not an accurate reflection of sub populations.
I just lost a lot of respect for TFA for giving in to this nonsense.
As someone who grew up in the communities (inner city NYC and then rural SC) where a lot of these gaps take place, I feel more connected to the opportunity gap phrasing rather than the achievement gap phrasing especially when basing it on race. In SC, I have see statistics where 60% of students in a county are failing a particular grade or test. That number includes all races, all SES, everything. It seems it’s more so a gap in resources and opportunities rather than focusing on race. I really believe it is more of a class discussion than race. I think race plays into the debate because proportionately speaking, the ratios for lower SES are much larger for AA and Hispanic children.