By 2019, when this year’s fourth graders are in their twenties, whites will be twice as likely as blacks and three times as likely as Hispanics to have a college degree. In schools across the nation, white and Asian students outperform their black and Hispanic peers in every subject.
This disparity in education is known as the “achievement gap,” and it’s been the subject of countless task forces and research studies.
Researchers claim that the achievement gap stems from years of discrimination, but the gap itself does not discriminate–it plagues public and private schools alike.
Although the achievement gap is widespread, in some schools it simply does not exist. To find out why, we visited an urban elementary school in Mount Vernon, New York that has managed to avoid the achievement gap.
(Originally aired November 12, 2003)
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