Mind the gap: how schools can bridge the opportunity gap through literacy
According to the Schoot Foundation for Public Education (n.d.),“The opportunity gap is the disparity in access to quality schools and the resources needed for all children to be academically successful” (par. 1). Unfortunately, equal opportunity is not a reality for all students or all schools. In my opinion, a school is a place that should offer equal opportunities to students regardless of an individual’s or community’s socioeconomic situation. This article will examine how schools influence adolescent literature through the lens of opportunity and analyze different ways in which school systems and educators can work to close the gap.
A discussion I had with my peer group sparked my interest in opportunity gaps. We discussed the idea of the ability to afford literacy. To be literate in the conventional sense, a student needs the means to buy a book, drive to the library, attain Internet access, etc. To be literate in unconventional ways can come at the price of using one’s imagination and critical thinking skills. But even becoming more developed in an unconventional literacy can prove financially difficult or impossible for underprivileged students and schools. With this thought, I sought to explore ways educators and school systems could work not only to mind the opportunity gap, but also to bridge it.
Adolescent literacy is understood in two ways. To those focused on achievement, literacy is a tool that proves or disproves a student’s intellectual capacity. To adolescents interacting with their peers, literacy is a cultural capital, a way to advance or decimate one’s own social standing in the hierarchy of school. When literacy is used in these ways, unequal opportunity creates a glass ceiling, wherein students with alternative forms of literacy are deemed unintelligent by standardized exams or cast out of the school’s social hierarchy. While research by Burns, Snow, and Griffin (1998) suggests a correlation exists between a low socioeconomic standing and poorer reading skills, they concluded, “the correlation between SES and low achievement is probably mediated…by differences in the quality of school experiences” (par. 9).
In Michele Knobel’s study (2001), Jacques displays both of these perceptions of literacy by participating in the literacy of Witnessing while subverting his participation in standardized school literacy. Despite his disinterested nature in school, Jacques has a wealth of cultural capital which he exercises through his unconventional literacy. Jacques’s education fails him because his educational opportunities do not align with his cultural capital. Readers are shown Jacques’ business literacy. However, this literacy goes unrecognized by the school system, and this denies Jacques an opportunity to express his individualized intelligence. Pedro Noguera (2009) speaks of achievement discrepancies caused by the opportunity gap . Noguera emphasizes the importance of relativity and speaking to students’ cultural capital and their nonconventional literacies:
Schools promote achievement and cultural capital-oriented literacy by practicing unimodal forms of learning and engaging students at a privileged socioeconomic level, despite some students being socioeconomically underprivileged. In Margaret Finders’ (1997) Just Girls, teachers’ disregard for students’ socioeconomics denies underprivileged students equal opportunity. Noguera discussed a teacher’s need to understand his or her students’ backgrounds in order to engage them properly, and this concept is reiterated in Just Girls. For example, Finders shows teachers use yearbooks as a motivational tool for their students. By using yearbooks this way, teachers speak above the socioeconomic understanding of some students, as some students are unable to be “yearbook literate” because they cannot afford to be literate in this way.
This is where we see literacy defined as cultural capital and see the negative effects of unimodal literacy. Literacy that is recognized only as one’s ability to read and comprehend a text fails to recognize the literacy of doing. The literacy of doing is one that opens students to a world of multimodal literacy, which expands cultural capital. Because literacy was defined in the school of Just Girls as an ability to read, what students read — and how many photos a student had in the yearbook — determined social standing, barring lower income students from this cultural capital.
Deprivation of cultural capital and unconventional literacies creates a school that systematically excludes particular literacies and students from many opportunities of public education. Schools cultivate an environment conducive to the majority, but it leaves the minority lacking in cultural capital. This brings us to an impasse — how should a school system promote literacy and equality for the minority within a system that targets the majority?
To counteract social stratification in schools, there must be equal opportunity. This equal opportunity can come both inside and outside the classroom. In Finders’ study, the school could have made yearbooks more accessible to students who were unable to afford it. Students could have been allowed to “work” or earn character points to earn their yearbooks. Character points work by teachers giving students who are exhibiting good character traits “points,” and if they earn enough points throughout the year, then they have earned their yearbook. This diminishes social stratification, expands the literacy of cultural capital, and promotes good behavior.
Promoting equal opportunity outside the classroom can be achieved through programs like my own non-profit Yule Read, which gifts underprivileged children with books they are allowed to keep. Statistically, according to Evans, Kelley, Sikora, and Treiman (2010) the mere fact that a child owns a book has the potential to alter his or her literacy. Evans, et al.’s twenty year study found that owning as few as ten books can make a difference in the child’s likelihood to finish his or her secondary schooling, as shown in Figure 1. As the number of books increases, the likelihood the student will finish schooling also increases. Evans (2010) stated in an interview, “The results of this study indicate that getting some books into [students’] homes is an inexpensive way that we can help these children succeed” (par. 4).
These examples of ways in which schools undermine adolescent literature do not have to be our way of educating. Instead, as educators, we should reach beyond a conventional sense of literacy, and by reaching beyond we have the ability to bridge the opportunity gap.
References
Burns, S., Griffin, P., & Snow, C. (1998). Chapter 4: Predictors of success and failure in reading. In Preventing reading difficulties in young children. Retrieved from http://www.readingrockets.org/article/socioeconomics-and-reading-difficulties
Evans, M. (2010). Books in the home as important as parents’ education level (Interview by C. Wharton) [Transcript]. Retrieved from NEVADAToday website: http://www.unr.edu/nevada-today/news/2010/books-in-the-home-as-important-as-parents-education-level
Evans, M., Kelley, J., Sikora, J., & Treiman, D. J. (2010). Estimated gain in education from various sources: First differences from multivariate models in Table 3. [Chart]. Retrieved from http://www.international-survey.org/PQ_2010_BooksOnEd27Nations_RSSM2.pdf
Evans, M., et al.(2010). Family scholarly culture and educational success: Books and schooling in 27 nations. Retrieved from http://www.international-survey.org/PQ_2010_BooksOnEd27Nations_RSSM2.pdf
Finders, M. (1997). Just girls: Hidden literacies and life in junior high. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.
Knobel, M. (2001). “I’m not a pencil man”: How one student challenges our notions of literacy “failure” in school. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 44(5), 404–414.
[Mind the gap]. (2016, March). Retrieved from http://www.mitaliblog.com/2016/03/mind-gap-questions-about-power-for.html
newyorkuniversity. (2009, August 27). How do schools promote equity among students? [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wiEKs01ZIho
Opportunity gap - talking points [Fact sheet]. (n.d.). Retrieved September 27, 2016, from Schott Foundation for Public Education website: http://schottfoundation.org/issues/opportunity-gap/talking-points
[Poverty in the classroom]. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.hmleague.org/#jp-carousel-1902
