How to Close the Achievement Gap?

Use the data to introduce change to measure again in an ongoing cycle of improvement.

But how do we know what change to introduce?

July 2010 - The Black-White Achievement Gap: When Progress Stopped - The nation’s attention has been — and remains — Although there is important knowledge to be gained from these longitudinal data on the children, the focus of concern and investigation should extend to the health of the family — our “smallest school” — as a teaching institution. In addition, we must look beyond the family to the neighborhoods. As William Julius Wilson puts it, the individual framework does not capture “the impact of relational, organizational, and collective processes that embody the social structure of inequality," Educational Testing Service.

November - December 2008 - Beth Hawkins and Cynthia Boyd of MinnPost: Five Part Series on Desegregation - In 1972, segregation in Minneapolis schools was so grave a federal judge ordered the city to begin busing students to achieve racial balance. Thirty-six years and several attempted reforms later, Twin Cities-area schools are more segregated than ever.

August 2008 - Close the Gap: A Community Guide - Fostering dialogue on how to eliminate race, class, and place disparities, UMN Human Rights Center in collaboration with the Itasca Project, Twin Cities Public Television (tpt), and Twin Cities Compass/Wilder Research .

December 16, 2007 - In Minneapolis, a Block Transformed - Mixed housing creates family-safe neighborhoods, New York Times.

May 2007 - The Choice is Ours: Expanding Educational Opportunity for all Twin Cities Children - To help integrate schools, and ensure equal access to opportunity, affordable housing should not be concentrated in racially or economically segregated areas, and decisions to site units should be coordinated with an expanded school choice program so opportunities are available for families to live near their children’s schools in places where job opportunities also are more abundant, UMN Institute on Race & Poverty.

March 2006 - Minority Suburbanization and Racial Change - Pro-integrative policies must be regional in scope or the operations of metropolitan housing markets will undermine efforts to stabilize neighborhoods, and frustrate efforts to ensure that children and families have access to education and housing that is not determined by race and ethnicity, UMN Institute on Race & Poverty.