Although much has been written about the achievement gap, practical guidance for educators and leaders on the front lines is rare, and we need it now more than ever. Teresa D. Hill, a superintendent who has devoted her career to combating achievement gaps, offers targeted advice and tools in The Instructional Leader's Guide to Closing Achievement Gaps: Five Keys for Improving Student Outcomes.
In this exclusive book excerpt, Hill dispels common myths that may hinder work toward closing achievement gaps.
People propagate myths and misconceptions in an attempt to oversimplify the process of improving student outcomes and closing achievement gaps—for example, by saying the process is easy or that all it takes is the will to do it. When we fall prey to people peddling quick fixes, it sets back the process of developing the urgency, efficacy, and capacity needed to engage with the real work ahead.
Here are some common and harmful myths about raising student achievement and closing achievement gaps.
Myth #1: Closing the Test Score Gap = Closing the Achievement Gap
The gap in test scores is just one marker of achievement gaps. Test scores can be arbitrarily designated as meeting or not meeting the required standards, on the basis of changes that have nothing to do with an individual student’s performance. In addition, test scores only provide information about the most easily assessed skills, which are often not the most important. Although test scores provide one snapshot measure of student achievement, they alone are not sufficient to denote the closing of the achievement gap. This is especially the case in settings in which excessive test prep has replaced much of the curriculum.
Myth #2: If a School Does Not Have Any Subgroups or Diversity, They Cannot Have Achievement Gaps
This myth is rooted in an overreliance on school accountability systems to determine the school’s expectations. Under past and current school accountability laws, states are required to designate a specific number of students who need to be in a particular subgroup for those students’ scores to count toward school accountability. If the required subgroup population number is 45 and a school has 43 students in a group, the school does not have that subgroup. Therefore, the school would not be held accountable for the performance of the group. Depending on a school’s population, the school might have all the possible subgroups or no subgroups at all. This does not mean that disparities or performance gaps don’t exist. The purpose of the comprehensive analysis of data is to identify the disparities and gaps that do exist, regardless of whether they affect school accountability ratings.
Myth #3: If Students Read at Grade Level by 3rd Grade, It Will Close the Achievement Gap
The idea that students “learn to read” up to 3rd grade and then “read to learn” at 4th grade and up is a major oversimplification of teaching and learning (Szymusiak & Sibberson, 2016). In reality, children continue learning to read well beyond primary school. For some groups of students (e.g., Black boys), achievement gaps get wider as they progress through intermediate, middle, and high school. For this reason, early childhood and primary school strategies to address the achievement gap are necessary but not sufficient to improve outcomes and close gaps for all students.
Myth #4: Test-Taking Strategies and Test Prep Help Close the Achievement Gap
Although many would argue that test-taking strategies, test prep, and test practice are necessary in schools, these strategies and practices focus on the tests—and not on improving meaningful outcomes or student achievement.
Myth #5: If Schools/Teachers/States Would Just _______, the Achievement Gap Would Close Once and for All
Vendors, organizations, and consultants typically claim that their product or service will close achievement gaps. Similarly, thought leaders, economists, and politicians pronounce their own broad prescriptions for “fixing” education. School choice, charter schools, neighborhood schools, mastery learning, nongraded schools, universal preschool, 3rd grade retention based on test scores, and many other policy prescriptions have been promoted to this end. For each of these prescriptions, the policy has seemed to work in one setting and fail miserably in another. It’s counterproductive to deny the difficulty of improving outcomes and closing achievement gaps for all students.
This work is a complex, ongoing, and detailed process that does not have a finish line. No one program, application, schedule, policy, or procedure is a panacea for improving outcomes and closing gaps in a school or system.
Instead, if you consistently implement a series of best practices, understandings, and actions with the necessary urgency, efficacy, and capacity, you can change the trajectory of achievement for individual students and entire groups. This is the purpose of the Five Keys.
