Educational Researcher

The achievement gap is one of the most talked-about issues in U.S. education. The term refers to the disparities in standardized test scores between Black and White, Latina/o and White, and recent immigrant and White students. This article argues that a focus on the gap is misplaced. Instead, we need to look at the “education debt” that has accumulated over time. This debt comprises historical, economic, sociopolitical, and moral components. The author draws an analogy with the concept of national debt—which she contrasts with that of a national budget deficit—to argue the significance of the education debt.

America’s schools are among the most unequal in the industrialized world in terms of both inputs and outcomes. Inequalities in spending, class sizes, textbooks, computers, facilities, curriculum offerings, and access to qualified teachers contribute to disparate achievement by race and class, which increasingly feeds the “school-to-prison pipeline”—a function of many young people’s lack of adequate skills for joining the labor market. This creates an enormous drain on national resources, which, in turn, reduces the capacity to invest in education, social services, and employment. To reverse this situation, the nation must create a coherent system that can provide well-trained teachers in all communities so that all children can be skillfully taught and ultimately successful in a knowledge-based economy. This article describes the kind of preparation and policy system needed to achieve this goal.

In an era of heightened teacher and school accountability, what are the implications of standards-based reform for individual Latino children and their democratic self-realization? The educational demography of the fastest-growing and largest ethnic group in the United States suggests that the future of Latino self-realization is in jeopardy. This commentary posits that the true malfeasance of accountability policies is the loss of the individual and the erasure of individuality and that, given the realities of Latino educational trajectory and population growth, the Latinization of America is effectively compromised.