Reducing and Averting Achievement Gaps: Key Findings from the Report &apos;Education Inequalities at the School Starting Gate&apos; and Comprehensive Strategies to Mitigate Early Skills Gaps
Author: García, Emma
Date: 2017-09-27
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Achievement Gap,Equal Education,Educational Strategies,Educational Policy,Intervention,Identification,Scaling,Kindergarten,Socioeconomic Status,Early Childhood Education,Educational Trends,Case Studies,School Readiness,School Districts

Persistently large achievement gaps between high-social-class and low-social-class children in America, and the disparities in opportunity that drive these achievement gaps, threaten the very notion of the American Dream. The lack of true equality of opportunity calls for much more comprehensive interventions to tackle those gaps. This report focuses on interventions at the school and community levels, including support for parents. However, the need for those interventions would be substantially reduced and students' odds of success greatly enhanced if the broader structural forces that drive poverty and inequality that hold back a growing number of children were also addressed. This brief describes the type and size of early achievement gaps--and trends in them over time--and points to effective and comprehensive educational policies to avert and narrow them. It is based on key findings from &quot;Education Inequalities at the School Starting Gate: Gaps, Trends, and Strategies to Address Them,&quot; a study combining statistical analyses of performance gaps and qualitative analyses of school districts that are piloting promising strategies for closing these achievement gaps. The quantitative analyses (on the persistence of gaps over time and their sensitivity to individual and family characteristics and to educational experiences) are based on data from two representative national samples of children who started kindergarten in 1998 and in 2010. (Kindergarten classes separated by 12 years constitute an &quot;academic generation&quot; because the eldest cohort is in its graduation year when the youngest cohort is beginning kindergarten.) Researchers compare children of low socioeconomic status (SES), as determined by parents' educational attainment and job status as well as household income, with their SES peers. In an effort to identify more effective policy solutions, researchers also look at how and why performance gaps and children's circumstances have changed over time. Specifically this brief argues the following: (1) Interventions to close performance gaps must start early in children's lives because skill and performance gaps take root before children enter kindergarten and do not go away; (2) Interventions that are already being provided must be reassessed because performance gaps did not narrow over an academic cohort (1998-2010); and (3) Comprehensive, community-level education strategies that begin addressing children's needs before kindergarten show promise in narrowing these gaps. Such strategies should be further explored and adapted in more districts, and proven interventions should be widely scaled up. This brief explores the interplay between educational outcomes, socioeconomic status, and social mobility. As the analyses show, there is a close connection between one's economic birthright and educational achievement.