The Achievement Gap.

I was asked before I left Baltimore: What is the achievement gap and why does it persist in your school and community? I have a feeling that if someone asked me this at the beginning of the year, my definition of the achievement gap wouldn't be too different. It had been seeing it and hearing about it through the kids at camp that made me want to join TFA. As for the reasons, though, I might have said something like, "bad schools," or "ineffective teachers." After a year of teaching, my answer came out more like this:

The achievement gap is when you take two children of the same age from different economic backgrounds and put them next to each other. You look at them and they have the same smiles, same sense of childish wonder, same potential, and same dreams and desires. But despite this, the child growing up in poverty, through no fault of his own, cannot read or do math or have a conversation at the same level as the other child. The child growing up in poverty just never learned how to do those things.

I believe the achievement gap is a fundamental inequity in our society. To eliminate the achievement gap would be to make our society more equitable and more fair. When it comes to eliminating this gap, lot of people in big places say things like "all you need to do is..." and they fill in the blank with things like "accountability," "merit pay," "eliminate unions," and "better teachers." I'm now convinced that anyone who starts a sentence about education reform with "All you need is..." has never spent a day in an inner city public school, and does not know what he or she is talking about.

In our education classes, the emphasis is always placed on differentiation. We know that each student learns differently and at different speeds than any other student. The challenge is meeting every kid where he or she is, in a way that is best for that person. I mention this because eliminating the achievement gap would be to make an unfair situation fair. But as our education classes repeatedly remind us, fair is not everyone getting the same thing. Fair is everyone getting what he or she needs. You might need glasses to see and succeed, but I wouldn't give glasses to everyone just because you got them since it doesn't help them at all.

When I look back at my year, I believe that many of the students in my class and at our school were not getting a fair chance because they' were not getting what they needed. Unfortunately, their needs are just so great compared to kids from more affluent areas. Students at my school weren't getting the food they needed, they weren't getting the medicine they needed, they weren't getting the clothing they needed. They weren't getting the help, time, or the attention they needed. They weren't getting the respect, role models, security, stability, patience, or confidence they needed. For too many of the kids, they weren't getting the love and compassion they needed.

At the end of a rocky, but ultimately successful and rewarding year, I can still look at all these problems and undoubtedly say that I believe education is the key to upward mobility in this country. But, when I wonder why I'm killing myself staying after school, buying food, planning all hours of the day, and putting up with some of the extremely disrespectful and awful things that are said in class, I think about everything these kids need from me, their teacher. This problem is so big, and as a society we need to address those difficult underlying issues like health and poverty. Until then, though, education has to offer an open door for our kids, and when no one else is giving these students what they need, for six hours a day the teacher should. It's only fair.