The Other Side of the Education Gap

Today I looked at a very interesting discussion of the U.S. achievement gap that provided many insightful graphs and data references about the socioeconomic side of the gap instead of the racial side.

I believe that race was and still is a very important factor in the educational gap between high achieving children and low achieving children. However, I believe with the coming generations that people are becoming more tolerant of other races and the discrimination is shifting off of race and on to socioeconomic class. The focus of study is still on race, however, because it is easier to obtain data on race and because of previous discrimination it just so happens that many african-american and other minorities are still representing a major portion of the lower socioeconomic classes.

Data comparisons showing African- American and white educational attainment show African-American high school graduation rates at somewhere around 82% and whites around 90%, and African- American college degree rates at 15% and white Americans around 30%. Not as much of a gap as media would have you believe.

However, reading and math scores broken down by socioeconomic status show an even more interesting story. Higher socioeconomic students ranked right around the 60th percentile for both reading and math, grades one through three. Lower socioeconomic students ranked right around the 30th percentile for both subjects.

Such a wide gap, much wider than a racial gap, shows that more emphasis needs to be placed on elevating the education quality in areas with low socioeconomic classes rather than solely focusing on the racial inequalities that still exist in our nation if they truly want to close the achievement gap.