Achievement Gaps

The land of 10,000 lakes is a proud place to live.   According to the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, Minnesota was dubbed as the State of Best Trails by American Trails; by Money Magazine in 2010, the best state to raise a family; and by Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal, named the eighth best place to work.   However, Money Magazine should have named us the state with the biggest achievement gap —something not to be so proud of.   Despite the fact that Minnesota has the highest rate of 80% for Caucasian high school graduates, its achievement gap in the comprehensive student population is the largest in the U.S. (MN Alliance with Youth).   This implies that the largest divergence of academic performances is an outcome of the high performance of Caucasian students and the low performance of the minority students (Parents United).   By definition, “The achievement gap is the difference in performance between low-income and minority students compared to that of their peers on standardized tests” (NAEP).   As the world is becoming “flat” (Friedman) and globalized, students need to be more aggressive with attaining post-graduate degrees. However, as families and educators are pushing students to do better in standardized testing, schools soon lose the creative expression and the value of multi-intelligence, becoming more focused on standardized testing scores.   As a latent repercussion, to students, school is becoming more of a task to check off their list as they unwillingly attend school without seeing the broad picture and the true value of education. This all draws to a grave economical consequence in the long run, all the while countries with exceptional human resources keep up with the growing competition and others without such resources fall behind. As the snowball effect, the achievement chasm gets larger toward the loss of our nation’s global competitiveness. In this case, should school districts make an effort to prioritize bridging the achievement...