The Education Gap Starts Long Before Higher Education, How Can We Remedy It?
Education is the best antidote to poverty according to many prominent figures, including President Barack Obama. But, in America, access to education and its anti-poverty characteristics is not equally available to all. This disparity in who has access, and who benefits, in our current education system is called the Education Gap, or Achievement Gap.
The Achievement Gap Starts Long Before Higher Education
The Achievement Gap manifests in different ways; level of degree attained, academic performance, behavioral issues at school, and more. It is starkest at the end of the education pipeline. Compared to white students, Black students are only half as likely to earn a bachelor’s degree by age 29, and Hispanic students are one third as likely.
These discrepancies begin long before students reach higher education. Students from working class families, which are predominantly families of color, begin their schooling with a disadvantage: at age three, professionals’ children have vocabularies nearly 50% greater than those of working class children.
And this gap only widens with time.
At the end of fourth grade, students of low socioeconomic status (SES) are two years behind their wealthier, primarily white, peers. By the end of eighth grade this gap is three years, and by twelfth grade, these students are at the level of their white peers in eighth grade.
How Can We Explain the Achievement Gap?
There are multiple factors at play. Schools in minority neighborhoods are under-funded and under-resourced; even when families of color make higher salaries, they often remain in lower class neighborhoods with under-resourced schools. Students of low SES have access to fewer books, fewer enrichment opportunities at home, and get less facetime with their parents, which is important for children’s development. They are more likely to have vision problems, miss school due to medical reasons, be malnourished, and have high lead exposure, which all impair learning.
As they age, students of color are disciplined more often and more harshly than their white counterparts, resulting in more time out of the classroom. Test scores drop due to the anxieties of stereotype threat, the fear of confirming harmful stereotypes about their personal identities.
Covid-19: Widening The Achievement Gap
Even before Covid-19, the education gap was growing. Now, the global pandemic is hurting all children, but not equally. While white students are losing 5-9 months of learning in math, students of color are experiencing 12-16 months of learning loss. And because education is cumulative, with each year building on the previous year’s knowledge and skills, educators think these children will never recover what they lost.
The pandemic is only worsening the levels of toxic stress encountered by working class children and children of color, which were already too high pre-pandemic. With increased economic anxiety and higher virus levels in working class communities and communities of color, these students are disproportionately impacted by economic and health stressors. Plus, they are unable to retreat to school as a safe haven from stressors at home.
Children in high SES households are more likely to have parents who work from home, and who can supplement their education, whether that be homework help or other enriching activities. Students from low SES families often have parents who are essential workers, who must often be out of the home working, rather than spending time supporting their children. Even when they are home, parents are often poorly educated themselves and tech illiterate, further impeding their ability to support their children academically.
Los Angeles: A City In Educational Crisis
This story of the widening achievement gap could not be more true in Los Angeles.
Los Angeles Unified School District is the nation's second largest public school district, with almost 80% of the district’s students living in poverty.
A recent report concluded that “Los Angeles is in an unprecedented educational crisis,” as the pandemic has caused a level of disruption never before seen. Students are struggling despite the district’s best efforts. LAUSD rapidly moved nearly half a million students online in March 2020, developing new virtual tours to support the hundreds of thousands of educators and supplying every student with a personal computer or tablet. The district has fed students and families 100 million meals over the course of the pandemic, and has had a massive campaign to vaccinate teachers in order to reopen safely.
These undertakings buffer students and teachers from the worst, but aren’t enough to fully combat the effects of a global pandemic.
When school first moved online, there was a massive drop in attendance. Around 40% of middle and high schoolers were disengaged or absent from Spring 2020 semester classes, a number likely higher for elementary students though difficult to capture. These lower levels of engagement continued into the fall for students of all grade levels.
Two out of three students in LAUSD are falling behind in math and literacy. This gap is especially large for students of color; the number of students on target for learning to read fell from 2019 to 2020. The pandemic is hurting the education achievement of all disadvantaged students.
Students of color, low-income students, English learners, foster youth, students with disabilities and homeless students are further behind than their more advantaged peers across all indicators of academic progress.
This learning loss will have serious consequences, emotionally and academically. Experts worry about the impact of school closure on students' mental health and emotional wellbeing. Isolation from peers can take a large toll on kids’ mental health, especially on younger children. The increases in anxiety and depression resulting from social isolation are likely to continue even after the pandemic ends. Additionally, researchers estimate that this loss of learning could result in up to $82,000 lost in lifetime earnings for the average student, an impact especially concerning in a district with so much poverty.
So, How Do We Remedy the Achievement Gap?
It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the state of our education system. But we aren’t powerless.
Policy change may be the best long term remedy for the achievement gap, but there are concrete steps we can take today to support the children disproportionately hurt by Covid-19 and the education gap, steps proven to be effective.
Individualized academic support in the form of tutoring has been proven repeatedly to be effective at boosting students’ academic performance. Now more than ever, students need the extra assistance from tutors to combat the learning loss from online school. With academic tutoring, students at under-resourced schools are buffered from the worst effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on the education gap.
Perhaps more importantly, tutors also serve as mentor figures for students. Mentorship is an important factor in achievement, and also a resource with varying access by race and class. A good mentor is proven to help students, not just academically, but to grow and achieve in all areas of their lives. Mentors support students social emotional development, encourage self-confidence and promote healthy behaviors and choices that serve students their entire lives.
Children from lower SES households often have a smaller perception of the world, even geographically. A mentor can broaden their horizon of opportunity–expanding youths’ worldviews and the opportunities and goals they envision for themselves.
How You Can Help
We are at a crucial moment in education. With the achievement gap continuing to widen, now is the time to step up to the challenge, combat systemic inequality, and make the difference in a kid’s life. Step Up Tutoring fights the achievement gap by connecting children from under-resourced schools with online, high quality tutoring and mentorship.
To become a volunteer tutor and mentor, and help close the education gap, apply here.
Written by Julia Axelrod, Experience Manager at Step Up Tutoring.