What’s Really Behind the “Achievement Gap”

Inequality, opportunity gaps, and the importance of high-quality early learning

By Rachel Herzfeldt-Kamprath and Maryam Adamu

You may be familiar with the achievement gap — it’s the disparities in test scores between white children and their peers of color, which follow children for most of their school careers. The achievement gap is the ubiquitous shorthand used by politicians, policymakers, and parents to discuss the ways in which inequality manifests itself in our education system.

Indeed, the impact of inequality can be seen in children as young as two. But conversations that focus on the achievement gap are misleading at best. In reality, the so-called achievement gap stems from the opportunity gap that exists between children of different races and socio-economic backgrounds, often affecting them before they are born. The achievement gap is a symptom of a long history of policy failures that perpetuate inequitable outcomes.

We owe it to our young children to promote policies that can create a level playing field from the very beginning of their lives. Considering what research tells us about the relationship between inequality and education, it’s time we target our interventions where they count: early childhood.

The cyclical nature of inequality means that disparities in early childhood inform those in adolescence which inform those in adulthood, but it does not have to be this way.

Currently, nearly half of all U.S. children under age 6 grow up in a household experiencing poverty. A disproportionate amount of those children are African American and Hispanic. Research shows that children who experience economic hardship at a young age face long-lasting negative consequences related to the development of social-emotional and cognitive skills.

Simultaneously, the shifting demographics of the United States means that allowing current trends in poverty to persist will be detrimental to our collective future. According to census projections, the country will be majority people of color in 2044. In the youngest subset of kids — those under 3 — children of color already make up the majority.

In other words, for young children, the future is now. Inequality continues to be a defining issue, shaping the social and economic landscape of our society and the longer we wait to solve it, the worse the outcomes will be.

Opportunities for high-quality early learning are out of reach

Fortunately, we know that high-quality early education is an effective policy that can level the playing field for children of color. Unfortunately, access to preschool is limited for all children. Across the country, only about a third of all children ages 3 and 4 attend preschool. Further, although Hispanic children are one of the fastest growing demographics of infants and toddlers, they are the least likely to attend preschool.

For children who do have access to preschool, data shows that quality is lacking. High-quality preschool programs have demonstrable short- and long-term benefits including higher test scores, better social skills, and greater educational attainment for children who attend.

Unfortunately, the majority of children who attend preschool programs are in poor to mediocre quality educational environments, regardless of race. These environments might not provide the learning and developmental support children need to ultimately be successful.

When children start out behind, it’s hard to catch up

Since access to high quality early learning opportunities varies for children of different races and/or socio-economic backgrounds, many enter kindergarten at different phases of skills development. Data shows that children who start school at a disadvantage continue to lag behind their peers.

This means that we are failing to provide enough support and opportunities to ensure that every child, particularly those from African American and Hispanic backgrounds, begins his or her education on equal footing as their peers.

Disparities in early education are compounded by the difficulties many children will experience as they move through the K-12 education system, snowballing into much greater problems by the time they become adults. For example, African American and Hispanic students are less likely to graduate high-school than their non-Hispanic white peers.

Not surprisingly, that shapes who goes to and graduates from college. By the time these children become adults, they are less likely to attain the higher education degrees that might put them on the path to long-term success and financial security.

Closing opportunity gaps

With demographic change on the horizon, it is especially critical that we interrupt the cycle of inequality. Fortunately, high-quality early learning has the power to significantly decrease and, potentially, completely reverse the persistent opportunity gaps that lead to worse outcomes for children of color.

Watch what happens to math and reading scores at kindergarten entry if we were to take the demonstrated impacts of the highest-quality preschool settings and apply them in a universal context:

The “achievement gap” effectively disappears. Ultimately, this is a no-brainer: when we give all children access to high-quality educational opportunities, they start to achieve at similar levels. However, it drives home the point that by not investing in young children, we put their futures and the future of our economy at risk.

To be fair, preschool is not in and of itself a silver bullet. We still have much work to do to completely eliminate disparities in access to quality housing, health, and educational supports, all of which impact how children perform in school.

However, at the very least, we owe it to children — particularly those from marginalized backgrounds — to make sure they start off on the right foot. We can do that by investing in and offering high-quality, universal pre-kindergarten for all 3- and 4- year-olds.