Closing the academic achievement gap

By Susan Sweeley

Nearly one-third of our student population struggles to succeed academically.

The widely publicized Academic Performance Index (API) provides a view into the "academic gap" that we face in the MVLA District. While the Asian and White ethic groups are performing at a very high level, the other groups are performing significantly lower. The "gap" is the difference between these respective groups of students.

You usually hear about the gap between Hispanics and the Asian/White groups. There is also a gap with students that are socio-economically disadvantaged, English learners and students with disabilities. The overlap is that Hispanics make up 74% of these disadvantaged students.

This is a difficult and complex problem shared by a large number of schools across the nation. Within the MVLA High School District, this problem weighs heavily on the approximately 21% of our student population that is Hispanic. One part of the solution is to close the gap before these students enter high school. However the underlying challenge is how to offset the cultural and socioeconomic factors that play such a big role in academic achievement and are external to the school classrooms and campus. This is an issue that you will hear mentioned regularly as part of our national election campaigns and is a key reason for my active involvement with the California School Boards Association and the Santa Clara School Board Association.