Critical Perspectives on Educational Buzz Words Series | Achievement Gap vs. Education Debt by Tori Amason

This piece is the first in the Critical Perspectives on Educational Buzz Series.

In education, there are common terms in education that we hear and use daily – achievement gap, college ready, learning, and global citizenship, to name a few. They are so familiar, we assume to know their meanings, yet they produce some of the complicated questions in which we are still searching for the answers. What is the achievement gap? How do we prepare college ready students? Are our students really learning? What is the purpose of education? This series will delve deeper into these common buzz words and phrases one at a time and offer new ways of thinking about some of the most prevalent issues in education. Up first is the achievement gap.

As a white woman, in my own journey of unlearning racism, I focused on deficits for a long time. It’s probably the most difficult task to retrain my thinking. The white savior complex is real and deeply ingrained. Understanding that Communities of Color have many strengths to contribute to our classrooms and society at large goes against the narratives about oppression and struggle and Communities of Color are in need of saving. The language we use serves to reinforce this thinking. Recently, in my doctoral studies, I discovered the work of many educators offering a different lens for what is known as the achievement gap. This term refers to the disparities in performance, testing, and completion between racial groups of students, with White and Asian students consistently outscoring their Black, Latinx, Indigenous, and Immigrant peers (Ladson-Billings, 2006; Milner, 2013). The achievement gap is perhaps among the most common phrases in education and one of the most pressing issues that remains unsolved. While this issue remains unsolved, it is important to understand some of the underlying beliefs that have impacted the prevailing discourse around this term.

“At-Risk” and Deficit Thinking

The term ‘at risk’ is often associated with the achievement gap. It refers to the students who are not the highest performers and are in danger of failing in educational settings (Toldson, 2019). Low-income, immigrant, first-generation, and Students of Color are often labeled at risk. When educators see ‘at risk’ as a descriptor for students, attention and resources are given to help students improve these deficits, but educators rarely see how these students can enrich classrooms and campus communities. Assumptions of the term ‘at risk’ can lead to stigma about marginalized students (Nakkula & Toshalis, 2020; Toldson, 2019) and these negative stereotypes can cause emotional distress to students trying to outperform or prove these stereotypes wrong (Welton & Martinez, 2014). This can cause students to negate the strengths they can offer to campus, peer relationships, and in the classroom. “As such, college readiness research places emphasis on policies, programs, and practices that tout to remedy deficiencies instead of building upon the prevailing assets of students from underrepresented groups” (Welton & Martinez, 2014, p. 201).

Patton Davis and Museus (2019) offer suggestions of how to design research that is anti-deficit in nature. Reframing and expanding language beyond deficits “centers the voices of communities of color, and advances anti-deficit perspectives”. Harper (2010) offers a conceptual framework for how researchers can apply an anti-deficit lens when studying marginalized students in STEM. He uses the example of “instead of” exploring how STEM students from low-income schools lack resources, an anti-deficit model would discover how STEM students from these environments overcame and succeeded. Another example of shifting from a deficit to anti-deficit mindset is asking the student who and what attributed to their success instead honing in on the barriers and challenges they face (Harper, 2010).

A deficit lens focuses on what students might be lacking and does not account for the cultural wealth of these students––the pride they carry, traditions they share, and the strength of the communities that support them––all qualities that provide motivation for these students to succeed (Yosso, 2005). Phrases like ‘achievement gap’ and ‘at risk’ do not adequately convey the issues of our educational system and it puts additional stress on students.

Achievement Gap to Education Debt

Buried in the rhetoric of standards and accountability is the fact that the mandates to standardize testing are not accompanied by parallel mandates to standardize the economic and social investment in children subjected to the tests.

-(Lomawaima & McCarty, 2002. P. 298)

The language and meaning of the achievement gap could be impacting how the issue is being framed and in turn, how educators and administrators approach this problem. Achievement gap discourse regularly focuses on student performance as the problem, which in turn, suggests students are to blame for their own status. As a result, stereotypes that Students of Color are less competent and intelligent, and unable to learn at the rates of their White peers become believable (Ladson-Billings, 2006; Quinn et al., 2019).  In a recent study, Quinn (2020) reported after seeing news stories about the achievement gap and test scores, participants belief in Black Americans’ ability to perform in educational spaces decreased. He uncovered the implicit bias associated with achievement gap discourse and urges education to “consider carefully how we frame educational inequalities” (Quinn, 2020, p. 490). Because the rhetoric of the achievement gap often places the blame on students, it does not place blame in its rightful place within the educational system and the structures and practices that continue to dangerously underserve marginalized students.  

Gloria Ladson-Billings provided a new direction in her 2006 AERA Presidential Address, when she challenged us to change our lens from an achievement gap to an education debt by offering an evaluation from historical, economic, sociopolitical, and moral perspectives. Ladson-Billings (2006) stated, “This all-out focus on the ‘Achievement Gap’ moves us toward short-term solutions that are unlikely to address the long-term underlying problem” (p.4).

Historically, Communities of Color have always educated themselves even when it was challenging or even forbidden. Indigenous communities were forced to give up their language and assimilate to White ways of knowing, and during segregation, Black schools were severely under-resourced (Ladson-Billings, 2006; Lomawaima & McCarty, 2002). Integration caused a great loss of Black teachers that would no longer be enriching the lives of all children (Fairclough, 2009; Siddle Walker, 2000). Though integration was positive for education in many ways, there was also great loss to Black communities. Black students were forced into an educational system that did not incorporate their culture and history into the curriculum. The education debt lens illuminates ways that educators and administrators failed to acknowledge and incorporate students’ cultures, strengths, and unique needs into our educational settings.

Economically, the education debt is in the separation of our neighborhoods and schools and the funding disparities that exist among them between and within school districts and suburban and urban schools (Ladson-Billings, 2006). From a sociopolitical lens, the education debt takes the onus of the achievement gap off students and families, as we better understand that they are often left out of the decisions made about the quality of their students’ education (Ladson-Billings, 2006). However, those in a position to change the lens of the gap, such as administrators and educators, often lack the cultural knowledge to interpret the gap any other way than a student’s responsibility, heightening the need for culturally responsive teaching (Garcia & Guerra, 2004). Ladson-Billings (2006) describes a lack of morality in the education debt the system carries. Educational leaders know what they should do to, but do not always successfully or effectively make changes to the rhetoric, perceptions, and the system that created the education debt.

Conclusion

The achievement gap centers the focus on student outcomes and not the systemic inequalities (Quinn, 2020); it focuses on short term fixes rather than long term solutions (Ladson-Billings, 2006). When we say achievement gap, the onus is on the students to bridge that gap. And though we are trying to close it, the responsibility for a student’s status within the gap is their own. The achievement gap strives for equality, not equity. Equality is giving students the same support and resources; while equity is giving students what they need to be successful. Understanding that fair is not equal was one of the greatest lessons I learned studying elementary education while in college. What students needs to succeed in education, regardless of the system, will always be different, because students are unique and have varying experiences within our education system. Eliminating the achievement gap is to eliminate the bias that is inherently built into the phrase by understanding how structural inequities and identity shapes students differently (Dormie ́-Williams, 2018).The burden is on educators and administrators to change to system and create spaces where marginalized students can achieve at their highest levels of potential (Love, 2020), and not at the levels set by power, privilege, and oppression.

Tori Amason is a PhD student in the Higher Education Leadership and Policy Studies Program at the University of Houston. Her research interests are centered around equity and justice in higher education as it relates to access, success, and completion. Currently, Amason is working on projects studying public-private partnerships in higher education housing, as well as whiteness and white student development. Prior to beginning her doctoral work, she spent time on various college campuses and at a nonprofit scholarship program as a leadership educator, helping students to recognize and utilize their potential as change agents. 

References

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Toldson, I. A. (2019, January 23). Why it’s wrong to label students ‘at-risk’. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/why-its-wrong-to-label-students-at-risk-109621

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