We need to close the Achievement Gap

By Olivia G. Martinez

Every year a significant number of students enter our high schools who are not prepared for the demands of high school. Many come from homes where English is not spoken and some come from low-income homes where little academic support is available. Still others come with significant learning or behavioral disorders. We must educate them all to the best of our ability.

In addition, our teaching staff has been specially trained in methods for teaching English language learners, students with different learning styles, students with behavioral and intellectual challenges and students who are unmotivated. All these efforts have met with some success but we still have significant numbers of students who do not perform well in school. Recently, our schools have partnered with elementary schools to ease the transition from 8th grade to high school and we need to do more of this. We must face the reality that an achievement gap of some dimension will always be with us, but that fact must not reduce our resolve to remedy it.

We must continue all these efforts and continue working with our elementary districts to better prepare our eigth graders for 9th grade work. We need to raise our expectations for students, something that is easily said but difficult to do when teachers have 35 students with different levels of preparation, facing them each day. We must continue to support our teachers and build on the creative resources and talents at our disposal.