Closing the Achievement Gap: What Else Can We Do?

SMSU Event Center BC

The achievement gap begins in elementary school and continues to persist throughout elementary and secondary schools producing differences in high school graduation rates, college and career attainment, and ultimately socio-economic differences in income between various groups (Gordon D. Amerson Jr, 2014; Salvin & Madden, 2006). Despite decades of overall progress in narrowing achievement gaps, disparities in educational outcomes related to poverty, English language proficiency, disability, and racial and ethnic background persist (Waldman, 2016). The purpose of this study is to constructively and concurrently analyze the practices and experiences of teachers as they work to close the achievement gap in relationship to key factors such as: the proportion of ELLs and non – ELLs students in the classrooms, Parents involvement in student’s education, etc. We will focus on schools in the Inland Empire County . Human subjects will be composed of teachers. Survey instrument will be associated with focus groups meetings, and research will take place after approval from IRB. A two-phase explanatory sequential mixed methods design will be used: quantitative and qualitative. Data collected will be analyzed with NVIVO software. We hope to propose a new model of practice that can potentially help close the achievement gap between high performing students and low performing students in K-12 as well as in higher education.