Issue Position: The Opportunity Gap

Issue Position

For too long, we used the phrase "achievement gap" to describe the persistent difference in academic performance between Caucasian students and students of color, English Language Learners, and other diverse communities. This leaves too many people believing that students have vastly different abilities. The raw truth is we have an opportunity gap that results in an achievement gap. Our students are diverse and may learn, develop, and achieve at different rates, but they are all capable of remarkable things. Our failure to address inequitable resources in our communities and in our schools leads to the opportunity gap. Native American students, African-Americans, Hispanics, and a host of other ethnic and racial populations are systemically discriminated against in the way we fund schools, our inability to address poverty, our discipline policies, and our narrowing definition of how students demonstrate proficiency by use of standardized, often culturally biased, and generally English-only exams. We cannot approach 100% graduation rates until we take a more sincere, more persistent, and more honest approach to how we connect our diverse communities with our public education system. Our education system was designed by people of privilege, it reflects their advantages, right down to the nine month agrarian calendar. Our communities of color, students with disabilities, and English Language Learners, and students in poverty, deserve a fully funded education system that is not a function of where they were born, or to whom they were born, or the property wealth of their neighborhood. Students of color deserve school boards that are as diverse as their communities, administrators as diverse as their schools, and teachers as diverse as their classrooms. State resources must be targeted beyond formula funds to schools that need additional support. Our data systems must drill down to understand the disproportionate impacts of our education policies and our funding decisions.

As Superintendent I will diversify the OSPI staff and create a policy framework for the organization that embeds solutions to the opportunity gap in everything we do! Not a single policy will be promoted from my office that does not fully examine the impact on our diverse communities. From policy development, to grant funds, to professional development for our school districts and education service districts; everything OSPI does to approach 100% graduation rates must have an acute eye to the populations that have been systemically denied opportunity in our past and still today. Embracing diversity is not an exercise in being color blind. Quite the opposite; it is absolutely about seeing color, seeing diversity, seeing barriers, having crucial conversations, and strategically moving our communities to a greater passion about their public schools and the expectations of all students.

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