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The nation needs to take a more comprehensive approach to improving educational outcomes for low-income and minority students and English learners.
Education has long been recognized as important to individual well-being and the nations economic growth. Yet, despite significant public and private investment, disparities in educational opportunities, behavior, attainment, and achievement exist among different student populations. For example, from early childhood through postsecondary education, English learners, low-income, and some racial and ethnic minority students generally have less access to quality learning opportunities, materials, and teachers than their peers. Students from these disadvantaged groups also fare less well on a variety of outcomes. In addition to well-documented gaps in K-12 achievement and graduation rates, these students are more likely to be absent or truant, have disciplinary problems in school, encounter the justice system, and engage in risky behaviors, and less likely to attend and graduate from college. As demographics continue to shift in the United States, the imperative for the K-12 education system to address these disparities and better prepare students to thrive in adulthood is greater than ever before.
Recent policy developments are renewing attention to this imperative and providing an opportunity to address it. The Common Core state standards in mathematics and English language arts will increase academic expectations for all students. In a similar vein, realizing President Obamas goal of producing 8 million more college graduates by 2020 will mean that a more diverse range of students needs to leave high school prepared for the future.
The available evidence suggests that meeting these goals will require appreciable changes in the approaches school systems take to educate students from low-income families, nonwhite students, and English learners. Making these changes will not be easy, for two major reasons. First, anyone who has spent appreciable time in schools, particularly low-performing schools or those with high concentrations of students in poverty, can attest to the complexity of the educational enterprise. Second, education policies and policy research often belie those known complexities, typically emphasizing one or two levers that are perceived as being the most influential at any given time. Without a greater willingness to grapple with more aspects of the system simultaneously when crafting policies and policy research, progress in reducing educational disparities will continue to...