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Why is it so hard to reduce the achievement gap between white and Asian American students and black and Hispanic students?

Living in the South, I hear some of the more extreme answers from those who still don’t accept racial integration.  The arguments are echoes of the 1950s and 1960s civil rights debates.  Blacks were an inferior race, segregationists claimed, and “race mingling” led to ruin.

The arguments today are not as raw or blunt as in the civil rights era.  More politically correct code words often serve as substitutes:  state’s rights, food stamp president, keeping people “in their place,” and learning to “show up for work.”

Such old attitudes are deeply discouraging for those who long for a country of equal rights and meritocracy.  Sadly, the words also signal a retreat to older times and a resignation to do nothing to change the status quo on such challenges as the achievement gap.

Thus, it is more than heartening to read about a long-term study of poor children and the impact of early education on their future prospects.

The study was conducted by the Frank Porter Graham Development Institute at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  It followed the lives of 111 poor children, many of them minorities, from birth to age 30.

The good news is that pre-kindergarten school meant better reading and math scores for the poor children in later school years.

The children were more likely to pursue college, and they were four times more likely to earn a college degree.  Twenty-three percent graduated from college while only 6 percent in the control group received a degree.

There were other measurable benefits.  The early-educated students were less likely to become teenage parents.  They were employed more and remained off public assistance more.

Surprisingly, given the encouraging findings, there was little difference in incomes, and more troubling, criminal behavior did not change when compared to the control group. 

The latter suggest that curriculum improvements might positively affect such negative results.

Another encouraging sign in North Carolina has been reported by Tony Habit, president of the New Schools Project.  His nonprofit’s focus on early college high schools has reduced dramatically the achievement gap among older, high school students.

The message here is one of hope.  The study and the News Schools Project show we can do better.  And we have evidence to prove it.