Getting students to believe in themselves

Students of color in America are at the center of a vortex of forces that have created an achievement gap. What a close look at these forces reveals is that the achievement gap is really an opportunity gap.

The opportunity gap gets a head start for many kids before they ever get to school — if they don’t have get the same chances to develop vocabulary, visit museums, or read books as their more privileged peers. But, without equal access to rigorous curriculum and high-expectations teaching, students caught in the opportunity gap can fall farther and farther behind. Add to that the debilitating effects of stereotype threat and institutional racism and we wind up with a tragic squandering of human potential.

But let’s also acknowledge that educators can do much more to provide positive support in the environments we control: the classroom and the school. And the power of that environment to make transformative changes has been demonstrated again and again (see schools identified each year on the Education Trust’s web site: https://edtrust.org/dispelling_the_myth.). Across the country, we can find individual teachers and whole schools at all levels that have overcome these obstacles for students with sustainable gains.