Implications of the Achievement Gap
Low-income and minority students are not receiving the same educational opportunities as their affluent, white peers, as they continue to attend schools with dilapidated facilities, a lack of essential educational resources such as computers and updated textbooks, poor teacher quality, and high concentrations of other minority and low-income students. Regardless of an individual's own learning capacity, simply attending schools with these features severely disadvantages students, as each is shown to have a negative impact on academic performance. This is clearly evidenced through the persistence of the gaps in achievement between racial and socioeconomic groups. And since education is one of the largest predictors of overall life success, the achievement gap has some serious implications.
For starters, there are the obvious. Achieving at low levels in school means having significantly less refined skills than the higher achieving students, even with critical skills such as reading comprehension and mathematics. With even every day activities requiring a certain level of mastery of these skills, one can only expect how much expertise is required for society's best, highest paying jobs. It should then come as no surprise that students demonstrating weaker skill sets are relegated to jobs that require only menial levels of mastery, which are often low-paying and physically demanding positions that many other people are not themselves interested in. As should also be expected, lower wages translates to things such as poverty, poor health, and an overall lower quality of life.
Beyond this, the minority and low-income students most greatly affected by the achievement gap are also subject to significantly higher rates of incarceration. But beyond simply the implications that the achievement gap has on an individual's life outcome, there are serious implications for the American economy as well. According to MacKinsey & Company's research, the achievement gap has an equivalent effect on the economy as a permanent recession. In the video below, they do things such as quantify this effect by attaching dollar amounts to show what the GDP would look had the achievement gaps between different groups been closed, and discussing how GDP has actually changed over the last several years. A discussion of the facts about achievement gaps presented with an examination of the economic consequences really puts into perspective how vitally important it is for the educational system to be reformed.
For starters, there are the obvious. Achieving at low levels in school means having significantly less refined skills than the higher achieving students, even with critical skills such as reading comprehension and mathematics. With even every day activities requiring a certain level of mastery of these skills, one can only expect how much expertise is required for society's best, highest paying jobs. It should then come as no surprise that students demonstrating weaker skill sets are relegated to jobs that require only menial levels of mastery, which are often low-paying and physically demanding positions that many other people are not themselves interested in. As should also be expected, lower wages translates to things such as poverty, poor health, and an overall lower quality of life.
Beyond this, the minority and low-income students most greatly affected by the achievement gap are also subject to significantly higher rates of incarceration. But beyond simply the implications that the achievement gap has on an individual's life outcome, there are serious implications for the American economy as well. According to MacKinsey & Company's research, the achievement gap has an equivalent effect on the economy as a permanent recession. In the video below, they do things such as quantify this effect by attaching dollar amounts to show what the GDP would look had the achievement gaps between different groups been closed, and discussing how GDP has actually changed over the last several years. A discussion of the facts about achievement gaps presented with an examination of the economic consequences really puts into perspective how vitally important it is for the educational system to be reformed.