Closing the Achievement Gap: What It Would Take

The Bush administration announced last fall that it wants to spend $100 billion and put a man on the moon. No one in the administration, apparently, has the heart to tell President Bush that we already did that -- in 1969.

If we want a mission on the scale of Kennedy's 1961 vision of putting a man on the moon by the end of the decade, then let's look at the contemporary equivalent of a moon-shot: eradicating the achievement gap between the haves and the have nots by the year 2013.

Sound crazy? Good. That means it fits in with Kennedy's wacko proclamation: it's seven years from the time of pronouncement to the time of execution.

Richard Rothstein, writing in his book _Class and Schools_, writes that adding the price of health, early childhood, after-school, and summer programs, the down payment on closing the achievement gap would probably increase the annual cost of education for children who attend schools where at least 40% of the enrolled children have low incomes by about $12,500 per pupil over and above the $8,000 already being spent. In total, this means about a $156 billion added annual national cost to provide these programs to low-income children.

Sound like a lot of money? Perfect. Initial NASA estimates of the costs of Project Apollo were about $20 billion through the end of the decade, a figure approaching $200 billion in contemporary dollars when accounting for inflation.

$156 billion is a lot of money. And there's little chance we'd get it done by 2013. But compared to putting another man on the moon, I'd rather spend money on helping children and families. Compared to spending $200 billion -- and counting -- on invading and rebuilding Iraq, I'd rather do something substantive for the future of the country. And although there's no guarantee that we could close the achievement gap in seven years, it's still worth approaching as if it were possible.

So what would it take to close the achievement gap between rich families and poor families?

1. smaller class sizes at every level
2. comprehensive social services so no child has to go without food, shelter, medicine, and dental care
3. adequate prenatal care and postnatal follow-up so children reach school age healthy
4. free, high-quality, universal pre-K that is developmentally appropriate
5. parent education for young parents
6. comprehensive job training and placement for parents at a real living wage
7. universal healthcare coverage for all Americans, especially the poor and "working poor"
8. free, high-quality onsite child-care or free transportation to and from child-care facilities to make it possible for parents to work and raise children
9. high-quality training and ongoing professional development for elementary teachers in reading instruction (not drill-and-kill phonics)
10. high-quality training and ongoing professional development for all teachers in classroom-based formative assessment

I can hear the objections now: "These are all nice feel good things to do and there may be some good reasons for doing them, but what evidence is there that they would actually narrow the achievement gap?"

Imagine if we applied this logic to Bush's argument about the war on terror, especially the invasion of Iraq. We would say, "Mr. President, these are all nice things to do and there may be good reasons for doing them, but what evidence is there they would actually end the war on terror and make the world safer?"

The clock is till ticking in Iraq, with no end whatsoever in sight. But that doesn't stop the Bush administration from pouring billions and billions of dollars into it every week.

So let's make a deal: let's take the money we are spending to go back to the moon -- $100 billion -- and the money we are spending in Iraq -- $200 billion and counting -- and let's spend it on closing the achievement gap. Then let's look at the results. If we spend $300 billion and achieve absolutely nothing in trying to close the achievement gap, then I grant the nay-sayers full license to run through the streets, shouting, "More money is not the answer!" But until such time, I respectfully assert the following: (1) this country has finally realized that we have a serious poverty problem, (2) rocks are hard, water is wet, the sky is blue, and poverty shapes whether children can learn or not, and (3) we have to do something about it – now.

Recall the words of Kennedy after making the famous moon declaration: "We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win."

So we choose to close the achievement gap not because it is easy, but because it is hard, because this goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win.